Jordan Peterson: Online harms bill is Trudeau's illiberal manifesto
It is a full frontal assault on free speech
There is no doubt that the virtual world is out of control, in proportion, perhaps, even to its benefits. When making that case, it is easiest to first point to pornography, the exchange of which constitutes a substantial proportion of internet traffic. The detrimental effects of such transmission are clear and, perhaps, self-evident: the substitution of the virtual for the real thing cannot be good for men or women, the former enticed into the idiot pleasures of immediate self-gratification, the latter into an increasingly commodified world of sexual transaction. The typical young man now can gain more access to anything-but-discreet images of digitally-enhanced young women engaged in every imaginable sexual activity in a morning than any man would have had exposure to in any conceivable lifetime twenty years ago — and that is the market in which young women now find themselves doomed to compete.
Up to half of all web traffic is now bot-generated, and much of that is devoted toward outright criminal activity. It is a rare pensioner indeed who is not under direct assault by machines designed by psychopaths to steal everything they have. Text messages from fraudsters are for most people an everyday encounter, and it is easy for anyone who is impaired in any manner in their faculties, however temporarily, to fall prey to the manipulators and thieves. The fact that the perpetrators of such crimes can operate anonymously, anywhere in the world, adds both to the danger and to the difficulty of regulating this increasingly lawless environment.
It is also the case that the lulz culture generated not least by online anonymity has contributed to the deadliness of the virtual environment. Those characterized by so-called Dark Tetrad personality traits — the manipulators, narcissists, psychopaths and sadists that make up perhaps five per cent of the population — can give full expression to their worst impulses online, invading every space of commentary with their purposefully hurtful, bitter and vengeful provocation, aiming precisely at spreading the grief and misery their vengeful souls wish to perpetrate on the world. Such people are held accountable in the real world by the fact that their reputations soon come to accompany them, and they are properly isolated, shunned and reviled — held accountable, in a phrase. Online, they are anonymous and can spread their poison not only without risk but with far greater reach than their utter lack of social skills would otherwise avail to them, and with some corporate-greed-amplified advantage of attention and notoriety. It is in no small part by dint of the efforts of the trolls that our culture is now polarized so extensively. They multiply divisions to sow discord, and they do it so they can Laugh Out Loud derisively at the idiots they purposefully torment.
Does virtualization enable psychopathy? I believe the answer to this question is yes. Furthermore, I know from a careful study of history from the psychological perspective that cultures end and often cataclysmically when the psychopaths get the upper hand, as they did after the French Revolution, in the aftermath of Lenin, in the Germany of the 1930’s and during Mao’s evil reign. Societies that will not or cannot defend themselves against the worst impulses of the worst within them collapse.
Thus I have some real sympathy with the hypothetical impulses behind the Trudeau government’s proposed online harms act, Bill C-63. There are multitudes of bad actors conspiring on the digital frontier, and it is the responsibility of the community and its governmental representatives to reign them in. However, when contemplating such a circumstance, and the appropriate response, two other questions must be simultaneously considered: has the problem been accurately diagnosed and, more seriously: is the recommended cure worse than the disease?
And, remember: we should evaluate what is being put forward remembering what giant governmental and corporate bureaucracies did in response to another recent and hypothetically deadly threat: the very COVID-19 the U.S. Center for Disease Control recently reclassified as a typical cold or influenza. The totalitarians, in league with the greedy, came rampaging forward to deal with that massively exaggerated threat. The consequences of that were not only dreadful and in some ways unprecedented but are still quite terribly unfolding. There has been a vast increase in so-called excess deaths since the time of the lockdowns — an increase of utterly scandalous proportions, so far unaddressed by the agents responsible for the totalitarian response. Furthermore, the lockdowns clearly and disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable, interfering, for example, with the education of the poorest children, as well as producing a massive wealth transfer from the poor/working/middle-class to those occupying the uppermost echelons of the social hierarchy.
Reading Bill C-63 is an odd experience. Dull, dull, dull — poison. Dull, dull, dull — poison. What do I mean by that? I mean that the bill primarily consists of anodyne fulminations against obvious social ills, interspersed with conceptual oddities breathtaking in their formulation and solutions dangerous in their extensiveness.
The bill’s authors first walk us through the problematic territory indicated previously — essentially, a listing of bad things on the internet: content that foments hatred (on a prohibited ground of discrimination); incites violence, violent extremism or terrorism; that incites children to harm themselves; that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor; that is used to bully a child; content that is intimate and shared without consent. So far, so good, in some regard: how could any decent person complain about a bill aimed at those who perpetrate such malfeasance?
But, unfortunately — and particularly, in law — the devil is in the details. There are definitely bad people, doing bad things in the world — but are the people who are calling them out actually concerned with control of the bad actors and remediation for the harm they are doing? Or are they instead employing the existence of what is genuinely bad to further their own equally miserable and dangerous ends? It is by no means a leitmotif of good policy to state “here are a litany of problems (and aren’t they severe?)” and to end with “therefore provide to us unlimited power and we will keep you safe.” This is exactly what Bill C-63 does, and in a manner so egregious that it is difficult even on repeated reading to believe that it is true.
