Full Comment - Canada waited too long to rein in dangerous Big Tech platforms

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00:00:30.000 If there's one thing that the Kearney government is focused on above and beyond, well, expanding trade internationally and building out Canada's economy, it seems to be regulating the Internet.

00:00:44.040 Hello, I'm Brian Lilly and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast.

00:00:46.960 This week, we take a look at Bill C-34.

00:00:49.880 Its full name is An Act to Enact, the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act.

00:00:56.500 Its, well, short-form name would be the Social Media Act.

00:01:00.920 But it's a lot more than just online harms and social media for kids, putting in a ban for those under 16.

00:01:07.880 What is this act all about, and are there concerns about it?

00:01:12.500 Joining us to talk about this is Emily Laidlaw.

00:01:15.160 She is the Canada Research Chair and Cybersecurity Law Professor at the University of Calgary.

00:01:20.280 Thanks for joining us, Ms. Laidlaw.

00:01:22.100 Yeah, thank you for having me.

00:01:23.780 So let me ask you about this first off.

00:01:26.160 there have been several attempts at putting forward this type of legislation. I won't use

00:01:31.800 the legislative numbers, but it started with Stephen Guibault when he was heritage minister

00:01:35.700 back in, I think, 2019. Then there were, or perhaps a little bit later, and then Arif

00:01:41.860 Farhani when he was justice minister in 2024. Now Sean Fraser is justice minister. Why did it take

00:01:48.760 so long to get to this point? And what were the issues with the previous versions? Because there

00:01:54.020 was a lot of pushback, even among those who may have supported the Liberal Party or may have

00:01:58.220 supported certain aspects. I know that I wrote about the first one saying that, well, look,

00:02:04.680 there is a good part to this bill and a bad part to this bill. Why did it take so long to get to

00:02:10.680 this point? Yeah, I would say that Canada is behind on digital policymaking. To give you an

00:02:19.500 idea. The EU passed its first law on kind of this platform regulation back in 2000, and it's on its

00:02:26.440 second version. And we still haven't. Sorry, did you say 2000? Yes, 2000. That's 26 years ago.

00:02:35.240 I know. I know. And so and I lived in the UK for about 10 years pre-Brexit. And so I was quite

00:02:43.220 surprised to come back to Canada and to find how far behind Canada really was. And so you mentioned

00:02:49.460 at the beginning that there seems to be this push by the liberal government to pass digital

00:02:55.020 bills. And I would say, you know, it's been a long time coming. It doesn't mean that any law will do.

00:03:00.840 I think that we really have to dig into that. But the need to look at this space is particularly

00:03:05.200 urgent. The government first introduced a paper with their proposal in 2021, and it was widely

00:03:11.780 criticized, including by me. And that was because it was really focused on regulating content online

00:03:19.040 and pushing for 24-hour takedowns.

00:03:21.740 It was modeled on a German law at that time called NetzDG,

00:03:25.700 but then an election happened.

00:03:27.580 And to their credit, they did take the feedback

00:03:31.260 and they started anew

00:03:33.200 and they started a process of wide consultation.

00:03:36.740 So I would say in contrast to some of the other digital bills

00:03:42.020 that have been introduced,

00:03:43.160 this particular one has been consulted extensively.

00:03:47.400 I co-chaired the expert group to the government. There were citizens' assemblies, youth assemblies,

00:03:53.900 consultations across Canada that culminated in Bill C-63. But as you mentioned, there was a lot

00:04:00.420 of controversy about that bill. 90% of the bill was about this online harms of regulating social

00:04:07.980 media platforms. Most of that was not controversial. So the big pushback was the fact that they decided

00:04:15.180 to make an omnibus bill and tack on amendments to the criminal code, reintroducing the Human

00:04:21.360 Rights Act. And that is where most of the controversy was. And of course, Parliament

00:04:26.740 was prorogued in January 2025, and that bill died. So this is kind of the second bill, Bill C-34.

