Thank you. On behalf of Egale Canada, I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak today on this critical question of online governance.
Ensuring that there are meaningful protections against online hate and harassment, while also maintaining our commitment to the fundamental Canadian value of freedom of expression, is both difficult and of utmost importance. As part of its mission, Egale works to improve the lives of LGBTQ2SI people in Canada, by promoting human rights and inclusion through research, education, community engagement and public policy contributions.
I am the chair of Egale's legal issues committee, which is a made up of LGBTQ2SI lawyers from across Canada. I am also a partner at Power Law, with a practice focused on constitutional law. I am grateful for the assistance of other members of the legal issues committee in preparing these remarks, particularly Professor Samuel Singer, Daniel Girlando and Melissa McKay.
Online hate poses a significant threat and is therefore an issue of particular concern to the LGBTQ2SI community. According to a Statistics Canada report on police-reported hate crime in Canada for 2017, hate crimes in general and hate crimes targeting members of the LGBTQ2SI community in particular are on the rise.
Police-reported hate crimes targeting sexual orientation rose 16% in 2017, compared with 2016. Crimes motivated by hatred of sexual orientation accounted for 10% of hate crimes. Police-reported data on trans-targeted hate crimes is suspect, as nearly half of reported incidents—15—occurred in 2017 alone, likely corresponding to the 2017 addition of gender identity and expression to the Criminal Code. We do know, however, from Trans Pulse, that 20% of trans people in Ontario have been physically or sexually assaulted for being trans. We also know that many survey respondents did not report these assaults to police. In fact, 24% reported having been assaulted by police.
Further, a significant proportion—15%—of hate crimes that are also cybercrimes target members of LGBTQ2SI community. Of particular concern is that hate crimes targeting members of the LGBTA2SI community are marked by violence. Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation were more likely to be violent than non-violent. Victims of violent hate crimes targeting sexual orientation and aboriginal peoples were also most likely to have sustained injury. Similarly, hate crimes targeting trans or asexual people were very often violent, with 74% of incidents involving violence.
In short, online hate is of significant concern to the LGBTQ2SI community, because people are committing ever more acts of hate against us, and, all too often, those who hate us want to hurt and kill us.
The Supreme Court of Canada's unanimous decision in Whatcott, a case that specifically dealt with hate speech targeting homosexuals, and in which Egale intervened, succinctly summarized the real harms caused by hate speech. First, hate speech subjects individual members of the targeted group to humiliation and degradation, resulting in grave psychological and social consequences. Second, hate speech harms society at large, by increasing discord, and, even if only subtly and unconsciously, by convincing listeners of the inferiority of the targeted group.
The regulatory response to online hate should also take into account how certain types of speech are fundamentally at odds with the values that underlie freedom of expression, including the search for truth, and democratic participation in the marketplace of ideas.
As the Supreme Court of Canada explained in Whatcott:
a particularly insidious aspect of hate speech is that it acts to cut off any path of reply by the group under attack. It does this not only by attempting to marginalize the group so that their reply will be ignored: it also forces the group to argue for their basic humanity or social standing, as a precondition to participating in the deliberative aspects of our democracy.
This insight has considerable resonance for members of the LGBTQ2SI community, who have often been portrayed as morally depraved child abusers, as was the case with some of the flyers in Whatcott, or in debates concerning access by trans people to bathrooms corresponding to their lived gender.
Beyond online hate speech, other forms of targeted online harassment are also of vital concern for the LGBTQ2SI community. Today, I will focus on two examples that cause serious harm.
First, cyber-bullying poses a particular threat to LGBTQ2SI youth. According to a 2016 Statistics Canada report on cyber-bullying and cyberstalking among Internet users aged 15 to 29 in Canada, more than one-third of the young homosexual and bisexual population were cyber-bullied or cyberstalked, compared with 15% of the heterosexual population. Cyber-bullying and cyberstalking were also correlated with substantially higher rates of discrimination, as well as physical and sexual assault.
According to a 2015 a Canada-wide survey by UBC's Stigma and Resilience Among Vulnerable Youth Centre, 50% of older trans youth experienced cyber-bullying.
The effects of cyber-bullying on LGBTQ2SI youth are serious. A 2018 systematic literature review by Abreu and Kenny found that these included suicidal ideation and attempt, depression, lower self-esteem, physical aggression, body image issues, isolation and reduced academic performance.
Second, aggressive trolling of members of the trans community has become a serious problem. Media reports indicate a growing trend, with members of the trans community who engage in public discourse online being targeted by an overwhelming volume of transphobic messages on online platforms. This form of harassment is marked by both the volume and the vitriol of the material, which has included alt-right memes and Nazi propaganda.
Further, the practice of doxing, collecting personal information on a person’s legal identity or Internet activities and publishing it to hostile publics, exposes members of the trans community to specific harms, such as revealing their deadnames, and to broader discrimination.
Such practices chill free expression, as trans people avoid participating in public discourse out of fear of reprisal.
A Norwegian study released in March “found that those who participate in online debates and comment sections, are more likely to receive hate speech than those who don’t participate online to the same extent.”It also found that members of the LGBTQ community are more likely than others to withdraw from political debate as a result.
While online hate and harassment are issues of particular concern to the LGBTQ2SI community, restrictions on online speech can also disproportionately affect that community. We know from the Little Sisters saga, when Canadian border officials equated representations of homosexuality with prohibited obscenity, that the policing of restrictions on speech can wrongly discriminate against unpopular viewpoints and groups. We also know that the Internet has become an important part of helping LGBTQ2SI individuals find or construct their identities.
In short, the issues are complex, and the stakes are high. A federal government response is needed. That response should be informed by careful study and will almost certainly require action on many fronts.
At this stage, it is evident that better regulation of online platforms is needed, but we cannot simply transpose old ideas onto this new forum. Requiring content monitoring by online platforms may be appropriate. However, there is a need to balance making platforms responsible for content from which they profit and the risk of incentivizing sweeping censorship. Creative solutions should also be explored to prevent online platforms from using algorithms that magnify and direct users towards ever more hateful and extreme content.
Additionally, more can be done through public education and information campaigns to strengthen online media literacy; to ensure a better understanding of what amounts to hate and harassment, since inflammatory and wrong understandings fuel distrust of initiatives to promote tolerance and inclusion; and to ensure broad public knowledge of the historically devastating effects of hate.
Finally, in any government response, hateful speech directed towards members of the LGBTQ2SI community must not be treated less seriously than speech directed towards other groups.
Egale Canada therefore calls upon the federal government to take a broad approach to developing a robust toolkit to combat online hate and harassment.
Thank you.