The current bill is a softer version of the 2019 proposal because the government doesn’t want to be accused of stifling free speech. According to Arif Virani, the awful stuff will still be lawful. But now people will have to think twice before telling me to hang myself.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 4, 2024.

OTTAWA—Gatineau’s first woman mayor stepped down on Feb. 22, joining 800 other municipal politicians in Quebec who’ve quit, citing death threats and a hostile political climate.

In a tearful press conference, France Bélisle said she had thought long and hard on before making the decision to terminate her two-and-a-half-year term.

Bélisle did not specify the nature of the threats that prompted her departure, but social media is currently a hotbed for vicious attacks.

As a woman, she probably got more than her share of misogyny.

She is not alone. The following is a verbatim message I received last week following one of my posts on Twitter regarding the use of toilets by transgendered individuals. “Sheila, you’re a disgusting, old, ugly, dyke-looking, treasonous piece of shit who should be thrown into the sea with Trudeau. Fuck you, Fuck Trudeau & the LGBT+ pride freaks. Rap the sick LGBT flag around your neck, tie it to a tree branch, and do humanity a favor. Can’t wait for Freedom/Justice Convoy.”

The federal government finally stepped in last week to introduce legislation governing online harms. Justice Minister Arif Virani specifically targeted three obligations, including “a duty to protect children, a duty to act responsibly and the duty to remove the most egregious content.”

Virani was surrounded by supporters of the proposed legislation, including mothers of teenagers on both coasts whose daughters were bullied online to the point where they committed suicide.

The proposed legislation is far narrower than an earlier version tabled in 2019.

The original bill died when the election was called.

The updated version includes the creation of a digital safety commission, a five-person panel with the power to enforce the rules. The commission would also provide a venue for investigation of complaints about online violations targeted at bullying children and/or posting private images without consent.

Carol Todd, the mother of Amanda Todd, a British Columbia teenager who committed suicide because of online threats, said the legislation was a long time coming.

She was joined at the press conference by the mother of Nova Scotia teen Rehtaeh Parsons. According to Leah Parsons, her daughter was driven to her death after being gang-raped and having the images posted online.

The proposed law requires social media platforms to have mechanisms in place to remove two kinds of offensive material: that which sexually victimizes children, and the posting of intimate images without consent.

Platforms have 24 hours to remove offending posts or face financial punishments. Fines are to be linked to the size and profitability of the platforms.

Virani insists the legislation would not affect free speech on the internet, however awful it might be. So social media attacks on politicians like the former mayor of Gatineau will not likely be stopped.

However, the newly-created commission will have the power to oversee the legislation, which will also mean that hate speech on the internet will be facing legal scrutiny and review.

The former Facebook data scientist who went public on its refusal to delete nefarious content endangering children lauded the proposed legislation.

Interviewed on CTV, Frances Haugen said it was among the best pieces of legislation on the matter she has seen.

But that didn’t stop Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre from opposing the legislation before he had even read it.

Poilievre immediately labelled it “Justin Trudeau’s latest attack on free speech,” and characterized the legislation as “woke authoritarian agenda.”

Social media opponents moved quickly online to post pictures of the Liberal Party covered in a Nazi flag, claiming the legislation is a first step toward a takeover of the whole country.

Poilievre attacked the prime minister personally, saying because Trudeau partied in “blackface” he had no right to speak on the issue of hate speech.

He vowed to kill the bill before it was introduced, but was silent following Virani’s press conference.

Poilievre himself has spoken out in support of a Senate bill that would require online age verification to access pornography, so he obviously sees some benefit in protecting minors on the internet.

It is impossible to see how his party would benefit from opposing this bill, but apparently his hatred of the prime minister appears to be more politically motivating than hate speech on the internet.

The current bill is a softer version of the 2019 proposal precisely because the government does not want to fall prey to accusations of stifling free speech.

According to Virani, the awful stuff will still be lawful.

But now people will have to think twice before telling me to hang myself.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

There has to be a reasonable way for elected representatives to receive police protection when necessary.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on September 5, 2022.

OTTAWA—Former energy minister Marc Lalonde used to be accompanied by armed guards when he visited Alberta back in 1980.

As the minister responsible for the introduction of the National Energy Program, he and then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau were hated by many Albertans.

“Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark” was a popular Alberta bumper sticker in the seventies.

Stephen Harper, in his pre-prime ministerial days, advocated for a firewall around Alberta, including a withdrawal from Medicare and the Canada Pension Plan, and replacement of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police by a provincial force.

Today, a major candidate for the United Conservative Party leadership is calling for Alberta sovereignty.

All this animus is not the result of social media or a twisted citizen. It is a political strategy practiced by some politicians to gain favour with constituents.

Hate sells. Just ask Donald Trump. Divisive campaign slogans drive votes. And if you can convince citizens that a politician from another party is an interloper, that is a guaranteed vote in your corner.

It may be a little rich for politicians who specialize in division to disavow the traitorous and misogynistic claims of an Albertan couple attacking Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Dog whistle politics sends a message out to ordinary citizens. The message is simple: it is okay to attack a politician from another province or party because they are not one of us. They are enemies out to plunder our fields and steal our oil.

Ironically, Freeland was born in Alberta.

As for the misogynistic slur directed at the minister, that should come as no surprise.

The good news about social media is that people can now be filmed saying horrible things, and risk being exposed for the miscreants that they are.

But the content is nothing new.

I was called a slut in the House of Commons. And that didn’t come from a random passerby, the insult was from the mouth of another Member of Parliament in the middle of a heated debate.

