Evidence of meeting #143 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was hatred.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I was wondering if Mr. Fogel was trying to get your attention. That's why I was....
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs
If I can add two super-quick comments....
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs
Look, here are two things about social media platforms. On the one hand, asking them to self-regulate and to, in effect, censor some of the content goes directly against their business model, which is to expand as opposed to contract. I think we have to be sensitive to this.
I have discerned over the past 12 to 18 months a sea change, an evolution in the thinking of these platforms. I think they are scared. They did not appreciate just how big they were getting, just how powerful a tool their platforms were. I do not think they have the confidence that they can do this on their own.
My sense, from some of the testimony they've given in various legislatures around the world, but certainly here in North America, is that they are looking for some support and leadership from government. I think they need it both for insulation, as well as for objective third party adjudication, for lack of a better term, to help direct and guide how they're going to put into place the kind of infrastructure....
With Facebook alone, just the other day I heard an interview where a senior employee at Facebook was talking about moving from having 10,000 to 30,000 people with the dedicated task of reviewing posts online. It's crazy. I think they do need government support, and they don't see that as encroachment, but as helpful intervention.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Thank you to the witnesses for coming in today and for your very wise testimony.
Last year I was at a mosque with a fellow member of Parliament. We had our heads covered, and the fellow member of Parliament refused to take a picture with me. I can only speculate that it was because of fear of the online mob that was waiting to comment on and judge what this member of Parliament was doing at a mosque, for example, with a person like me.
In light of all of this online hate, what role can public figures like me and other members of Parliament and you play in combatting this? We can talk about policy and effective laws to combat this, but as Mr. Iqbal said, it's not about bending heads; it's about changing minds. How do we, as role models or as community leaders, take that initiative? I'd like to know a little bit about what you are doing to proactively combat this kind of online hatred as well.
Could we go down the line, starting with Mr. Fogel?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs
A public conversation has to take place. We always look to what we call “thought leaders”, those who will help frame and guide the discussion. Frankly, I think parliamentarians and public officials are uniquely positioned to be able to set the terms of reference for the discussion.
As I noted earlier in my remarks, this only works if there is broad buy-in on the part of Canadians. In some respects, this is a very scary subject. It brings to mind the idea of how intrusive into people's lives “they” can be, whether it's Internet providers or government and so forth, because what you're really talking about is scrutinizing what people post, making or rendering a judgment on it and then taking action on it. That can be very intimidating. In order to get that buy-in, I think there has to be a, maybe not a uniform but certainly a united, set of messages being conveyed from the political sector about that need and also how it's safe for Canadians to be contemplating some regulation, regime or protocol that will govern this.
For our part, as was mentioned by Ryan, we have an obligation from our pulpits, from our community centres and from our schools to be echoing that message at the more granular and local level.
Canadian Rabbinic Caucus
Staying away from policy for a moment and what our roles should be, certainly within our synagogues we actively fight hate. We actively educate on the importance of these issues. Our synagogue, just as an example, often serves as a platform for bringing different people together and educating ourselves about different types of Canadians and different people within our own communities. Those types of messages tend to be very, very important and quite striking when it comes to changing the tone of conversations and discussions specifically around this issue.
As well, just as we do in our pulpits and our congregations, I think a following of that model by parliamentarians and political leaders as well would be very striking, just as in the example you gave of being in a mosque, being a leader in that type of position, and following suit in all of our different communities, making it very clear that this is something the Government of Canada stands for.
Lead Animator, Public Witness for Social and Ecological Justice, Anglican Church of Canada
The short answer is that I wish that the person had shared the photo. I think a big part of the role of public figures is to make visible these relationships, to build those relationships and to normalize things that might be unfamiliar to people who are involved.
Just last week I was talking to one of our bishops, who said he's gotten to know the local rabbi and imam because they've attended so many vigils together. They realized at one point that the only effective way to prevent any further need for vigils was to have ongoing relationships where they were not strangers to one another and where it wasn't an intimidating prospect. Sharing your presence in some of these places is effective, as is creating opportunity for people to build relationships with one another. Maybe public figures can be the meeting point. Rather than compelling people to go into a situation that they may not be comfortable with, create opportunities for people to be in a neutral space. Get to know one another so that it's not about an “other” person over there; it's about somebody who is right in front of you and with whom you can relate.
Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at
I would echo Mr. Weston. There needs to be more interfaith dialogue. I think people in your position can certainly have a role to play in encouraging interfaith connections and interfaith dialogue.
When I was in Toronto, I was part of the Toronto Area Interfaith Council for a couple of years. The engagement we had with the city enabled us to host the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Toronto. After the unfortunate van attack in Toronto, it was the Toronto Area Interfaith Council that was able to bring so many people together in the square and have that event.
Vigils were mentioned as well. Vigils can only be successful if the different communities are coming together. People who are in your position can help promote these kinds of connections. You have so many connections with the community and different faith groups. If you help them come together, I think it can make a difference.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I want to thank the members of the panel. You guys have been extraordinary in offering insight to us today. I wish we had more time, but we have another panel that we have to get up here.
I'm going to suspend the meeting briefly to change panels. I'd ask the members of the next panel to come forward. I thank all of you very much for your help on this.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
We are now going to start our second panel on online hate. It is a pleasure to be joined by Amnesty International Canada with Mr. Alex Neve, the Secretary General. Welcome back.
The Armenian National Committee of Canada is joining us by video conference from Toronto, represented by Mr. Shahen Mirakian, the President. Welcome, Mr. Mirakian.
The Association for Reformed Political Action Canada is also joining us, represented by Mr. André Schutten, Legal Counsel and Director of Law and Policy. Welcome.
Finally, the Bahá'í Community of Canada is joining us. I'd like to welcome Mr. Geoffrey Cameron, Director of the Office of Public Affairs.
What we normally do is try to put the person by video conference first in case we lose the connection, so we're going to ask Mr. Mirakian to start.
Mr. Mirakian, the floor is yours.
Shahen Mirakian President, Armenian National Committee of Canada
Thank you.
My thanks to the chair and the members of the committee for inviting the Armenian National Committee of Canada to provide evidence to you today. My name is Shahen Mirakian and I am the President of the Armenian National Committee of Canada. I apologize for not being able to join you in person today.
As representatives of a community that has suffered genocide, the ultimate expression of hate-based violence, we are more familiar than most with the consequences of the promotion of hate. Similarly, as a community that has routinely advocated for positions that run counter to the status quo, we are fierce defenders of freedom of expression. In our view, there is no contradiction in these two positions. Hate propaganda is a means of infringing the freedom of expression of the targeted group by delegitimizing or vilifying identifiable groups. Hate propaganda makes it impossible for members of those groups to be heard or participate in civil society in a meaningful fashion.
Canada's history of protecting freedom of speech and freedom of expression while criminalizing the willful incitement of hate or advocacy of genocide has been a powerful example for the international community. Now Canada has to apply the lessons learned from nearly 50 years of combatting hate in the real world to the virtual world and develop a national strategy to address online hate.
As you are aware, on April 24, 2015, the House of Commons adopted motion M-587, calling upon the government to recognize the month of April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month. The Armenian National Committee of Canada has worked with various other non-governmental organizations, particularly the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, and the Humura Association, to ensure that each year the government recognizes April as Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month.
However, this April, recognition alone will not be enough. Over the past year the ANCC has worked collaboratively with a broad coalition of human rights advocacy organizations to ask for action as well. An important part of that effort was to ask the government to combat online hate. In December 2018, the ANCC joined with 17 other organizations, many of whom are providing evidence today, in sending a message to the Minister of Justice asking that a national strategy be launched to combat online hate.
This year, for Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month we are working with a broad coalition of communities that have experienced the horror of genocide to ask all Canadians to join us in requesting that the Government of Canada adopt policy solutions to the problem of online hate. We would encourage all Canadians to visit itstartswithwords.ca. At this site, Canadians can read all about what can be done to combat online hate and learn what other actions Canada can take to do its part to prevent future genocides and properly recognize those that have already taken place.
