New Crime: Promoting Terrorism Online
An Act to amend the Criminal Code (promotion of terrorist activity or group)
Summary
- Creates a new Criminal Code offence for wilfully promoting any terrorist activity, a terrorist group, or any activity of a terrorist group, punishable by up to five years' imprisonment.
- Clarifies that the offence applies even if statements are general and even if they do not actually encourage or instigate anyone to participate in terrorism.
- Provides defences mirroring hate-propaganda provisions: truth, good-faith religious opinion, public-interest discussion with reasonable belief in truth, and good-faith efforts to expose and remove promotion.
- Classifies the new offence as a "terrorism offence," makes sentences consecutive to other terrorism sentences, and adds it to the list of wiretap-eligible offences.
Builder Assessment
Principles Analysis
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Canada should aim to be the world's most prosperous country.
Aims to enhance public safety but has no clear, direct impact on national prosperity.
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Promote economic freedom, ambition, and breaking from bureaucratic inertia (reduce red tape).
Creates a broad new speech offence that may chill expression and impose legal risk on media and digital platforms, increasing compliance burdens rather than reducing them.
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Drive national productivity and global competitiveness, including removing interprovincial trade barriers and improving labour mobility (one country, one market).
Security can support a stable environment, but the bill's primary effect on productivity or competitiveness is indirect and unclear.
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Grow exports of Canadian products and resources, and move up the value chain by processing resources domestically rather than exporting them raw.
No material connection to export growth.
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Encourage investment, innovation, and resource development.
Potential chilling effects on online services and media are speculative; the bill does not directly address investment or innovation.
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Deliver better public services at lower cost (government efficiency).
Adds investigative and prosecutorial complexity, expands wiretap eligibility, and mandates consecutive sentencing, likely increasing costs without clear efficiency gains.
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Reform taxes to incentivize work, risk-taking, and innovation.
No tax measures are affected.
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Focus on large-scale prosperity, not incrementalism.
Targets criminal speech related to terrorism rather than large-scale economic outcomes.
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Email [email protected]
PartyMember of Parliament
StatusOutside the Order of Precedence
Last updatedN/A
TopicsCriminal Justice, National Security
Parliament45