Thank you very much for inviting me to appear before you today.
I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa, and I co-lead The eQuality Project, which is a SSHRC-funded initiative that focuses on young people's experiences with privacy and equality in digitally networked environments, including experiences relating to tech-facilitated violence.
Like those of you in the chamber, I appear today on unceded Algonquin territory. I want to acknowledge and thank the Algonquin peoples who have cared for, and continue to care for, this land.
You have heard and will hear from many witnesses with specific expertise in ideologically motivated violent extremism, or IMVE, from numerous perspectives, including psychological, security and technological. The perspective I bring today is a more general one that is based on my research and policy submissions on tech-facilitated violence, including work related to Internet hate speech targeting members of marginalized communities. It was initially inspired by having acted many years ago as junior co-counsel to a complainant in the first Internet hate speech case to be heard by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal under the former section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
I was pleased to see that the motion initiating this study aims to eventually enable government to table a comprehensive response. IMVE targeting members of marginalized communities forms part of a spectrum of hatred and violence against them. That spectrum both reflects and is reflective of a broader and complex context that is rife with social inequality and systemic oppressions. Development and implementation of a nuanced, multipronged national strategy will be essential to meaningfully address the complexity of IMVE and other forms of hate in a way that affirms and respects the rights of members of marginalized communities to fully participate in all aspects of public and private life, free from violence and hate.
Criminal law should form only part of that strategy. Criminal law's post hoc nature and its disproportionate use against members of marginalized communities means that some will have good reason not to see criminal law, or even law in general, as a meaningful solution when they are targeted by hate. For this and other reasons, approaches beyond legal measures will be necessary, including proactive ones aimed at structural and systemic factors. At all costs, we must avoid solutions that do further harm to marginalized communities who are simultaneously disproportionately targeted by both hate and discriminatory state surveillance and violence.
I turn now to seven considerations for developing a multipronged national strategy prioritizing a survivor-centred, substantive, equality-focused approach.
One, centre members of affected communities in policy processes like this—including women, Black, indigenous, Jewish and Muslim peoples, people of colour, and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community—to ensure that understanding the diversity in their lived realities is prioritized in this process. It also means centring the expertise of researchers who are members of those communities, including those from disciplines outside of law, criminology and security studies, and centring the experience of community organizations that are trusted by and serve those communities.
Two, reject approaches that make targeted individuals and groups responsible to avoid harm. Instead, focus on the responsibility of society as a whole, individual perpetrators, and the role that the underlying “data in exchange for services” commercial model that currently characterizes digital networks plays in shaping the environment in problematic ways.
Three, better support marginalized community members targeted by hate through such measures as funding trusted community agencies that serve them and, with respect to tech-facilitated violence, creating an administrative body that they can contact for assistance.
Four, support proactive human rights-based educational and outreach initiatives aimed at dismantling underlying systems of discrimination and dehumanizing stereotypes that undermine marginalized community members' right to full and equal participation.
Five, ensure that the central and important goal of defending the rights of members of targeted communities does not become an excuse for unnecessary expansion of police powers and surveillance.
Six, improve the responsiveness of the criminal justice system for survivors who do wish to pursue that avenue with social context training for law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges that centres principles of substantive equality.
Seven, recognize that although IMVE is part of a spectrum of violence experienced by members of marginalized communities, the complexity of IMVE and other forms of violence—