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Commission bill format for Legal

thank you good afternoon and thank you for the opportunity to present before this committee I represent the Canadian Constitution Foundation which is a national legal charity that defends fundamental freedoms and we view this bill C63 as posing a grave threat to all Canadians right to Freed speech and a flourishing democracy we welcome The Minister's announcement that he intends to split the bill Parts one and four of the bill um but we remain con concerned about the constitutionality of aspects of part one as well as Parts two and three in their entirety first I'll will address portions of the bill that expand sanctions for offenses related to hate speech including harmful content and content that ferments hatred I referring both to the Mandate on the new digital safety commissioner which is created in part one of the bill as well as the expanded penalties for hate crimes in part two part one of the bill imposes obligations on an operator to implement measures that are adequate to mitigate the risk that users will be exposed to harmful content this includes content that FS hatred this office will cost around $200 million over 5 years and impose fines up to the millions of dollars on platforms part two of the bill meanwhile increases penalties for existing hate crimes including promoting genocide now punishable up to life it also creates a new Standalone offense for any federal offense motivated by hatred Section 320 which is also now punishable up to life now as the previous witness mentioned and I agree with many of his comments this is an inherently subjective concept hate speech these expanded penalties and Regulatory obligations pose a risk of gross proportionality and excessive chill of protected expression in what caught the Supreme Court of Canada said that hatred encompasses only the most extreme manifestations captured by the words detestation and vilification only that type of speech can be penalized without violating the charter C63 adopts this language in section 3197 hatred means the emotion that involves detestation or vilification but detestation is really just a synonym for hate and vilification is a highly subjective concept we are in a present moment of passionate and often fraught disagreement in our society where a lot of claims are made that are understood differently depending on context for example calling someone a Zionist presently May land as vilification or more dubiously promotion of genocide or as praise depending on the speaker and the audience just a few days ago a former CBC producer shenaz carali accused MP Kevin Wong of hateful expression for posing with an individual wearing an F Hamas sweatshirt on social media that's the problem with criminalizing language it's sub objective it shifts depending on context and these concerns become pressing with the expanded sanctions proposed in part two even if our judges can be relied upon to respect principles of proportionality when sentencing an offender under 320 for example the range of available sentences in the law will now include life imprisonment so it's not a frivolous possibility that prosecutors can refer judges to a range of sentencing up to life imprisonment for a crime such as vandalism if it is alleged that the crime was motivated by hate so the reality is that it's virtually impossible to identify in advance predictably a line that separates the merely awful but lawful from Criminal hate speech and this lack of clarity Pro poses an urgent threat to online discourse which is our current Town Square and Sh Brook this type of passionate adversarial disagreement when these types of sanctions are in play everyone has an incentive to air on the side of caution platforms will flag and remove content that that is actually protected expression and individuals will self censor finally I will briefly address part three of the bill which brings back a civil remedy for online hate speech which allows members of the public to bring complaints for the Canadian Human Rights Commission this would be disastrous and you should not go forward with this proposal even if most alleged instances are dismissed for not miss meeting the threshold of hate speech the penalties for individuals found liable up to $50,000 paid to the government plus 20,000 to the victim are severe enough that we can infer the new regime will lead to large amounts of soft pedaling of expression for fear of skirting the line it will interfere severely with press freedom to publish controversial opinions which are necessary to a flourishing civil society and finally process is punishment even if the case does not proceed we will see more people punished for protected expression thank you I welcome your questions