Mr. Speaker, it is a great privilege to rise in this House once again and ask the government a question that it has not been all that forthright in answering: What, precisely, are its plans when it comes to its long-standing desire to censor what Canadians see, say and do on the Internet?
Not that long ago in this House, I asked the Minister of Canadian Identity what he was planning to do. Actually, I asked him if he would cop to the fact that he was the minister tasked with online censorship, given that there seemed to be some doubt and some examples of Liberal ministers clamouring over precisely who got to take up that honour.
I need to give a bit of a history lesson for those who have not been following this. For the last two Parliaments, the Liberals have tried to bring in draconian online censorship bills. They tried it in the 43rd Parliament and failed; they tried it in the 44th Parliament and failed. Now, both the justice minister and the Minister of Canadian Identity have said that this still remains a very live priority.
When it comes to online censorship, the Liberals are saying, “If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.” What Canadians are saying is to take the loss and sit down. Canadians do not want the government to regulate online speech; they do not trust the government to do it.
We are already seeing with Bill C-9 that the Liberals reduced the threshold of what constitutes hate speech. We have seen them, in that bill, water down a definition that has been working in criminal law in Canada.
Bill C-63 in the most recent Parliament, the online harms act, went far beyond this. Bill C-63 would empower the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to prosecute Canadians for saying things that offended people online. The Liberals were bringing back a much maligned and, I am grateful to say, formerly repealed section of the Canadian Human Rights Act, section 13. That is what is at issue when we talk about so-called “online harms.”
I have no doubt that tonight the parliamentary secretary to the minister will talk about all the examples of why this is so necessary, but the reality is that condemnation of the Liberal government's online harms proposals has come from left and right. It has come from civil liberties groups on the left and right, and it has come from Canadian luminaries such as Margaret Atwood, who I do not believe would ever align herself with those of us on this side of the bench, because Canadian free speech advocates, Canadian artists, scholars and journalists all realize the importance of being able to speak one's mind without the government weaponizing a definition of hate to censor what Canadians do.
I bring this up now because when I asked the minister the first time around, he started talking about Google trying to give money to pacify the government when it comes to local journalism initiatives. The minister was mixing up the many online censorship bills the Liberal government has put forward. I realize there have been a lot of them; it is tough to keep on top of them. I was not asking him about Bill C-11, which forced the government to mandate YouTube algorithms and streaming. I was not talking about Bill C-18, which the government used to ultimately pull local news and all journalism off the Facebook and Instagram platforms in Canada. I was talking specifically about online harms, a term that the government uses to cloak what it is doing in something that may make someone who does not pay attention to these issues feel that it is a good thing. In reality, it has no other objective but to reduce what is acceptable and permissible in the bounds of debate and free society.
I am asking the government, once and for all, will it commit to taking its so-called online harms censorship bill out of the playbook and not censor what Canadians say and do online?