00:04:34.620 It is the third effort, and it is unlike the predecessor, it just reintroduces platform

00:04:43.420 regulation. So there's no attempt as previously you mentioned the Canadian Human Rights Act

00:04:50.320 and a long time ago many of us fought a provision that was in there that allowed you know we

00:04:59.080 basically said it was the hurt feelings regulation that someone could complain to the Canadian Human

00:05:04.620 Rights Commission and get a judgment a financial judgment against someone because they felt that

00:05:11.420 they'd said something that was harmful to their feelings. Not wrong. Mark Stein famously went 0.97

00:05:19.000 through all of that. There was a big push that was gotten rid of. There was an attempt to bring

00:05:22.780 that back in the previous version, wasn't there? There was an attempt to bring it back and to keep

00:05:27.320 it more focused, though. So some of the provisions in it were really tailored to trying to limit

00:05:33.800 the kind of frivolous and vexatious complaints that you're speaking to.

00:05:42.180 But there wasn't popular support for it.

00:05:45.760 And I find that I'm in rooms where it's really mixed.

00:05:48.820 And I also teach an anti-hate course at the University of Ottawa

00:05:53.400 where we study this and the students are really mixed.

00:05:55.800 We dig into freedom of expression law.

00:05:58.600 And so that one is just, I see no indications of that being reintroduced by the government.

00:06:03.800 I still laugh at one of the reasons that Mark Stein was, for his piece in McLean's, was cited as pushing hate was he made a joke about Islam.

00:06:15.280 He said, is it just me or does Ramadan seem to come around earlier and earlier every year?

00:06:20.140 Well, that only is funny if you know anything about Islam. 1.00

00:06:23.920 And Ramadan comes around about every 11 and a half months.

00:06:26.800 So, yes, it comes around earlier every year because it's not a 12-month holiday.

00:06:32.220 It moves.

00:06:33.460 And that was used back 20-odd years ago to say, well, you're promoting hatred.

00:06:38.620 I'm glad that they're not going that way.

00:06:40.760 But do you feel that in the current situation, have they struck the right note or are they going too far?

00:06:49.200 And I'll use one of your expressions that I love.

00:06:53.180 Are they still protecting lawful but awful expression?

00:06:58.420 Yeah, and that is the big question is the lawful but awful, right?

00:07:01.300 So I will say this. And if you'll indulge me, maybe I'll explain how the law works a little bit. The new law strikes the right balance. Let me put aside the social media ban, because I think we have to have a separate conversation about that.

00:07:17.300 The gold standard now is this idea that these enormous, incredibly influential businesses, these big tech companies, should have consumer protection responsibilities and that they should be mitigating the risks of harm, right?

00:07:35.480 That essentially there is a business model here that can cause harm and they should be regulated.

00:07:41.140 At the moment, there is very little regulation of what they do.

00:07:44.760 So in a way, this is what kinds of harms, though.

00:07:48.940 So there's two types of harms that I think are a real focus.

00:07:53.200 One is the business model itself.

00:07:55.380 So these social media is essentially designed to be like the sticky design features, right?

00:08:01.600 If you're looking at the algorithms that are pushing certain repetitive content, we're seeing with kids pushing of self-harm content, pushing of eating disorder content and sticky design features.

00:08:14.740 that keep people on those spaces.

00:08:17.920 I mean, we talk about dopamine hits, right?

00:08:20.680 It's rewards, it's gaming,

00:08:22.600 it's encouragement of things like chat streaks,

00:08:26.960 all these design features that are to keep you there.

00:08:30.840 They're a business.

00:08:31.580 They're there to make money, right?

00:08:32.820 They're going to design it that way.

00:08:34.720 And so if I can speak to that for just a moment,

00:08:37.860 I've been on social media since Facebook started,

00:08:40.680 since Twitter started.

00:08:41.660 As a journalist, I use it to send out my material.

00:08:46.140 And as the algorithms change, and they change on a regular basis, multiple times a year, there will be shifts.

00:08:52.540 You know, I can see that my content, people are clicking on it less.

00:08:56.560 Now, on Facebook, they can't click through on anything related to, say, my columns at the Toronto Sun.

00:09:02.140 But on X or elsewhere, it will go up and down because they don't want you to click through to a link.

00:09:08.560 They want you to stay there.

00:09:09.800 And so they feed you material that will keep you on their platform. That's what you mean when you're talking about the sticky content. Now, I want people to go to my material on my website. They want to keep you there. And so they're going to feed you things that will give you that dopamine hit.

