I got in some hot water a while back for admitting I was relatively unconcerned with Republican villainy these days compared to other worries. This Canada Online Harms Act, whose details I missed earlier (apologies to Public and Yuri Bezmenov!), perfectly embodies the kind of thing that keeps me up at night now.
Whatever else Republicans have been up to, they haven’t been scheduling nuclear bomb runs over the whole concept of individual rights (although they’re trying to catch up with moves like the antisemitism bill). People will focus on the cartoon wokeness of Justin Trudeau’s bill, but that’s not what makes it scary — he’s trying to create a full-blown surveillance state, complete with a giant citizen army of paid snitches, with one stroke. Things not even imaginable a few years ago, like pre-emptive punishment for crimes not even committed or life sentences for what Canada’s former Chief Justice called “some words,” would be reality with this bill. Genuine political dissent would become logistically impossible, and virtual mob rule a certainty.
People misunderstood the content of stories like the Twitter Files to be solely about censorship. The real issue was the creation of huge extrademocratic bureaucracies that use digital levers to manipulate political life and whose growth is difficult-to-impossible to check. The way this bill casually dismisses things like the right to face your accuser or due process or protection from ex post facto law shows the utter contempt for democracy. These ideas have a lot of support in elite circles in America and I’m sorry, they’re operating on a completely different level of scary than something like the Trump movement even. Do people just not believe this stuff is happening, or do they think it’s okay? I don’t get it.
The thing is, Canada already has an established (and repeatedly courg-challenged) legal framework for hate speech and hate crimes. These terms are already clearly defined, and laws are free and even supposed to reference other established legislation and legal precedent rather than republish parts of the criminal code over and over again.
So no, the law does not need to be a capsule full of explicit definitions of things that are already well defined in law. It merely needs to make direct reference to those definitions and other relevant legislation.
And based off of those established legislation
is a bizarre twisting of things. The author is either ignorant of Canadian hate laws, while still choosing to report on them, or engaging in purposeful FUD for some reason.
Well, if hate is defined in Canadian Law, let’s stop making more laws about supposed harms. People need to be responsible for themselves and not have a nanny government telling us what is right. This is getting so ridiculous! Society takes generations to adapt to new customs.
This law is about the government regulating thought and speech. Not my government!
Hate to break it to you, buddy, but Canada has never embraced completely free speech, even with the caveat of yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. You might be thinking of laws and a constitution originating a little farther south.