Former human rights tribunal chair speaks out against Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms’ bill

‘If this passes, God help us, because I don’t know where it will go,’ former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal David Thomas warned of Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms’ bill.

A former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has warned that the Trudeau government’s proposed “Online Harms” bill could have a devastating impact on speech in the nation.

During a March 13 interview with independent media outlet True North, lawyer and former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal David Thomas blasted Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which could jail Canadians for “hate speech,” warning Canadians to be careful what they post online.

“What we are likely to see right away is a chilling effect,” Thomas explained, adding that the proposed legislation will have “a big impact on free political discourse in this country and I think that’s what we should all be concerned about immediately.”

“If this passes, God help us, because I don’t know where it will go,” he lamented.

Appointed in 2014 for a seven-year term, Thomas is the former chair of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, the body tasked with adjudicating violations of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

“The reason I am speaking out right now is that nobody who is on the tribunal is free to speak, they’re like judges sitting on the bench,” he revealed.

“That’s why I think it’s important for somebody with inside knowledge to convey these concerns about this legislation,” Thomas continued.

He explained that the “vagueness” of the proposed legislation means that “that nobody really knows” what would be considered “hate speech.” He warned it would cause uncertainty and fear across Canada.

Thomas described the Online Harms Act as “an incredibly damping piece of legislation, which I think, of course, will infringe on our Charter rights to freedom of expression.”

Thomas further warned that if the bill is passed, Canadian Human Rights Tribunal will be overrun with the number of cases against Canadians for “hate speech.”

“To adjudicate these cases themselves takes years. When someone lodges a complaint when they get a final decision, it would not be surprising if it took three to five years or even longer,” he predicted.

“That’s a terrible thing, especially for an administrative tribunal which is supposed to be delivering access to justice to the public,” Thomas lamented.

Bill C-63, introduced a few weeks ago, will create the Online Harms Act and modify existing laws, amending the Criminal Code as well as the Canadian Human Rights Act, in what the Liberals claim will target certain cases of internet content removal, notably those involving child sexual abuse and pornography.

However, the bill also seeks to punish “hate speech” and increase punishments for existing hate propaganda offenses in a substantial manner.

Penalties for violations of the proposed law include $20,000 fines and jail time, including life in prison for what it deems the most serious offenses.

According to the proposed legislation, the bill would not only punish those who committed a “hate crime” but also those suspected of committing one in the future. 

“A person may, with the Attorney General’s consent, lay an information before a provincial court judge if the person fears on reasonable grounds that another person will commit; (a)an offence under section 318 or any of subsections 319(1) to (2.‍1); or (b) an offence under section 320.‍1001,” the text of the bill reads. 

Thomas is not alone in his concerns over the legislation. Increasingly, prominent Canadians and even Americans have begun commenting on Trudeau’s authoritarian rule over Canada, particularly his restricting of internet speech.

Earlier this week, tech mogul Elon Musk called the proposed legislation “insane” as the new law would “allow judges to hand down life sentences for ‘speech crimes.’”

In late February, prominent Canadian anti-woke psychologist Jordan Peterson warned the new bill would undoubtedly lead to his criminalization.

Similarly, a top constitutional lawyer warned LifeSiteNews that the legislation will allow a yet-to-be-formed digital safety commission to conduct “secret commission hearings” against those found to have violated the law, raising “serious concerns for the freedom of expression” of Canadians online.

Additionally, Campaign Life Coalition recently warned that Bill C-63 will stifle free speech and crush pro-life activism.

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Overregulation is choking Canadian businesses, says the MEI

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Business

Overregulation is choking Canadian businesses, says the MEI

Published on May 2, 2025

Todayville

From the Montreal Economic Institute

The federal government’s growing regulatory burden on businesses is holding Canada back and must be urgently reviewed, argues a new publication from the MEI released this morning.

“Regulation creep is a real thing, and Ottawa has been fuelling it for decades,” says Krystle Wittevrongel, director of research at the MEI and coauthor of the Viewpoint. “Regulations are passed but rarely reviewed, making it burdensome to run a business, or even too costly to get started.”

Between 2006 and 2021, the number of federal regulatory requirements in Canada rose by 37 per cent, from 234,200 to 320,900. This is estimated to have reduced real GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points, employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points, according to recent Statistics Canada data.

Small businesses are disproportionately impacted by the proliferation of new regulations.

In 2024, firms with fewer than five employees pay over $10,200 per employee in regulatory and red tape compliance costs, compared to roughly $1,400 per employee for businesses with 100 or more employees, according to data from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

Overall, Canadian businesses spend 768 million hours a year on compliance, which is equivalent to almost 394,000 full-time jobs. The costs to the economy in 2024 alone were over $51.5 billion.

It is hardly surprising in this context that entrepreneurship in Canada is on the decline. In the year 2000, 3 out of every 1,000 Canadians started a business. By 2022, that rate had fallen to just 1.3, representing a nearly 57 per cent drop since 2000.

The impact of regulation in particular is real: had Ottawa maintained the number of regulations at 2006 levels, Canada would have seen about 10 per cent more business start-ups in 2021, according to Statistics Canada.

The MEI researcher proposes a practical way to reevaluate the necessity of these regulations, applying a model based on the Chrétien government’s 1995 Program Review.

In the 1990s, the federal government launched a review process aimed at reducing federal spending. Over the course of two years, it successfully eliminated $12 billion in federal spending, a reduction of 9.7 per cent, and restored fiscal balance.

A similar approach applied to regulations could help identify rules that are outdated, duplicative, or unjustified.

The publication outlines six key questions to evaluate existing or proposed regulations:

What is the purpose of the regulation?
Does it serve the public interest?
What is the role of the federal government and is its intervention necessary?
What is the expected economic cost of the regulation?
Is there a less costly or intrusive way to solve the problem the regulation seeks to address?
Is there a net benefit?