I was stalked by a constituent who had already been arrested for attacking a journalist. He entered Hamilton City Hall with a magazine bearing the image of a soldier carrying an Uzi, and slammed it on my mother’s desk. She was an alderman at the time, and he swore at her, and said that was the gun he was going to use to kill me.

I called the RCMP, which was responsible for ministerial protective details. Its local detachment was closed for the weekend, so early the next week, an officer got in touch to discourage me from pressing charges, claiming this action was clearly only the work of one crazy person.

I insisted, and when charges were laid, it was discovered that the individual had already stabbed a journalist.

Regular death threats, and a brick through my office window were common. My provincial counterpart, New Democrat Bob Mackenzie, suffered the firebombing of his office. The perpetrator, an angry constituent, was never arrested.

Those incidents occurred in one riding in one city in Canada.

Threats to politicians are nothing new. It will only be a matter of time before someone’s verbal attacks go deadly.

The government has ordered a review of Freeland’s security. But it should actually undertake a review of security measures for all Members of Parliament, especially when they are outside of Ottawa. Round-the-clock security may not be the answer, but there has to be a reasonable way for elected representatives to receive police protection when necessary.

An angry constituent can quickly turn into a dangerous constituent.

And the level of respect that used to be afforded politicians of all political stripes has gone by the wayside.

People think nothing of parading a Fuck Trudeau poster in their truck window or on their property. That is not against the law, but violent language can lead to violence.

The number of Canadians embracing the rhetoric of the Ottawa anti-vaxx occupiers is truly disturbing. Those politicians who align themselves with anti-democracy movements are also contributing to the problem.

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre characterized the Freeland attack as “unacceptable” and said he has hired a private security firm to protect his wife from social media attacks.

But Poilievre’s whole campaign has been based on the same dynamic of people versus elites.

With the advent of social media, everyone is a critic. Civil discourse is past history.

But politicians who use venom as their tool of choice must bear some of the responsibility.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

First published on April 30, 2018 in The Hill Times.

OTTAWA—Misogyny lives. And the internet is giving it too much oxygen.

While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is being called to account by governments around the world for political misuse of social media intel, a bigger issue looms in cyberspace.

Normal platforms of discourse are governed by legal restraints which serve to cool down the rhetoric that can come from unfettered anonymity. Slander, libel and anti-hate laws serve to make people think before they speak, write or act. Not so for tweets and social media postings.

The kind of bilious outrage that is common on the internet would be outlawed in traditional newspapers and television.

The internet is the modern-day equivalent of the Wild West, with like-minded bandits, terrorists and incels getting together to cultivate a venomous sense of brotherhood.

Hate speech is given free rein on the web, and communities connected by common deviance are rapidly mushrooming. They thrive in the dark web with little public knowledge or exposure. Underground chat groups provide blanket anonymity, encouraging deviants and misfits to group together into cells of like-minded outsiders who do not even have to use their own names to make common cause against the world.

From jihadists to white supremacists, from incels to pedophiles, they derive comfort in the belief that they are part of a bigger movement and form a community.

Their hate-mongering would be illegal in other fora. So it is about time the purveyors of social media put their mouth where their money is. Anonymity in social media should be outlawed.

An international convention to ban internet hate speech would be a good place for world governments to start. That initiative should be accompanied by national laws outlawing anonymity and hate speech in social media communications. And social media owners should be responsible for the content their platforms create.

Last week Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly joined with the Canada Council for the Arts in announcing a series of initiatives to support harassment-free workplaces in the arts. She vowed to deny funding to organizations that fail to provide such a workplace.

The initiative is an important one. But it pales in comparison to the looming challenges of the virtual workplace. One should not preclude the other but the government would be well-advised to launch targetted public discussions about how to achieve a harassment-free internet.

The tragic events in Toronto last week shone a light into the depth of misogyny that festers and is fostered in the deep net.

Like many, I had never heard of the incel movement. But the more I learn about it, the more I fear that with these movements growing by the day, misogyny will never be stamped out.

According to an investigative piece in Elle magazine, incel is an underground movement of disgruntled men who blame women for their incapacity to form lasting relationships.

Until it was shut down last November, internet purveyor Reddit provided a safe place for misogynists to gather and spew hate. The site posted this proviso to warn users “Normies are allowed to post here, but do note that many incels are generally hostile to normies; tread carefully. Blackpill: A subjective term used to describe the real or perceived socially unspoken realizations that come from being a long-time incel. This sidebar will certainly be revised every now and again.”

Reddit boasted 40,000 registered members in its incel chat group. The real numbers are much higher because that figure does not include visitors who monitor the site without establishing their own accounts.

The now-infamous Facebook posting of Alek Minassian was linked to incel chat rooms. He conferred high praise upon the self-described “supreme gentleman” Californian Elliot Rodger, who murdered six people and injured 14 others before killing himself.

Minassian appears to have replicated Rodger’s massacre, right down to motive. In Rodger’s pre-massacre suicide note, he claims his murders were designed to “punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex”. He also uploaded a YouTube video explaining why.

Minassian claims similar victimization status on his postings. After the murders, Facebook deleted the Minassian account, but that is not enough. A current posting on Incel.me says that women should be like cattle, enslaved to service men’s sexual desires.

The oversight of hate speech must be expanded and included in a legislated, legal framework.

The only way to stop poison spewing from hate sites is to shut them down and deny the cover of anonymity to potential perpetrators.

That would be a noble outcome of the horrific Toronto tragedy.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.