Amnesty International released a report on Monday detailing the increasing levels of online hate speech against women, visible minorities and the 2SLGBTQI+ community in Canada.
The report details the rise of xenophobia, misogyny and racism in Canada. It also explains how these factors interact to create a “virulent cocktail” of hatred online. According to the group, South Asian and Muslim diaspora communities have been particularly subject to inflammatory attacks and harmful narratives.
The report also points to the historical role of white racism in Canada. According to the group, this continues to manifest itself today in narratives spread by politicians and fraudsters on social media. One such example is the Instagram account 6ixBuzz, which has over 2.5 million followers criticized for spreading misinformation, Islamophobia and homophobia. The account is also said to have spread anti-Asian, anti-Sikh and anti-Indian prejudices. Amnesty International notes that these narratives place blame for the “economic failures of governments and the global neoliberal order” on minority communities rather than addressing government policies and decades of systemic underfunding of social programs in Canada.
Online hate crimes remain largely unregulated by the Canadian government. The suggested one Bill C-63 introduces tougher penalties for online hate speech (including up to life in prison). The bill, if enacted, will also appoint a digital security commissioner to manage a framework to combat online hate speech. However, this bill was criticized The term is too broad and unclear and therefore poses a significant risk of allowing politically motivated persecution.
Internationally, Canada is a signatory to both Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). These international treaties oblige the state to take decisive action against incitement to misogynistic or racist hate speech.
Amnesty International launched this Make it safe online campaign alongside the report, which aims to combat online hate speech and technology-enabled gender-based violence (TfGBV) through “messages of critical resistance, inclusion and hope”. They also launched a Canada-specific social media campaign to counter the increasing spread of “us versus them” narratives.
