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If there are complaints, they would go to a federal tribunal with powers “ranging from mediation to cease and desist orders and the right to issue fines,” the report suggested.
Under the 1970 amendments to the Criminal Code, hate speech has already been outlawed. According to Blacklock’s Reporter, successive cabinets have decided not to regulate internet content since the Department of Industry commissioned a 1995 Final Report Of The Information Superhighway Advisory Council.
In Harms Reduction, the commission stated it’s the role of governments “to protect against social harms, stand up for the targeted and assert the greater public interest through the appropriate governance of platforms, search engines and other intentional or incidental purveyors of this material.”
Ottawa think tank Public Policy Forum produced the latest report at a cost of $2,848,329 in federal grants and contracts. The same organization in 2016 was also paid $130,000 to study newspapers which resulted in Parliament’s passage of Income Tax amendments in 2019 approving a $595 million bailout of government-approved publishers.
Despite releasing the report, Policy Forum did not go on to state how internet code of conduct could be enforced, rather assuming liability for labelling any Facebook or Twitter user as a hate monger.
Professor Jameel Jaffer, a member of Columbia University’s law faculty and of the Commission of Democratic Expression, noted a dissenting opinion the recommendations went too far.
“I find it difficult to endorse the proposed Duty To Act Responsibly when the content of that duty is left almost entirely to Parliament,” Jaffer wrote. “Defining the duty will require trade-offs, not only between free speech and other values – for example privacy, equality and due process – but also between different conceptions of free speech.”
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