00:09:25.980 It's the dopamine hit, but it's also likes and angry emotions and putting in little rewards that if you keep using something, you might achieve a certain level and get some sort of gift, right?

00:09:44.440 And there's a lot of gaming involved, particularly for kids.

00:09:49.600 And so it's how they design these spaces.

00:09:52.600 It's basically this is the business that they're in.

00:09:54.720 This is how they keep people using their products so that they make money. That's fine. It's just it's a consumer protection question about is leaving it to the companies to make decisions about how to craft that protecting consumers or does that need there need to be legal intervention to to put in place certain base business standards.

00:10:15.540 And that is what this type of law, at least on a whole, targets.

00:10:20.440 The other thing is that there's some extraordinary harm that we've seen that's flown from them.

00:10:25.760 And this act targets social media and chatbots.

00:10:28.500 So we can talk about chatbots in a bit.

00:10:30.720 But it is this.

00:10:32.120 And let me talk about kids, although it's not just about kids.

00:10:36.580 What we're seeing is that increasingly as kids are using these spaces,

00:10:41.260 We're seeing a huge increase in exposure to essentially strangers that are exploiting these spaces for criminal ends, whether it's grooming and luring kids and then threatening them and sextorting them.

00:10:57.880 And oftentimes they're connecting with them in real life.

00:11:00.480 We have some horrific instances where, you know, a kid was lured through Spotify and then kidnapped.

00:11:06.380 We are seeing extremism play out in these spaces.

00:11:09.340 For example, they'll often befriend these children and then they'll get them to do certain things and then they'll threaten them with it. And they become basically drawn into an organized crime racket that is for extremism purposes.

00:11:24.500 And this is real, and this is happening on the front end. And we are seeing a huge proliferation of child sexual abuse images, intimate image abuse of children and adults. Well, the adults for the intimate images. And now the creation of AI-generated synthetic images. So there's a lot going on there, right?

00:11:44.840 At the moment, most of the laws focus rightfully on the wrongdoer. Of course, you can't find them half the time. And you're also looking at quick ways that the spaces and the platforms that are these gatekeepers in the middle should maybe have business obligations to try to handle these particular harms.

00:12:03.800 And that's what the legislation is aimed at. Of course, the lawful but awful that you mentioned, that is that key in-between space, which is when are platforms overreaching and being forced to overregulate sort of the day-to-day conversations that might be offensive, that might be hateful, but don't rise to the level of being something that would be criminal or otherwise unlawful.

00:12:31.740 I will say that the legislation intentionally does not, for the most part, target that, and we can dig into some of that if you want.

00:12:41.560 So, look, we've heard about incidents of young people, kids, harming themselves for many years.

00:12:49.920 I think back to the Amanda Todd case, and that has to be 15 years ago, maybe?

00:12:57.960 Yeah, 2013.

00:12:58.960 2013.

00:12:59.680 2013.

00:13:00.720 Okay, so about 13 years ago then.

00:13:03.900 But how common is this?

00:13:06.520 Because, you know, you have to wonder, okay, what is the, are we attacking a small problem with a sledgehammer?

00:13:18.020 Are we in a moral panic over something that is rarely happening?

00:13:23.000 And, you know, look, I've dealt with this with the issue of human trafficking.

00:13:30.420 For years, I've talked about this issue and people have told me it's not real.

00:13:34.720 It's not happening.

00:13:35.880 My own media colleagues have said it's not real.

00:13:38.260 And yet I'm talking to police officers.

00:13:40.260 I'm talking to social agencies that deal with it.

00:13:42.880 And it is happening in large numbers.

00:13:44.740 So is what you're talking about, the negative harms, the children being groomed, whether sexually or for organized crime,

00:13:53.000 Is that a common thing? I'm not saying like one out of three kids or anything like that, but is it a very small group or is it bigger than most of us can imagine?

00:14:06.180 It is. I mean, it's that's a hard question to answer. I would say like all crimes, you know, most people don't murder, but it's still a crime. Right.

