Thank you.
My name is Ricki Justice. I am the Acting Chair of the Pride Centre of Edmonton.
Our mission at the Pride Centre of Edmonton is to provide supports that respond to the needs of people with diverse sexual orientation, gender identities and gender expression and of the people in their lives. We really work with the most marginalized people in our community, especially with youth.
What we are seeing right now is that youth are taking their own lives and that online bullying and hate have a significant role in suicide in youth in our community. So many of our youth spend a lot of time in the online world that it becomes central to their social lives, so feeling hatred and anger against them through an online venue has a significant impact on their mental health.
Many Albertans who live in rural or remote locations may not have structured LGBT communities or local support, so they rely heavily on online support groups that are affected by continued online hate.
For one of our service users, the negativity that gets directed toward them through their online time, whether that's through video game chats, Facebook or other social media, has played a role in multiple suicide attempts, which they have thankfully survived. This is our daily reality.
Mainstream media has a role in reinforcing negative messages about certain groups. In my day job I work at the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, where we have also seen online hate towards immigrants. Mainstream media plays a major role in reinforcing negative images of refugees, for example, and the LGBTQ2S+ community.
An example of this was during the recent cancellation of the pride festival in Edmonton when a group called Shades of Colour was blamed for the cancellation because they were protesting and asking for pride festival to refocus on queer, trans, black, indigenous and people of colour who are still fighting for equity in our community.
This group received.... Well, it was quite a horrible online hate campaign, including death threats, that resulted in their basically locking themselves up in their homes and feeling unsafe in their own community, which tells me that online hate really is real-world hate and that the two go hand in hand.
We also realized through this example that there is racism within the LGBTQ2S+ community and that there is a general lack of understanding of intersectionality and diversity in our community. Also within our community we find that people are hesitant to report online hate because of a fear of police and their systemic mistreatment historically, so they don't come forward.
Basically, I am advocating that we address root causes of online hate in the real world, such as social isolation, poverty and lack of education, but the Canadian government also needs to set clear expectations for social media platforms to provide information to the public regarding harmful speech on their platforms and their policies to address it.
I was very happy to hear Prime Minister Trudeau announce that there will be a digital charter coming out at the end of the month, and I look forward to seeing what actions will be taken as part of that.
I would recommend that illegal content on these platforms be removed as quickly as possible, within 24 hours. I know that other countries have such regulations and that platforms take measures to dissuade users from repeatedly uploading illegal content, so it's not just taking the content down; it's making sure that the content isn't put back up again.
In Canada there is also a lack of civil society research on harmful online speech, and I think we need more of that so that we can have good evidence-based policy.
We also need public education about how to report online hate. The LGBTQ2S+ community needs to know they will be treated equitably if they report online hate, and police need to know how to handle these reports consistently.
Digital literacy for youth is very important to help them develop understanding about the sources of news but also to help them recognize and reject racist, sexist, homophobic and religion-based hate content. We also need to foster inclusivity in schools.
Last, we need to address the mental health impact created by harmful speech online through community-based mental health care supports.
Thank you very much.