Okay. I'm going to go really quickly.
I won't repeat what everyone has said on section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. What I will say is that I worked using that section, and it was effective to combat online hate. The section, as it's written, does include a recognition that hate includes computer and online communication.
We call for a re-enactment of that section. We can, in this committee, study what the issues were, procedurally, and why it was ineffective. There's a lot of nitty-gritty. We can take best practices from what we learned about things that didn't work and put in what did. I had, I think, at least five successful section 13 cases; none went to hearing. Just the use of section 13 resolved those issues.
Lastly, what we want to speak about most is that we cannot do any of this work piecemeal, such as by changing a section in the Criminal Code or adding a section. What we really need is some sort of national anti-hate strategy. We need a strategy that talks about online hate, social media platforms, the Internet and how they collect data, and makes it mandatory.
A lot of data has been quoted here, but the reality is that the data we have does not even touch on the reality of online hate. Most people don't report it; most people don't go to the police, as my colleague just said, so we don't know the real picture in Canada. We continue to fail repeatedly on how we collect data on this issue. We continue not to push social media outlets to collect data.
We also need a strategy—and someone said it before—around education. A national strategy, directorate, secretariat or whatever you want to call it ensures a commitment and a continuity of this work, regardless of what happens, and that we're looking at this within the larger picture. You see the work on online hate and education; you see the bigger picture. We would call on this committee to look at doing that.
The other thing I want to say quickly is that I would urge this committee not to come back with a recommendation that we study this more. As was the case with forced marriage, we had people from the U.K. come in to say, “You don't need to study it. You have enough anecdotal information in front of you that you should act now.” I feel very much the same way on this issue.
Thank you.