According to OECD projections, Canada is expected to experience the lowest GDP per capita growth among advanced economies through 2060.

“Canada has just lived through a decade marked by weak growth, stagnant wages, and declining prosperity,” says Ms. Wittevrongel. “If policymakers are serious about reversing this trend, they must start by asking whether existing regulations are doing more harm than good.”

The MEI Viewpoint is available here.

* * *

The MEI is an independent public policy think tank with offices in Montreal, Ottawa, and Calgary. Through its publications, media appearances, and advisory services to policymakers, the MEI stimulates public policy debate and reforms based on sound economics and entrepreneurship.

2025 Federal Election

The Last Of Us: Canada’s Chaos Election

Published on May 2, 2025

Bruce Dowbiggin

Show me good loser and I’ll show you a loser— Leo Durocher

There’s an expression that goes, you’re not allowed to die until all the people in your life have disappointed you. That trenchant observation is particularly relevant to those who woke up on April 29 to discover that their neighbours and friends in Canada have opted to give the federal Liberals (under new leader Mark Carney) another four years to continue Canada’s descent into irrelevance.

These are the same Liberals sans Carney who were polling in the low 20s six months earlier. Their cabinet members were quitting in droves. In the finest Wag The Dog tradition, a sure victory for Canada’s Conservatives was then transformed into a humiliating defeat that saw the Tories leader Pierre Poilievre lose the seat he’d represented for 20 years. The debate in the chattering classes now is how much was Poilievre’s fault?

In a minor vindication the Liberals were seemingly denied a majority by three seats (169-144) . How they balance that equation to advance their pet projects on trade, climate, gender, free speech, native rights and Donald Trump was unknowable Which is why the Grits have turned to dumpster diving MPs like Elizabeth May and keffiyeh-clad NDP to achieve a workable majority..

Suffice to say that neophyte Carney, without any support system within the Liberals, is being highly influenced by the Justin Trudeau faculty lounge left behind after the disgraced three-term PM slunk off into the night.

It’s not all beer and skittles. No sooner had the Liberal pixie dust settled than Carney was hit with Bloc leader Yves-Francois Blanchet announced unequivocally that energy pipelines were still a no-go in electrified Quebec. Alberta premier Danielle Smith lowered the requirement for a separation referendum from 600 K signatures to around 170 K— a very doable mark in pissed-off Alberta.

Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe outlined his demands on Carney if his province is not to join Alberta. And former British PM Tony Blair, who’d worked with Carney in the UK, announced that Carney’s pet project Net Zero was a loser for nations. Finally RBC revealed it was moving beyond diversity toward “inclusion” by removing “unconscious bias” among its upper ranks.

Such is the backwash from April 28. If you listened to the state-supported media on election night you might think that Trump had picked on poor, innocent friend next door Canada. His outrageous 51st state jest did send the Canadian political apparatus into panic. A Liberal party that proclaimed Canada a postmodern state with no real traditions (lowerering flags to half mast for six months to promote their Rez School genocide hustle) suddenly adopted the flag-waving ultra-patriotic visage of expatriate comedian Mike Myers.

Instead the commentariat was spitballing about how to make the House of Commons function more smoothly or if Carney should depart for Europe immediately or in a month to meet his true constituents in the EU commentariat. China? Wassat’? Urban crime? I can’t hear you. Canada as fentanyl capital of the West? Not interested.

Astonishingly, many people who should know better bought it. It was Boomers waking from a long nap to impose their cozy values one final time on the nation they’d created via Trudeau. Comfy ridings like Oakville, Burlington, North Vancouver, Ottawa Centre and Charlottetown mailed it in for another four years. Academic hotbeds like Western (London), Laurier (Kitchener), Waterloo, UNB (Fredericton), U Calgary (Confederation) Alberta (Strathcona) and UBC (Vancouver) also kept the radical dream alive.

Meanwhile shrieks of “Panic!” over Trump decimated the Bloc (22 seats) and the NDP (7 seats) with their support transferred to a banker-led party that had been poison to them only six months earlier. You could not have written a more supportive script for a party who had neglected the essentials in traditional Canada while pursuing radical policies to please the globalists of the West.

Speaking of time capsules, you’d have been hard-pressed to find a more retro scene than the one produced by the legacy TV networks. With their emphasis on the horse-race story the tone, the panels, the hosts could have easily been teleported from 1990s. While many were interested in the micro of government finance, most listeners were expecting maybe a word or two on the collapsed state exposed by Trump’s aggressive negotiating.

As we’ve mentioned often before, Canada’s allies are appalled by the takeover of the country by malign actors, drugs traffickers, money launderers, real-estate manipulators and Chinese subterfuge. Trump’s generic reference to the border was a catch-all for the corruption swallowing the election process and the finance of the country.

That avoidance was echoed by pollsters who spent the night talking about how the final figures reflected their findings. Except for those that didn’t— Conservatives vote tally over 41 percent and Liberals well under 200 seats. What was avoided was the cumulative effect of highly inflated Liberal polling during the campaign, the “why-bother?” narrative they sold to voters appalled by the Liberals manipulation of the process to switch leaders and hold a micro-campaign of 36 days.

While Donald Trump has announced he’ll work with Carney on tariffs, it’s still highly likely that this was the final Canadian election fought by the old rules where the have-nots (Atlantic Canada) the haves-but-outraged (Quebec) and the indolent (Ontario) control the math for making government. The money pump (Alberta, Saskatchewan) will seek to attract eastern BC and southern Manitoba to their crew. In the worst case Carney may be the nation’s final PM of ten provinces plus territories.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org. You can see all his books at brucedowbigginbooks.ca.