Who's responsible for online harms? Responsibility for troubled file floats between ministers
OTTAWA — As ministers settle into their new roles, discussions are underway about who is best suited to steer the government's efforts to legislate against online harms, cabinet minister Steven Guilbeault said on Tuesday.
Article content
Questions have arisen about which minister and department would be best suited to handle the complicated issue after the Liberals' proposed Online Harms Act died in Parliament when Prime Minister Mark Carney triggered a federal election in March.
Article content
Article content
'It's a good question,' said Guilbeault, who oversees the Canadian Heritage department, told reporters on his way into the Liberals' weekly cabinet meeting.
Article content
Article content
Canadian Heritage had been the first department to develop and later introduce the Liberals' initial plan to combat the harms Canadian users experience online.
Article content
That proposal, which was released in 2021, was met with widespread backlash over concerns about the requirement for social media companies to remove content within 24 hours after receiving a complaint.
Experts had warned the provision was overly broad and risked infringing on free expression, given that companies could remove legal content.
Article content
The Liberals then struck an advisory group and got to work on figuring out a Plan B.
Article content
Responsibility for the bill also shifted from Canadian Heritage to the Justice Department.
Article content
In early 2024, former justice minister Arif Vriani introduced Bill C-63, which proposed to create a new digital safety regulator that would be tasked with ensuring social media giants took steps to reduce users' access to content, such as child sex abuse images and incite extremism and violence.
Article content
That bill was also met with backlash over its proposal to introduce stiffer sentences for hate-related offences and reintroduce a controversial section to the Canadian Human Rights Act to allow people to bring forward complaints of hate speech, which civil liberties advocates and Parliamentarians said risked violating free speech.
Article content
Virani spent months defending the need for the tougher Criminal Code measures to be included in the online safety bill, but last December announced the government was prepared to split the bill to help get it passed.
Article content
In January, former prime minister Justin Trudeau announced his resignation and that Parliament would be suspended until March.
Article content
Emily Laidlaw, a Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law at the University of Calgary, who sat on the government's expert advisory group, said it was a mistake for the government to have combined different provisions into the same legislation and that by the time it announced the legislation would be split, 'it was too late.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Toronto Star
an hour ago
- Toronto Star
I worked side-by-side with Justin Trudeau. This is what I think of Mark Carney's first big mistake
Prime Minister Mark Carney's decision to invite Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Canada for the G7 has generated a lot of chatter. Unfortunately, there's a lot that has been missing in the conversation. For starters, the Indian government's belief that Canada is soft on extremists seeking to establish an independent Sikh state known as Khalistan isn't exactly new. In fact, despite the fact I have now entered middle age, it's about as old as I am. But as India-Canada relations appear to be entering a new phase under Prime Minister Carney, it's worth considering what we are giving up by welcoming the Modi government back into our good graces.
Toronto Star
2 hours ago
- Toronto Star
Bill C-5 passes in the House, as Carney vows to consult Indigenous groups
OTTAWA — Facing concerns and warnings of Indigenous resistance against a key part of his governing agenda, Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged Friday that 'more fulsome conversations are needed' to choose the development projects his government wants to fast-track through controversial new legislation, Bill C-5. Speaking moments after the bill passed third reading in the House of Commons, Carney pledged to hold meetings in the coming weeks with First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders and experts in a series of summits to 'launch the implementation of this legislation in the right way' in 'full partnership' with Indigenous communities.
National Post
2 hours ago
- National Post
Ottawa considering 'combination of approaches' to 20% military pay hike
OTTAWA — Defence Minister David McGuinty's office says it's considering a 'combination of approaches' to boosting pay for armed service members, including introducing retention bonuses for 'stress trades.' Article content 'This investment represents an almost 20 per cent increase to the overall CAF compensation envelope,' McGuinty's spokesperson Laurent de Casanove said in an email statement to The Canadian Press. Article content Article content 'The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are actively working on how best to implement this investment, looking at options that include a combination of approaches such as retention bonuses for stress trades, increased starting salaries for junior members, and a broad-based salary increase.' Article content Article content While McGuinty's recent public commitment to grant the Canadian Armed Forces a '20 per cent pay increase' won praise within the defence community, it has also led to confusion — and some experts are saying they want to read the fine print. Article content Military pay scales are complicated and are based on rank, profession, deployment and other conditions. There are many ways to roll out a boost in compensation. Article content Charlotte Duval-Lantoine, a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said she thinks this will not amount to an across-the-board pay hike. Article content 'What is clear to me from this statement is that they are looking at all the options,' she said. 'We're still in that big question about what it looks like because a pay raise versus specialty pay versus an adaptation of the compensation package overall — not in salary — are not the same thing.' Article content Article content She said the way the pay pledge was communicated initially was 'risky' since the details were not readily available, and that has led to confusion among military members and expectations of a blanket pay hike. Article content Article content Gary Walbourne, former ombudsman for the Department of National Defence, called McGuinty's promise 'vague at best.' Article content 'There's nothing clear in this message,' he said. 'A 20 per cent increase overall to CAF compensation envelope, what does that mean? Is it coming in benefits? … Is it going be on a cyclical basis? What's the percentage increase? Is it based on seniority, rank, merit?' Article content The former watchdog for military personnel said it sounds like the Liberal government wants to implement a pay boost quickly, but 'the mechanisms that they apply to it is going to complicate it and once the bureaucrats get their hands on it, well, I can see a slowdown coming.' Article content If CAF members don't see a 20 per cent pay bump after the minister's announcement, he said, it will be 'deja vu all over again' for military personnel who have been let down in the past by lofty promises followed by implementation that 'sucks big time.'
