Attorney General Sean Fraser insists cabinet’s new hate crime legislation is not a backdoor attempt to police speech online, despite two previous Liberal efforts to expand censorship powers.“We should recognize there are many acts we may find offensive that do not constitute hate for the purpose of the Criminal Code,” Fraser told the Commons justice committee. “The new measure would not criminalize any internet activity considered legal today.”Blacklock's Reporter says Bill C-9, An Act To Amend The Criminal Code, would ban public displays of Nazi, Hamas, or similar symbols that “wilfully promote hatred against an identifiable group,” prohibit interference with religious or cultural gatherings, and broaden police authority to lay hate speech charges for “detestation or vilification.”Conservative MP Andrew Lawton pressed Fraser on whether the bill applies to the internet..“Bill C-9 makes reference specifically with hate symbols to ‘public places,’” said Lawton. “Just to confirm, does that include the internet?”“Generally speaking, the law will apply equally online as it does in real communities,” replied Fraser. When asked again if the law would affect what people say and write online, he responded, “Just in the limited circumstances where there is the wilful promotion of hatred.”Lawton persisted: “It will apply to the internet?” Fraser conceded, “It would be possible that somebody could commit a hate crime on the internet.”Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin questioned why the government needed new legislation at all. .“The fact remains most of the situations Bill C-9 intends to address already exist,” he said. “Why did you deem it necessary to introduce legislation that substantially cuts and pastes the Criminal Code?”“I understand your point but I don’t agree with it,” replied Fraser.Canada first criminalized hate speech in 1970. Parliament toughened the law again in 2022 under Bill C-19, which made it an offence to “wilfully promote anti-Semitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust,” punishable by up to two years in jail.Fraser admitted he didn’t know how many of the roughly 5,000 hate crimes reported annually lead to prosecution. “I don’t have the numbers,” he said. “I expect not” when asked if prosecutions matched the reported crimes..Liberal MP Anthony Housefather defended the bill, saying it was needed after a “shocking rise in anti-Semitism” over the past two years that has left many Jews “feeling very, very unsafe.”Conservative MP Roman Baber said the measure only highlighted the government’s failure to act sooner. “Please don’t pretend you’re doing us any favours,” he told Fraser. “Over the last decade of Liberal government, hate crimes against the Jewish community have more than quadrupled.”Cabinet has twice tried and failed since 2021 to pass internet censorship bills — C-36 and C-63 — both abandoned after backlash from free speech advocates.
