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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

Abstain

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.

✗

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.

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.

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.

✗

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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C-257

PartyMember of Parliament
StatusOutside the Order of Precedence
Last updatedN/A
TopicsCriminal Justice, National Security
Parliament45