Hate speech penalty in proposed online harms law exposes Canadians to costly legal fees and up to $50,000 in fines

Proceedings at the Canadian Parliament are beginning to feel like a zombie film: a monster was killed, it came back, was killed again and yet returns a third time. But this isn’t your typical horror flick. This one involves a group of government bureaucrats investigating complaints about your speech, prosecuting you at their own tribunal and ordering you to pay tens of thousands of dollars to people who don’t like what you say or write. The undead antagonist at the centre of it all is the civil penalty for hate speech, proposed last week in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s newly tabled Bill C-63.

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Hate speech is punishable under criminal law, but in the past, it could also be met with a civil penalty under Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. In 2014, the penalty was killed by Stephen Harper’s government after being badly abused. In 2021, the Trudeau government tried to resurrect Section 13 in Bill C-36, but the bill died when an election was called. Now, it’s back for a third time as Bill C-63, and is as dangerous as ever to freedom of speech and the free press.

The civil penalty for hate speech will result in self-censorship, intrude into press freedom and result in frivolous complaints arising from online flame wars where the process becomes the punishment. These frivolous complaints will clog up the already overburdened Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) which is supposed to deal with complex societal problems, such as discrimination in transportation or by government agencies. All are supported by a taxpayer-funded bureaucracy.

We’ve already seen this story play........

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