NDP leader Jagmeet Singh on Wednesday threw his full support behind the controversial Liberal Internet censorship bill, and its need to pass urgently, says Blacklock’s Reporter..“This is serious,” Singh told reporters..“We’ve got hate speech laws. We know and we’ve agreed as a society there are certain things you can’t say, absolutely not.”.Parliament in 1970 banned hate speech under the Criminal Code. Cabinet on June 23 introduced Bill C-36 to further ban online content deemed to “foment detestation or vilification.”.Internet publishers, bloggers, Facebook users and others would face $70,000 fines or house arrest for Internet writings without evidence any crime was incited..“Right now you can’t use hate speech in public or in written form,” said Singh..“There can be remedies. But if you’re doing it online, there is no remedy..“There is no way to stop it right now. That has to end,” he said..“Right now there are really only two options. The current existing model is we leave Mark Zuckerberg to do it. Facebook does it. I think that’s a bad model. It hasn’t worked. They’re not doing a good job of it and they don’t have a vested interest in it. They just want to make money..“I think it’s incumbent on Canadians to have a say about what is appropriate and what is not. The way we have a say is we’ve got elected officials and we can bring in legislation that regulates online hate. It should be the government’s responsibility.”.Bill C-36 would amend the Criminal Code to permit house arrest or electronic monitoring for any Internet user suspected “on reasonable grounds” of thinking they might commit “an offence motivated by bias, prejudice or hate.”.The Ontario Civil Liberties Association has called the measure an “astounding proposal.”.“Criminal conduct, in this case, is speech in which no actual harm to any specific person needs to be proven by the state, nor does the anticipated ‘criminal’ speech involve incitement of a crime, but rather incitement of ‘hatred,’ an emotion which is not in itself a crime,” wrote the Association..Attorney General David Lametti to date has not addressed the impact of Bill C-36 on free expression, but said on introducing the bill involved “different delicate balances to protect this public space that we feel is critically important to the vitality of our democracy..“We won’t catch everything that is awful out there,” said Lametti..“There’s a lot of stuff out there that is absolutely brutal, but doesn’t reach the standard. But we will identify a lot of things.”.“These changes are designed to target the most egregious and clear forms of hate speech that can lead to discrimination and violence. They do not target simple expressions of dislike or disdain that pepper everyday discourse, especially online.”.Dave Naylor is the News Editor of the Western Standard.,dnaylor@westernstandardonline.com,.Twitter.com/nobby7694
