Feds Will Commit up to $1.9 Million in Funding to ‘Combat Online Terrorist’ Content

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks with the Canadian media at Canada House, in London on Sept. 18, 2022. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)

The federal government announced that it would be committing up to $1.9 million in funding to “combat online terrorist and violent extremist content,” according to an announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sept. 20.

“We need to confront the rise of hate and violent extremism,” said Trudeau in a tweet. “At the Christchurch Call Summit, I announced that Canada will fund a new tool that helps small and medium-size online platforms better identify and counter content related to terrorism and violent extremism.”

Trudeau made the announcement from New York City, where he is attending the United Nations General Assembly.

“With information so easy to access, the Government of Canada is committed to ensuring that social media and other online platforms are not used as tools to incite, publish, and promote terrorism, violence, and hatred,” read a Sept. 20 public safety department news release.

The funding is in response to New Zealand’s “Christchurch Call to Action,” which was a commitment made by a number of governments in 2019 “to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online” following the terrorist mosque attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The $1.9 million in funds will be committed over a three-year period to Tech Against Terrorism, an initiative launched by the United Nations Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate with a mandate “to tackle terrorist use of the internet whilst respecting human rights.”

The federal funding will go toward the second phase of the initiative’s “Terrorist Content Analytics Platform” (TCAP), which the government describes as “a secure online tool that automates the detection, notification, and analysis of verified terrorist content.”

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino called TCAP “real tools that can make the Internet a safer place for Canada, Canadians, and the world” and said that “extremist views and content do not belong anywhere online where they can influence others and incite violence,” according to his department’s news release.

The government says the development of TCAP’s second phase will allow it to monitor “a wider range of platforms” across which it will be able to “identify and assess more types of content.”

In turn, the government says TCAP’s development will “help develop a content moderation tool to assist smaller tech companies in quickly removing this terrorist content.”

Mendicino also said during an Aug. 29 press conference that the Liberal government is making progress on and will soon present its pending “online harms” legislation, which aims to regulate and censor any internet content deemed harmful or hateful.

He did not specify when exactly the Liberals aim to propose the new legislation nor how similar it would be to Bill C-36, the Liberals’ online harms legislation that lapsed when the last Parliament ended.

However, Mendicino said the bill will set “some clear boundaries on what is not acceptable“ and added, ”I think that includes hate speech, that includes criminal threats.”