OPINION
Well, these are strange days, indeed: I find myself in wholehearted agreement with Margaret Atwood.
Despite the acclaim heaped on them, I’ve always found Atwood’s books to be risible taradiddles with little grasp of history or the realities of human society. In contrast to the masochistic feminine fantasies of The Handmaid’s Tale, for instance, in a real strongly patriarchal society where fertile women are scarce, feminine social and political power is brutally in the ascendant. Just watch an episode of Chinese dating show, If You Are the One.
Still, even a clock with its gears gummed up with cat urine and cheap wine is sometimes right.
Acclaimed author Margaret Atwood has warned that the federal government’s online harms bill is “Orwellian” and its definitions of punishable hate speech are vague and could invite abuse, such as unwarranted complaints under the Canadian Human Rights Act.
To her credit, Atwood has recognised a principle that few on the modern left will: free speech means allowing even speech we don’t like.
Ms Atwood said she has been the frequent target of “hate speech, online vilification, lies, threats and doxxing” and is “no fan of this kind of online behaviour.” But, in an e-mail exchange with The Globe and Mail, she said she is “also no fan of unsupervised authority acting under vague laws, without any oversight.”
On Friday, she posted on X her concerns about “Trudeau’s Orwellian online harms bill” after reading an article about it in The Spectator. “If this account of the bill is true, it’s Lettres de Cachet all over again,” she wrote, referring to letters once signed by the King of France with orders to enforce arbitrary judgments.
“The possibilities for revenge false accusations and thoughtcrime stuff are sooo inviting!” she added.
The Globe and Mail
In fact, the bill is not just Orwell, it’s a load of Dick. By which, I refer to Philip K Dick’s The Minority Report, made into a 2002 movie, in which the PreCrime agency arrests and convicts people even before they commit the crime for which they’re convicted.
This legislation authorises house arrest and electronic tagging for a person considered likely to commit a future crime. It’s right there in the text: if a judge believes there are reasonable grounds to ‘fear’ a future hate crime, the as of yet innocent party can be sentenced to house arrest, complete with electronic tagging, mandatory drug testing and communication bans. Failure to cooperate nets you an additional year in jail […]
The legislation appears to apply retroactively, meaning you can be hauled up before the Human Rights Tribunal for any material you’ve left online, regardless of its posting date. Anonymous accusations and secret testimony are permitted (at the tribunal’s discretion).
The Spectator
Of course the bill defines “hate crime” in the broadest possible way, effectively handing the state a license to lock up anyone they’re afraid will say something they don’t like.
For life, if necessary.
Introduced late last month, the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, would allow judges to imprison adults for life if they advocate for genocide […]
Citing a government spokesperson, the bill would increase the maximum penalty specifically for advocating genocide from 5 years to life imprisonment and from 2 years to 5 years, on indictment, for the willful promotion of hatred.
Fox News
Does that include chanting the Hamas war cry, “From the River to the Sea”, a call for the eradication of the Jews? Just asking on Chloe Swarbrick’s behalf. Interestingly, the bill is the work of Justice Minister Arif Virani, a Muslim. Who wants to bet that it will be used to weaponise spurious claims of ‘Islamophobia’, while the very real tidal wave of violent antisemitism staining the West will go as unpunished as ever? But it’s surely just a conspiracy theory to wonder if this is yet another case of Muslims weaponising the West’s own freedoms against us.
Of course no one (apart from a Green) wants to hear anyone advocating genocide – but that’s a crime already covered by existing laws such as incitement. Incitement requires, of course, a likelihood that the act incited will be carried out. If there is no such likelihood, then it’s just a particularly odious case of free speech. It’s the difference between somebody grumbling that ‘we’d all be better off without those buggers’ and a ‘respected community figure’ urging a rampaging mob to “Gas the Jews!”
Not that that’s likely to happen, now is it? And if it did, no doubt police and politicians would bend over backwards to prosecute it.