First and foremost, I will tell you that defamatory libel is being used far more often than most people understand. At the time that the Law Reform Commission of Canada wrote about this, we were seeing about two or three charges per year. Around 2000, it was at 20 charges per year. Now it appears that we're at 40 per year. Those are just the numbers that I can gather by going through the secondary and primary sources. No doubt there are some that have escaped my attention. We're talking about 40 cases a year, despite the conventional wisdom that says this is barely used, a little-used provision in the Criminal Code.
I have to divide the cases into two categories. There are two-thirds that deal with essentially crimes that are born of the Internet, and I'll come back to those in a minute. A full one-third of the cases target political dissent. They are individuals who are upset with the police, judges, lawyers, or Revenue Canada field agents, and who say inelegant and often harsh things about those individuals in their professional capacity. The criticism of public entities is core in its consistency with our guarantee of freedom of expression.
The other interesting thing that happens with this is that a disproportionate number of charges are laid under the criminal defamatory libel provisions and later dropped or withdrawn or other charges are used in their stead.
What we're seeing is the appearance that the police are using this charge to harass individuals who have the temerity to criticize the state. Once you know that you're under investigation or you're charged, you hire a lawyer, you think about your defence, and you have your cellphone and computer seized. In this sense, the very investigative process becomes the punishment, even if ultimately the charges do not go to trial.
Unlike in other democracies that still have criminal defamatory libel, and we're seeing fewer of them as we go forward, the individuals who are targeted are never journalists, high profile, or powerful individuals. They're one of the little guys, if I can use that term, who is upset with Revenue Canada, or who doesn't think the judge should have awarded custody to her ex-husband. Those are the individuals who are being charged.
Just one example is a man in Thunder Bay who dared to put up a poster with a Revenue Canada agent's photo and said, “This man is known to be working for an insidious organization.... Protect yourself from organized crime. If you are approached by this man be prepared to defend yourself.” He was convicted and sentenced to seven months house arrest for something that was equal parts angry and fanciful.
That's the one-third. There are the two-thirds that are born, as I said, of Internet shaming and what we call cyber-smearing, or if I may say it, slut shaming. We have seen an increase in those cases, there's no denying that. They are not core to free expression values. What those cases have is a full list of alternate provisions in the Criminal Code from intimidation to harassment, and others. In fact, the Department of Justice published earlier this year a list of 12 Criminal Code provisions that can be used to respond to those kinds of cases. Given how well protected individuals are who find themselves as victims of those particular transgressions, there is no need for a law being used to attack our core freedom of expression rights.
If I can elaborate any more, I will. There are cases upon cases.