An All Out Assault

The last couple of weeks of legislative activity in Ottawa have been distressing to say the least.  To call it an all out assault on Canada and Canadians is an understatement.

The Harper Government has been ramming through a series of legislation that comprise the single most overt attack on all that is good and reasoned in Canada.

I've already discussed my thoughts regarding Bill C-36, the Conservative response to the Bedford ruling on prostitution.  Unfortunately, what the Harper Government is ramming through is a more overt piece of legislation that makes a mess out of far more than prostitution.  It stands to make just about anything to do with sex illegal - from therapists to sex toys.

Then there is Bill C-24, which gives the Minister of Immigration rather broad powers to strip Canadians of their citizenship.  Quite rightly, a lot of Canadians are very concerned about this legislation.  This gives the politicians rather broad powers to strip people of their citizenship without any kind of real recourse in the courts.  Yes, they are talking about people who hold dual citizenship, but why on earth would we want to create an environment where there are two "grades" of citizenship?

It's been centuries since any civilized country engaged in banishing citizens who broke the local laws.

Bill C-13 is another piece of nasty legislation.  Framed in the rubric of addressing online bullying, this legislation gives the government unprecedented powers to engage in broad, invasive surveillance of Canadian citizens and their online activities.  In committee, Randall Garrison put forward an amendment which would have added gender identity to the hate crimes statutes (which are being amended by C-13).  To defeat that singular amendment, the Conservatives swapped out two CPC members on the committee who they thought might vote for it.

All of these are pieces in a larger mosaic of legislation that the Harper Government has put forth, sometimes as single issue bills, sometimes buried in the depths of omnibus "budget bills".  This government has been gradually attacking Canadian rights and freedoms at every turn.  Sometimes using subtle means, other legislation is much more blatant.

My guess is that Harper is doing all of this with an eye to wrapping up his legislative agenda (the one that he doesn't admit to) well in advance of the next election.  He's no doubt going to try and get Canadians to forget all of the legislative evilness that he has foisted upon Canadians in 2014.

Bill C-13 Does Not Address Online Bullying

In spite of the Harper Government's public claims to the contrary, Bill C-13 has very little to do with online bullying.

It talks about a whole lot of things, but only a small fraction has anything to do with online bullying.  At its core, it adds a few changes to essentially broaden the definition of child pornography and pornography by creating a definition for "intimate images".  This is not particularly meaningful in the realm of online bullying.

The very definition of an "intimate image" is highly problematic at the best of times:

162.1 (1) Everyone who knowingly publishes, distributes, transmits, sells, makes available or advertises an intimate image of a person knowing that the person depicted in the image did not give their consent to that conduct, or being reckless as to whether or not that person gave their consent to that conduct, is guilty 

(a) of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years; or(b) of an offence punishable on summary conviction. 

Definition of “intimate image”(2) In this section, “intimate image” means a visual recording of a person made by any means including a photographic, film or video recording,(a) in which the person is nude, is exposing his or her genital organs or anal region or her breasts or is engaged in explicit sexual activity;(b) in respect of which, at the time of the recording, there were circumstances that gave rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy; and(c) in respect of which the person depicted retains a reasonable expectation of privacy at the time the offence is committed.

Fundamentally, this sounds like an attempt (and a very bad one) to define what constitutes an "obscene" image rather than an "intimate" image.  Using this definition, some of the pictures we have seen of Rob Ford could be construed to be "intimate images", and yet the publication of those very images have provided valuable public insight into the character of this man who would be mayor and claims further to have designs on the Prime Minister's office.  Does Rob Ford peeing on a bush in a parking lot have a "reasonable expectation of privacy"?

Perhaps more troubling is the fact that this law gives the police extraordinary powers to seize people's computers "on the balance of probabilities", among other things.

Further, this law is actually remarkably naive in terms of its provisions regarding the removal of an image from websites.  Once an image is posted in a public forum, it can spread through the internet in  a completely untraceable manner.  Simply put, once the picture is posted, the damage is done.  Further, while you can request that an image be removed from a specific site, outside of Canada the Canadian government has very little ability to enforce removal orders.

What I find even more troubling is that the law does very little to address the notion of making harassment a criminal offence.  While Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons were victimized by people passing around pictures of them, the government seems to have overlooked that it is not just the picture which is the issue, but the messages that were associated with those pictures and the context in which they were distributed and whether they were directed at these unfortunate girls.

These girls did not kill themselves over the pictures, but over the treatment that they received at the hands of those who accessed those pictures and then addressed them.  The Internet is a harsh place, and it is one which will continue to be so, regardless of this law.  A quick search through the legislation mentions "harass" exactly once.

372. (1) Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to injure or alarm a person, conveys information that they know is false, or causes such information to be conveyed by letter or any means of telecommunication. 

Indecent communications(2) Everyone commits an offence who, with intent to alarm or annoy a person, makes an indecent communication to that person or to any other person by a means of telecommunication.Harassing communications(3) Everyone commits an offence who, without lawful excuse and with intent to harass a person, repeatedly communicates, or causes repeated communications to be made, with them by a means of telecommunication.

In many respects, this is the only part of the legislation which begins to address the kinds of behaviour that actually turn into bullying.  Unfortunately, I don't believe that this is an effective tool in the management of bullying in part because it is at the same time both overly broad in terms of the kinds of communication and overly narrow in that it specifically talks about it being "knowingly false".

Bullying is a very subtle social behaviour, and it often operates on the principle of "wrapping a lie with just a little bit of truth".  Remember that people often say things which get turned against them by the bully - it may be perfectly true as a statement, but when couched in the right words can be used as a tool against that person.

Further, the bill itself appears to do very little to identify the form and structure of bullying practices in the world of the internet.  Perhaps even more unsettling is that it also fails to recognize that much of the bullying often involves youth.  (and certainly the high profile cases do)

Sadly, Bill C-13 seems to be more of a resurrection of the kind of overreaching legislation that made Toews' "Internet Surveillance" Bill C-30 so unpalatable to Canadians.  Ultimately it expands the powers of the police to engage in search and seizure of people's activities while doing precious little to effectively identify the kinds of activities which comprise bullying behaviour.

... and more detailed analysis by a lawyer is here:  http://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2013/11/some-comments-on-new-canadian.html