Good morning, honourable MPs. We would like to thank the members of Parliament for allowing us to give our perspectives on online hate on behalf of the Windsor Islamic Council and the Windsor Islamic Association, of which I am the public relations director. Lina Chaker is from the Windsor Islamic Council.

Good morning to everyone.

The problem is victims of online hate. Internet use is growing year by year and will continue to do so in the generations to come. Just as we have regulated other technologies, including television, radio, movies, magazines, and other communication platforms, we cannot ignore the Internet. The harm of online conversations transcends the digital world. We don't need to cite violent events or even the most recent attack in New Zealand to prove that online hate has real-world consequences.

Our community centres are filled with troubled youth facing negative peer pressure, social anxiety, and mental health issues. The overall international Muslim community has been shaken twice over the past couple of years by terrorism, just as other communities have been. These terrorists clearly built their Islamic knowledge from misinformed online sources that spew hate.

We have our own Canadian example from January 29, 2017, in Quebec, with evidence that motivation was driven by online hate sites.

To prevent and respond to online hate, we believe there are three important actions the Government of Canada can take.

Number one is to set strict standards and guidelines for social media companies to self-regulate their content. Number two is to more readily enforce legislation that criminalizes both online and off-line hate speech. Number three is to increase awareness about public reporting and responding to this type of behaviour online.

The first action is to impose strict self-regulation standards and penalties for social media companies. Other countries have developed strategies to impose regulations and protocols for social media companies to self-regulate the content of hate speech on their sites. For example, Australia and Germany now penalize social media sites that fail to remove hateful content with financial charges or even imprisonment.

Alternatively, some countries such as Sri Lanka...[Technical difficulty—Editor] ...social media to stop the spread of misinformation and hate. Canada should consider policies of the kind that have been adopted in Australia, Germany and even Sri Lanka to enforce the removal of hateful content and combat terrorism.

We recognize that there may be difficulties in regulating online content. However, our country currently regulates other forms of online content such as child pornography, and anti-spam legislation does exist.

Similar to this, there has to be an effort to combat online hate. For the individuals who try to bypass such regulations, we should combat that by not allowing companies to provide individuals with VPNs or other IP-blocking programs.

Nuimber two is to introduce effective legislation to penalize those who incite hatred. In addition to penalizing social media companies for not taking down hateful content, we must penalize Canadians who spread hateful messages, whether online or off-line. Although we currently have tools to do so, such as section 319 of the Criminal Code, our community feels that they are not adequately utilized and thus cannot encompass online hate crimes.

In fact, we had an unfortunate local example here in Windsor, Ontario. An individual was spraying graffiti all over the city, on the posts and bus stop signs, inciting hatred and harm to Muslims specifically.

These acts weren't recognized as hate crimes under section 319, which makes our community pessimistic about the prospects of encompassing online hate speech. This individual had a misdemeanour and no other charges were pressed against him.

Recognizing this, we believe that section 13 of the Human Rights Act was a vital piece of legislation that was dedicated to online speech. However, it can be amended or restructured to be more effective. We recognize that section 13 was not heavily utilized before it was repealed. However, we do not find this to be a convincing reason not to reintroduce it.

Online hate can be responsible for other types of actions in our society, including verbal attacks against women with hijabs, trying to do harm to people of a visible minority and inciting the physical confrontations that have happened in several supermarkets, shopping areas and malls in our country.

Thus, we are not limiting the discussion of section 13, but hope that any legislation introduced to combat hate will readily be enforced for the betterment of our multicultural Canadian society. The frequency with which a piece of legislation is used should not be the basis on which we decide whether it exists or not. Rather, it should highlight to us that most people still do not know what to do when faced with online hate.

We recommend that there be more education on the consequences of promoting hate. While recognizing that education tends to be a provincial mandate, it is our believe that the Government of Canada can play a vital role. This leads us into our third and final point: educating the public on how to report incidents of hate.

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