We also want to go on the record today as strongly supporting the four policy recommendations proposed in November 2018 by the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs as the basis for a comprehensive national strategy for combatting online hate. Those four policy recommendations are: defining hate, monitoring hate, preventing hate, and intervening to stop hate. We also agree that there needs to be a greater use of existing tools to address online hate as well as consideration given to implementing new tools to assist authorities in responding to online hate.
One specific area of concern we would like to highlight is law enforcement, which we believe must make hate-motivated cyber-attacks or website-hacking a priority. Since 2008, websites of Armenian community organizations have been subjected to three separate incidents of cyber-attacks. The websites of Armenian-Canadian newspapers, churches and community organizations have been replaced with anti-Armenian propaganda, including, but not limited to, denials of the Armenian genocide. Despite publicizing these incidents and reporting them to law enforcement, we are not aware of any active effort to identify the perpetrators or bring them to justice. While many cyber-attacks will never lead to actual violence, it is very possible that the perpetrators are linked to groups that either advocate for or actually engage in violence. If law enforcement prioritized identifying the parties who engage in hate-motivated cyber-attacks, they would be able to obtain intelligence on potentially violent groups and prevent hate-motivated physical attacks.
We also believe that the regular surveys conducted by the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics should specifically track hate-motivated cyber-vandalism and not just track victimization by individuals who have received hate-motivated messages online. Hate-motivated cyber-vandalism is a criminal act, just like hate-motivated physical vandalism, and law enforcement resources should be equally allocated to both. Canada should work with the international community to bring the perpetrators of these incidents to justice, whether or not the perpetrators are physically located in Canada.
In this regard, Canada's signing in 2005 of the additional protocol to the convention on cybercrime specifically concerning the criminalization of acts of racist or xenophobic nature was an important step, but the domestic tools must be implemented to allow for the extradition of suspects and co-operation with international partners.
Finally, law enforcement needs to provide communities with the tools to properly report these crimes and obtain updates about the investigation. As it stands right now, we are not clear on to whom these crimes should be reported and if they are actively being investigated or how we can find out if they are being actively investigated.
The harm done to communities by hate-motivated cyber-vandalism can be in some instances just as severe as the harm done by hate-motivated physical vandalism. This study being undertaken by this committee today and in upcoming days is a very important first step in combatting online hate.
We are very grateful to this committee for making room on its agenda during Genocide Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention Month to bring attention to this issue and to do its part in preventing future genocides. We are hopeful that this study will result in an effective national strategy to deal with the pressing problem of online hate promotion.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
We'll now move to Amnesty International Canada and Mr. Neve.
Alex Neve Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Allow me to first make two very brief opening remarks.
First, I very much want to acknowledge that we're gathering for this hearing today on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory. Given the degree to which online hate, amongst other things, very much plays out for indigenous peoples in Canada, I think that's a very important acknowledgement to begin with.
I also can't help but make a gender observation as we begin. I'm conscious of the fact that both the earlier panel and now our panel, including me, are all men, and I note that two of the eleven members of Parliament on the committee today are women. As you will hear from me and my remarks, Amnesty International is particularly concerned about the very virulent gendered dimensions of online hate. I expect and assume that going forward this committee will seek and will have opportunities to ensure that there's going to be a very strong representation of that concern.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I'm not taking up your time, but I have to note that the committee did not invite individuals; the committee invited groups. For both of these panels, the groups that were invited chose to send men as opposed to women. That was not the committee that asked them to choose by gender—
Secretary General, Amnesty International Canada
Mr. Chair, I wasn't blaming the committee. I was just making an observation.
Obviously, the question in front of this committee brings into sharp focus two crucially important human rights matters. The first is the right to be free from discrimination, including the ugliest manifestations of discrimination that arise through abuse and violence expressed as hate, which in far too many corners of our world continues to the extremes of mass atrocities, such as crimes against humanity and genocide. It is a very important and stark reminder less than one week after we have remembered and commemorated the horror of the Rwandan genocide and very much a reminder on my mind as I'm freshly back from having spent time in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, which of course is all about a community that has had to flee because of hatred. There's no doubt that the online world, which continues to transform and grow virtually daily, has become a troubling front line in that reality of discrimination and hate.
