Online Harms Law suggests that social networks remove such posts within 24 hours- such as those that sexualise children.
The Act would forcibly change Internet policies, social media services and “adult content user-uploaded domains”.
It should receive the approval of Canada’s Parliament first before becoming operative.
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Overview of Canada’s Online Safety Regulations
It enumerates the seven categories of harmful content that will constitute a reason for removal from the websites. Forbidden posts you can suggest the bully anywhere else or with any other post to bully a child and the posts that can be harmful to the child. This Act of Parliament would begin by creating the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to be a regulator of online platforms.
“We acknowledge the impact of the online harms that we experience which can propel to real-world impacts and in some cases become fatal,” said Justice Minister at a news conference on Monday the 23rd of November.
“Ironic is how the whole exercise, right down to the part I missed, almost evaded scrutiny.”
He said this bill intended to ban deep-fakes from spreading widely across the internet, such as those images that were recently circulated that were an image of Taylor Swift’s head placed on a naked woman’s body Congressman Mr. Leroy commented on this saying that people-to-people communication outside the scope of this law will remain untouched.
The bill must come under examination by a committee of the parliament and, later, by the Senate -where every chamber may suggest changes to the final version of the bill.
Proposed Changes to Hate Crime Laws in Canada
The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau aided by the criminal law reform also aims at increasing hate crime punishments through introducing new crimes. One such crime with a punishment of up to life term in imprisonment for hate mongers who motivate genocide.
The Canadian Human Rights Act would also be modified to consider hate speech a crime and would allow the Human Rights Tribunal to fill the void in another paragraph.
The party holders Liberal had forewarned during the 2021 elections to bring the online safety bill to be signed within 100 days after the re-election.
In a statement, Jagmeet Singh, who leads the New Democratic Party, said his group’s caucus will vote in favour of the bill, but he also noted that the government by waiting had delayed the legislation’s introduction for so long.
“To this, the sarcastic saying goes, ‘their inaction has communicated that kids were affected. Even kids were sexually exploited online because they failed to act,'” Mr Singh said as quoted by the Canadian Press.
Debate Over Definition of Hate Speech in Canada
The leader of the Conservative party Pierre Poilievre, said his party alone is against “Justin Trudeau’s agenda of woke censorship that will be used to stifle any political speech”.
Just like the discussion about censorship of ideas and thoughts, what does Mr. Trudeau mean when he uses the words “hate speech”? It is the speech he does not like. Dr. Poilievre said last week. He will do away with it all, by just putting an end to it!
For instance, the United Kingdom and some other countries such as Australia and France, have adopted the new legislation designed to curtail the distribution of digital misinformation.
The Prime Minister’s recent announcement of overhauling this law players into the already existing relations between the Canadian government and social media platforms, which have attracted critique due to a law that compels companies to pay Canadian news publishers for their content.
In November, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, agreed to spend C$100 every year on fulfilling the government requirements, although Meta decided to disallow all news content only on Instagram and Facebook to avoid the law.
Last Updated on by Nikita Pradhan