When reporters asked Heritage Minister Marc Miller last month what the Liberal government plans to do with its majority, he confirmed they intend to use it to pass a new bill to regulate the speech of adults online. Here we go again!<\/p>\n
The Carney government had been saying<\/a> for months that they intend to pass \u201conline harms\u201d legislation, but it was unclear before Miller\u2019s comments whether that meant banning kids from accessing social media or resurrecting aspects of Trudeau\u2019s failed online harms bills, C-36 and C-63. Miller confirmed<\/a> the goal is both. \u201cOnline harms don\u2019t end as soon as you turn 15 or 16 or 17,\u201d Miller said, also noting<\/a> that \u201cSegments of society can be violently attacked online and it\u2019s time for social media and social platforms to have some responsibility.<\/p>\n Miller\u2019s comments about \u201csome responsibility\u201d suggest that although the Carney government may be willing to drop the chilling Trudeau-era plan to allow judges to jail people who may commit speech crimes in the future<\/a>, and to give the Canadian Human Rights Commission the power to fine people of up to $50,000<\/a> for mean tweets, they may be intending to push ahead with creating the previously proposed digital safety commissioner<\/a>. The Trudeau proposal was to give this new federal bureaucracy the power to enforce<\/a> a \u201cduty\u201d on social media companies \u201cto act responsibly\u201d by proactively blocking<\/a> \u201charmful\u201d speech or face potentially enormous fines.<\/p>\n The Liberals ought to take a close look at Australia\u2019s experience with similar legislation before they spend their political capital on this. Australia\u2019s Online Safety Act 2021<\/a> has quickly turned into the kind of bureaucratic censorship regime that free speech advocates had warned about. Under Australia\u2019s law, the government gave eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant the power to police online \u201cabusive\u201d and \u201cviolent\u201d speech. She\u2019s used that power to censor speech \u2014 and has been repeatedly overturned on judicial review.<\/p>\n In March 2024, Grant threatened<\/a> X with a fine of up to A$782,500 for allowing Canadian activist Chris Elston (sometimes known online as Billboard Chris) to post a tweet linking to a story about the appointment of transgender activist Teddy Cook to a World Health Organization panel in which he stated: \u201cThis woman (yes, she\u2019s female) is part of a panel of 20 \u2018experts\u2019 hired by the WHO to draft their policy on caring for \u2018trans people.\u2019 People who belong in psychiatric wards are writing the guidelines for people who belong in psychiatric wards.\u201d Harsh words, no doubt, but clearly traditionally-protected speech. After Grant\u2019s order, X geoblocked the post from Australia, but fought in favour of free speech until the decision was overturned in 2025.<\/p>\n In April 2024, one day after a terrorist shouting<\/a> \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d stabbed a bishop at The Good Shepherd Church near Sydney, Grant ordered<\/a> X to remove viral videos showing the gruesome attack. Grant didn\u2019t need to order Google, Microsoft, Snap or TikTok to remove the videos; they had already removed them as most rational companies would when facing large fines.<\/p>\n While you may not want to see that video, it was in the public interest for people to be able to share it and comment on it. Any good journalist will tell you it\u2019s important to bear witness to the world, even when it\u2019s hard to watch. Australia\u2019s Federal Court refused<\/a> to extend the ban, but for weeks Australians couldn\u2019t see the video. Think of the implications of Grant\u2019s order and the risks this kind of censorship poses. Will war reporting be banned next?<\/p>\n The following month, Grant was at it again. Grant wrote to X to demand that a tweet from a woman named Celine Baumgarten be blocked after Baumgarten responded to a post about \u201cQueer Club\u201d for eight to 12-year-old children at a Victorian elementary school with the following comment: \u201cChildren should not be learning about sexualities at such a young, impressionable age. This is foul. Leave the kids alone.\u201d People should obviously be free to oppose sexuality clubs for elementary schools without being labelled child abusers. That decision was overturned,<\/a> too.<\/p>\n What\u2019s most concerning is that, for every person fighting Australia\u2019s eSafety commissioner to preserve free speech in court, there are countless others who were chilled from debating difficult topics online as a result of the legislation. That\u2019s extremely unhealthy for a democracy, where people need to be able to have conversations about difficult topics, including using language others find offensive. It\u2019s through the cut and thrust of these debates that we settle on solutions.<\/p>\n The Carney government should take Australia\u2019s experience as a lesson: appointing a digital safety commissioner to police speech online will only lead to more censorship and more headaches for the government.<\/p>\n National Post<\/p>\n Josh Dehaas is interim litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, a legal charity dedicated to defending Canadians\u2019 rights and freedoms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When reporters asked Heritage Minister Marc Miller last month what the Liberal government plans to do with its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[367,17,13554,13553,13552,8210,1194,12355],"class_list":{"0":"post-29073","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canadian-human-rights-commission","11":"tag-free-speech-advocates","12":"tag-julie-inman-grant","13":"tag-marc-miller","14":"tag-social-media","15":"tag-the-liberal-government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}