First, the government determines to establish an entirely new bureaucratic arm: the Digital Safety Commission of Canada. This group of officials—appointed, not elected, mind you — will serve generously-provisioned terms of not more than five years. The CEO of this Commission will have the status of the head of a department, and his or her commission the power of a Federal court. Thus will be called into existence a full state apparatus, with enforcement capacity — and specifically empowered to police speech and its virtual transmission, particularly on social media. This group of three to five appointed members (“that’s not very many? How dangerous could that be?”) has the right to authorize any number of additional members and employees to carry out its tasks — any or all of whom can be granted the full power of the Commission itself. Thus the stage is set for the exponential growth of the commission, given the magnitude of the task that has been set out: the very policing of the internet.
Now, of course, some limitations on the power of this group are set out, however much for window-dressing they might be. It must govern itself with due respect for freedom of expression, “equality rights” (whatever the hell they are — and words matter); privacy rights, “the needs and perspectives of the Indigenous peoples of Canada (a phrase utterly out of place here and really a marker for the woke interests genuinely operating behind the scenes) and, of course, and most poisonously “any other factor that the Commission considers relevant.” Really? “Any other factor?” Why bother with any of the other codicils, then? I think the answer to that is obvious.
So we have the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, unelected, a CEO and Ombudsperson at its head, with unlimited powers of expansion, enabled to pursue its mission essentially as it sees fit — an eventually and inevitably gigantic enterprise, given the scope of its endeavour: the policing of the entire virtual world.
Next, we might consider: What powers is this new commission to be granted? For starters, it can regulate any “social media service,” which is, by the definitions set forth in the bill, any service that enables a user to communicate content to the public. Let that sink in. We are now producing in Canada a new bureaucracy to monitor all public communication for “harm,” which can be defined in any way the new bureaucracy sees fit, under the guise, most particularly, of protecting children from sexual exploitation. Who can object to the latter? No one decent. But in what manner does it enable the former? In every manner imaginable — and then some.
Let’s concentrate on a few particularly egregious examples from the bill in question, which make the full danger apparent only once you also understand that you or anyone else who uses social media can be denounced anonymously by anyone anywhere for any reason and that you will be investigated without the right to confront your accuser or even to know who it was. So don’t be thinking this just applies to the giant evil corporations idiot politicians enjoy lambasting for their own self-aggrandizement. Any technologically-equipped modern person falls under the purview of Bill C-63, and by design.
First, in our analysis, we might note the means of investigation: the Digital Safety Commission or any of its representatives will be able to enter a place of business without a warrant and take and/or reproduce anything there — and with full cooperation, or else.
Second, note the powers of the Commission: its edicts will have the full force of a Canadian Federal court, despite the fact that it will not be bound (this is literally in the bill) by “any legal or technical rules of evidence.”|
Third, Bill C-63 also amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to create the offence of “communication of hate speech.” Now the problem with this is not that there is no speech that is hateful, because it is obvious that such speech exists. The problem, as it always is, is “who defines hate?” And the answer to that question is always two-fold: those you would least want charged with that task, and those who hate speech. It is no different here. Note the potential scope of your malfeasance and liability: you can be reported (and by anyone anywhere) to the Canadian Human Rights Commission not only for anything you post after this bill comes into existence, but for anything you ever posted anywhere.
This, combined with the much lower evidentiary standard employed in the course of these proceedings, absolutely guarantees that anyone with any contentious opinions whatsoever will be immediately made subject to endless lawfare — particularly by the devious radicals and psychopaths who have already learned to weaponize such ill-conceived systems of governance and policing. Fines of up to $20,000 to the complainant and $50,000 to the Crown (of course) follow — but that’s only the beginning. Bill C-63 also adds a “hate crime” offence to the Criminal code, which could be laid in conjunction with any legal violation “if the commission of the offence is motivated by hatred.” The potential sentence? Life in prison — which is a sentence that in the case of this bill in the hands of this government and the increasingly captured judiciary that now serves Canada is a sentence very likely to be enforced, and for purely political reasons.
Fourth: hatred is defined in this bill as an “emotion.” The danger in making that a crime should be self-evident: who defines the offending emotion? It is currently in vogue among the activists most likely to misuse such provisions and their definitions to allow the existence of such criminal sentiment to be determined by the offended “feelings” of the hypothetical target. Furthermore—and this is dangerous almost beyond belief—the protected social classes protected by Bill C-63 include the now-familiar and entirely imaginary categories of “gender identity” and, worse, “gender expression.” The first is the radical re-imagining of the concept of sex that is currently and purposefully wreaking havoc in our society, particularly among the easily manipulated and young. The second is something literally indistinguishable from fashion, as it is nothing but means of self-presentation, however conceived. It is exactly the inclusion of such a concept that indicates just how dangerous the concept of “group rights” can become.