The second is the right to freedom of expression, which is often referred to as the lifeblood of the human rights system. This is the right to hold, shape and share opinions and ideas, to engage with others and to take part in public debate. It is essential for so many reasons, including that free expression itself provides the avenues for exposing and addressing injustice and for evolving our understanding about society and democracy and the environment in a way that makes for a better world. Equally, there is no doubt the online world has been a very important and growing avenue for providing new possibilities for free expression.
On any given day, Amnesty International researchers, campaigners, advocates and our millions of activists and supporters worldwide are taking action to uphold both of these essential human rights, both of which, of course, are enshrined in numerous international treaties. In international law, the right to be free from discrimination is considered to be so fundamental that nothing ever justifies its abrogation.
The right to free expression is a right that is balanced in its very formulation. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights notes that it's a right that carries “special duties and responsibilities” and may therefore be subject to restrictions only if they are provided by law and are necessary for respect of the rights of others. The key word here is “necessary”.
I would suggest to you that this word and this question—restrictions on free expression that are necessary for the respect of the rights of others—go to the very heart of your work. Please do remember that word “necessary”, because if there is a cautionary lesson from the world of human rights protection, it is that restrictions and limitations of any kind on any right are always a slippery slope and governments are very quick to push the limits. Necessity is absolutely crucial.
The rise of hate-based and hate-fuelled discrimination is on the rise everywhere, often made easier—or at least more obvious—by the new and accessible channels the online world offers. Misogynistic racist hate has become a devastating phenomenon in almost all social media platforms. Amnesty International has drawn particular attention to that reality on Twitter through our major Toxic Twitter research project, which over the past two years has revealed how much online abuse and violence women are subjected to. This abuse and violence is exponentially worse for women of colour, LGBTI women, indigenous women and women from other marginalized communities. Like many indigenous organizations, faith groups and anti-racism campaigners, human rights organizations and others, we have repeatedly highlighted the many ways in which the hate and racism represented in white supremacy has also found a toxic home in the digital world. It is by no means limited to simply objectionable or offensive views, but is increasingly spilling over into hate-filled online discussions that stand in the background of threats against indigenous land defenders, and of course horrific acts of mass violence and killings such as in Christchurch, Pittsburgh, Sainte-Foy in Quebec, and Yonge Street in Toronto.
Let me wrap up with six very quick final comments and recommendations that I hope will shape your ongoing work here. First, it is commendable and important the Canadian Criminal Code does criminalize the incitement of hatred against a growing number of identifiable groups. That does not mean, of course, that from a human rights perspective protections against hate in Canada should in any way be considered to be full and complete. Rarely if ever does the criminal law offer the whole solution to any human rights challenge.
Second, given the rapid rise, in particular, of online hate and its increasingly devastating consequences, governments are compelled to look for further action including with respect to further tools for investigating, enforcing and imposing sanctions.
Third, hate, as we would all agree, is obviously a human rights issue that often leads to the most violent expressions of discrimination. In our country, human rights commissions have mandates that are grounded primarily in addressing discrimination. It is therefore intuitive and obvious to consider the role they could and should be playing in responding to this serious concern.
Fourth, any move to provide a mandate to human rights commissions, including the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to address online hate should be grounded in strong recognition of the vital importance of the right to be free from discrimination and the right to free expression, and the development of clear guidelines and criteria drawing on international human rights standards that would assist investigators and adjudicators in understanding and giving shape to the crucial interplay and relationship between those rights.
Fifth, given the tension between these two rights, the legal complexities in finding the right balance, and the rapid evolution in the nature and the reach of the online platforms involved, any move to provide a mandate to human rights commissions, for instance, must involve a very serious commitment to ensuring adequate resourcing to support the training, the expertise, the research, the outreach and the education that would be required.
Finally, changes to the role of the Canadian Human Rights Commission or any other human rights bodies with respect to online hate absolutely should go forward as part of wider approaches to tackling the growing concerns about online hate and fulfilling the need, still unaddressed in Canada, to develop a national action plan on gender-based violence, including through the ongoing development of a national anti-racism strategy and measures to respond to Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other religious intolerance.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you very much.
We will now move to Mr. Schutten from ARPA.
