Province says it will revisit public-harm bill if other online safety efforts don’t succeed.
The B.C. government announced late last month that it will put its Bill 12 public-harm legislation on hold, a decision that was applauded by a significant portion of the province’s business community.
“We’re happy that the attorney general and the premier decided to pause the bill. Hopefully, it doesn’t come back in the next legislature.… We want the bill to be completely repealed,” said Jairo Yunis, CFIB’s director of provincial affairs and Western economic policy. Contributors to a health-related wrong could include any goods or services that can be demonstrated to carry a risk of disease, illness or injury, and legal action would apply in instances where a defendant violated a duty or obligation to someone who may have been exposed to such as good or service.
“This bill allows to sue anyone for the present value of the total expenditure of government for health-care benefits, whenever they’ve done something that could reasonably be expected to result in the risk,” he said. “We understand the intention of the bill and what the government tries to do with protecting public health, and businesses are at the frontline of protecting public health both for their employees and consumers. But the broad scope and vague language of the bill raised a lot of alarm,” he said.
But Ferris said that, because of the nature of the bill, he doesn’t believe it can be redrafted in a way that doesn’t pose significant harm and risks to businesses.
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