Fifth, and finally, we might and should note what is much worse in this bill, and there is plenty: Bill C-63 allows not only for the creation of a new, giant, power-mad bureaucracy, aimed squarely at the prosecution of free speech, under the guise of harm reduction, but for the invention of an entirely new and ominous crime — pre-crime, really — the “possibility” of offending. Under the changes to the Criminal Code proposed, you can be denounced by anyone in the manner already indicated for being a probable future offender — on the basis of their “fears.”
Under the “hate crime” provisions, you can and will be brought before a provincial court, which can deem you a probable offender — someone likely to generate “hate propaganda or hate crime.” You can and will then be outfitted not only with an ankle bracelet (!), restricted in your movement to your house (!), and barred from communicating in any manner with whomsoever the commission or court specifies, but will also be rendered subject to the mandatory monitoring of your bodily fluids, on the off chance that you take a drink or smoke, say, a joint, so that your mouth might be loosened (although no reason for such invasive surveillance is given in the legislation).
It might be noted as well that if you decide “to hell with the ankle bracelet, gag order and bodily fluid provision” then you can be sent to prison for up to a year. Remember: all this for a “crime” indicated by nothing other than someone’s fear that you might say something that could be reported as “hateful” under the exceedingly wide provisions of this bill.
We’ll close with something personal. I have no doubt whatsoever that if this bill became law I would be immediately denounced for things I have said in the past and will no doubt continue to say in the future, and that I would be exactly the sort of person ankle-braceleted, kept at home unable to communicate, and monitored for body fluid production. Why? Well, the good people at the Ontario College of Psychologists — another group given only a modicum of the power that the new commission will be granted — have already sentenced me to an indefinite re-education for exactly that reason, deeming me at risk to re-offend, and in consequence of the sorts of denunciations that Bill C-63 make even easier and more risk-free.
Bill C-63 will literally make such cancel culture the law of the land — and let us be clear: despite all the hand-wringing about harm that accompanies the bill, that expansion of censorial power is the point and purpose: the further gathering of limitless and responsibility-free power to the mad centralizers of the Trudeau authoritarians.
To sum up: first, what is the problem? The problem is that the virtualized world is inhabited in dangerous and possibly unsustainable part by those with a criminal or psychopathic proclivity. What is the solution put forth by our hapless and unforgivably ignorant Minister of Justice and the Trudeau incompetents? To produce a new court/department with unlimited reach and power with no electoral accountability and no restriction by precedent, informed and policed by a cadre of denouncer-informants who can accuse anonymously at no risk. This is literally a manifesto for an authoritarian state. The intermingling of the virtual and real world has already occurred to the degree that there is no separate regulation of the former, without serious and immediate infringement on the latter. Make no mistake about it, Canadians: The freedoms this idiot (that’s not nearly a sufficiently derogatory word) commission will remove in the name of your hypothetical security and safety are the very freedoms upon which the stability of your psyche and your state directly depend.
Are there dangers online? Of course, and they’re real and serious. Will this bill protect you? Quite the contrary: it will, instead, create a colossal, lumbering, expansive, blind bureaucracy that will enable a whole new class of predators to come after you — a whole class of anonymous ideologically-addled resentful denouncers and accusers, empowered by their effortless access to the power of bureaucracy and court. Bill C-63 will do nothing to curtail online harm, not least because it is not designed to deal with that problem. Such a solution would have been far too effortful and difficult for those of the caliber of our current federal representatives. What we have instead is a bill designed to demolish whatever right to free speech those of us in our increasingly sad little banana-republic country have left, and that is already damned little, and to centralize power further in the hands of a self-absorbed, ignorant and increasingly contemptuous elite.
This is a bill that is both stunningly dangerous and appallingly lazy. It is stunningly dangerous because it produces a free-speech policing and court enterprise with an unlimited purview — one that can and will be immediately weaponized for political reasons (as the commission can consider any factor it deems “relevant”). It is appalling and unforgivably lazy because although the bill purports to deal with online harm it fails to consider any such harm with any degree of seriousness in analysis or with regard to rectification. It does not deal seriously with the problem of online sexual exploitation.
It does not deal seriously with the online criminals, or with the amplification of the voices of the pathological trolls by attention-hungry and increasingly ideology-possessed and evil corporations. Instead, it sloughs off the responsibility and the effort to yet another instantly gigantic and tremendously powerful bureaucracy, granted extensive power to forcefully and extra-judicially deal with anything said ever anywhere ever that any anonymous denouncer anywhere deems “harmful” in any manner no matter how political/deluded in its essence.
Beware, Canadians: you trust far too much, and think far too little. The demagogues and liars that have come to inhabit our uppermost institutions are offering you servitude in the guise of safety and security. Bill C-63 is an act of authoritarian overreach the likes of which has never been seen in this country, or anywhere else in the democratic west. Crime and pre-crime — alleged by the anonymous, and punished by the unaccountable. Read it and weep.
National Post
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