Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I was addressing the following seven categories, which are outlined in the bill: first, content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor; second, intimate content communicated without consent; third, content used to bully a child; fourth, content that induces a child to harm themselves; fifth, content that foments hatred; sixth, content that incites violence; and, last, terrorism or violent extremism content. The first category is content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, which is among the most serious harms that this bill would address. I have travelled across the country and talked to law enforcement, and of course to the RCMP here in Ottawa, and cases involving this type of harmful content are on the rise. The pain caused by this kind of content is profound, ongoing and not limited to the original act of victimization. When such material is communicated, reproduced, circulated or re-encountered online, the harm is continuously experienced over time, each reappearance reviving the pain of the original trauma to the victim. The second category is intimate content communicated without consent. This category has a particular gender dimension. Online harassment affects women at a much higher rate than men. This may take the form of revenge porn, which is a specific type of intimate content shared or posted without consent. It also manifests itself through sexual extortion, in which victims are forced to pay sums of money to have images taken down. In this category, the harm is deeply personal, often immediate and in many cases particularly devastating for the victims, whose dignity, privacy and autonomy are violated in an online world accessible to their friends and family. The third category is content used to bully a child, which addresses the harm that many children experience online, but is not currently adequately or expeditiously addressed. Content used to bully a child can have significant cumulative and negative impacts on a child’s physical and mental health, development and self-esteem. Over time, relationships can also be impacted by this type of harm. Bill C-34’s definition does not catch mere rudeness or criticism. The act’s definition focuses on content that could cause serious harm to a child’s physical or mental health. General expressions of opinion are not captured, and this carefully bounded definition addresses serious cyber-bullying while respecting broader expression. The fourth category is content that induces a child to harm themselves. This addresses content that advocates for, or advises a person to engage in, self-harm, disordered eating or dying by suicide. In fact, over the past decade, depression has doubled among Canadians aged 15 to 24. Anxiety has quadrupled, and emergency room visits for self-harm among teenage girls has risen by 138% in my home province of Ontario. The fifth defined harm is content that foments hatred. The definition of “hatred” abides by the Supreme Court’s now widely accepted definition, as set out in R v. Keegstra. This content expresses extreme detestation or vilification on the basis of a protected characteristic under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The sixth category is content that incites violence and captures content that actively encourages real-world harm and pain. Violence and the threat of violence have spiked online, enabled by circulation and amplification. I am sure many of my colleagues have witnessed this themselves. It should be noted at this point that Bill C-34 would not newly criminalize this. Death threats are already illegal, as they should be in a free society. This inclusion in the bill would simply strengthen online platforms’ obligations to address it and to remove it. The seventh and final category is terrorism or violent extremism content. Here, the definition captures content that actively encourages, promotes, facilitates, offers training for or recruits for violent extremist or terrorist activity. Training, encouragement, operational assistance and recruitment play a role in international terrorism networks, festering and predating online. In addition to the seven types of harmful content, the act tackles access to pornography, requiring covered services to ensure that pornographic content is not accessible to children. It would do so by requiring age verification or estimation measures to be used to prevent access to pornographic content. The act also addresses an emerging technology with potential for significant harm: synthetic content. In the bill, synthetic content is defined as computer-generated content whose depiction is likely to be mistaken as authentic. This captures content like deepfakes and AI-generated materials that look real. Synthetic text is excluded from the scope of the bill. Only synthetic images, audio or video would be subject to the labelling requirement. The safe social media act also addresses coordinated, inauthentic behaviour or bot campaigns. Under the duty to act responsibly, social media services would have to mitigate risks to exposure and label content from bot campaigns, combatting disinformation and foreign interference campaigns. Bill C-34 would combat the most damaging types of harmful content online in a manner that aligns with other regimes and other jurisdictions. The safe social media act is in line with our government’s commitment to supporting victims of crime, as well as the protection of Canadians online, while respecting rights, institutional roles and the realities of today’s online world.
