Attorney General Sean Fraser says the federal government will not recycle its previous online-speech bills, insisting any new attempt to regulate legal internet content will look different than the two controversial proposals that collapsed amid public backlash since 2021.Blacklock's Reporter says Fraser told senators the issue is now under consultation and any future “reforms” will be led by the Department of Canadian Heritage. His remarks came after Sen. Kristopher Wells, a strong advocate for tighter online rules, pushed the government to revive legislation aimed at tackling what he called growing online hate.“In the previous Parliament the government tabled comprehensive legislation to combat online harms,” Wells said, pointing to the failed attempt to create a Digital Safety Commission. He asked whether Ottawa still intends to introduce new laws targeting radicalization and hate on social media..“You are referring to the previous Bill C-63,” Fraser replied. “Canadians should expect to see the government take action to address some of the same harms that were the subject of that bill. You should not expect to see the identical bill copied and pasted in its previous form.”Bill C-63 would have regulated legal online content deemed “likely to foment detestation or vilification,” giving the Canadian Human Rights Commission new investigative powers. It stalled before Second Reading in the Commons. Its predecessor, Bill C-36, would have created a chief censor able to block websites deemed harmful, but it died with the 2021 election.Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner has argued the federal government already has tools to prosecute hate speech, noting those laws have existed since 1970. .She accused Ottawa of misusing power in other areas. “We are presently living under a government that unlawfully invoked the Emergencies Act and that routinely gaslights Canadians who legitimately question the efficacy or the morality of its policies as spreading misinformation,” she said.Civil liberties groups, academics and lawyers have repeatedly warned that the government’s past proposals targeted lawful speech and threatened core freedoms. Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto said in a 2021 submission that Ottawa’s approach “fails to account for the importance of protecting the kinds of expression that are most central to a free and democratic society including journalism, academic scholarship and public interest research, debate, artistic creation, criticism and political dissent.”
