Yes, exactly.
In terms of the Internet specifically, we need a modified safe harbour provision. Right now with respect to the U.S., they have a kind of complete immunity. What we need is in fact liability, the opposite of safe harbour, with a defence of innocent dissemination. Those are criminal law suggestions.
My colleague has mentioned the protocol that Canada signed in 2005, which addresses “criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems”. If Canada enacts a modified safe harbour provision that relates only to innocent dissemination, in my view that would allow us to ratify that convention.
The Canadian Human Rights Act's section 13 was good in substance but problematic in terms of procedure. The standard should be re-enacted but with procedural protection so it doesn't lead to harassment of the innocent. There needs to be the power to award costs, which the Human Rights Commission and tribunals don't have now.
The screening and conduct missions need to be decoupled so that screening should be in all cases, but the commission need not undertake itself any case it screens in and could allow for private individuals to take the case.
There needs to be a requirement of election of forums so that a complainant could not proceed in many forums simultaneously—federal and provincial—which is a problem now.
There needs to be a power to remove parties. The commission and tribunal can add parties but can't remove parties. That can become a problem for an improperly joining party.
There needs to be a right to know the accuser, because right now these commissions and tribunals can function on the basis of rumour only, without disclosing the accuser. That needs to be put in place.
There needs to be a right of disclosure of the complaint, because right now, if the commission takes on the case, they don't actually have to disclose the complaint. There needs to be this right of disclosure.
That's a quick run-through. The brief elaborates on all these recommendations in detail. The general approach is that we are obviously concerned with the right to be free from incitement to hatred and discrimination, but we're also concerned about the right to freedom of expression. We don't want these tools to be turned around and used to frustrate legitimate expression and, indeed, to harass people who are calling out hate promoters. All our recommendations are developed with keeping this balance in mind.