00:14:15.640 So it is not happening to most kids, but it is happening to more than we think. And I think that there's a tendency to view it as, and I have these conversations all the time, which is, oh, but my kids are fine. They're okay. They're not into anything problematic.

00:14:32.740 And I think all kids are at risk. Some are more at risk. I think marginalized youth in particular are more at risk to this kind of extortion. But the number of stories about kids who are not marginalized that have faced this situation, I think the question we have to ask is a bit different.

00:14:53.520 And it is, is this a whole of society problem? And should there be certain safety measures? And safety measures don't mean always content removal, right? So it might be, hey, your kid is on this space and maybe if you figure out who the kids are, you shouldn't allow them to live stream or have private chats because we know that some of those private chats are where this grooming takes place.

00:15:20.860 Or it might be things like we should have more curated algorithms so it's safer for children.

00:15:27.560 What does the legislation do to deal with this, though?

00:15:31.300 I mean, we'll talk about the social media ban in a moment.

00:15:34.640 But beyond that, you know, kids are going to end up or they'll be 15 one day and 16 the next and then they can go on.

00:15:42.360 And so what does the legislation do to change algorithms or to alter what people can see without blocking me from being able to see the content that I want that is lawful and hopefully not awful?

00:15:59.800 Yeah, precisely.

00:16:00.440 And so this type of legislation, I say it's this type because we're seeing something similar in, for example, Europe, which is it takes a scalpel approach and it creates it's you create a regulator that's acting in the public interest.

00:16:17.000 And the regulator in the case of Canada would only have the power to order content removal when it's child sexual abuse and intimate images.

00:16:24.540 So stuff that we'd all agree should be taken down.

00:16:27.740 And for the rest of it, for things like fomenting hatred, inciting terrorism and all the child protection areas, companies need to put in place risk mitigation measures and they need to be transparent about it.

00:16:42.280 It basically is you need to lift the lid on the business model of these companies.

00:16:46.520 And it's not about individual pieces of content.

00:16:49.220 It is about what safety measures do you put in place?

00:16:52.420 What are your content moderation practices?

00:16:54.780 How do you handle complaints?

00:16:59.160 How often are you reporting to law enforcement?

00:17:02.020 And what does that look like?

00:17:03.180 What are your practices there?

00:17:04.920 So it's a series of safety steps that are sort of the packaging that is the foundation of safety.

00:17:11.640 more so than individual pieces of content.

00:17:14.360 And they have to be transparent about it to the regulator.

00:17:17.780 And if there is a basis to investigate basically a systemic failure by the company,

00:17:23.600 the regulator could investigate that company.

00:17:27.240 The social media ban.

00:17:30.520 Is that going to work?

00:17:33.140 Kids are devious little creatures.

00:17:36.580 you know some people might you know be taken aback at me saying that but if you've had kids you know

00:17:43.180 that if they really want something they're going to figure out how to try and get it you may you

00:17:50.200 know give them wise counsel as to why it's not good or what have you but you know Australia's

00:17:56.140 banned social media and I know some people say it's been a great success other analyses say no

00:18:03.320 it's actually not working, and most kids are still on social media. So is the social media ban

00:18:09.440 an effective tool or window dressing for the government? Because people are concerned. You

00:18:16.680 know, one of my own colleagues says, look, I have a hard time keeping my kids off social media

00:18:21.880 because, well, every other kid is on it. But if the government says you can't do it, then I can say,

00:18:27.700 okay, you know, the government's my backup.

00:18:30.520 I can see both arguments.

00:18:33.300 What, you know, what's the reality, though?

00:18:35.320 Will a social media ban be effective

00:18:38.040 if Australia's hasn't, according to some?

00:18:42.300 Yeah, and the Australia ban, it's early days.

00:18:44.340 It's been in effect for six months.

00:18:46.500 I think most of the data is showing that,

00:18:48.740 I mean, a study came out yesterday

00:18:50.140 saying over 80% of kids are still using social media.

00:18:54.360 So we don't know necessarily why that is.

00:18:59.960 So I think we still need time to assess it.

00:19:02.340 It could be that the companies are aggressively mediocre in their compliance.

00:19:07.020 And so it indicates it's not working very well.

00:19:10.240 But I think that the other is it's not age-gating the entire Internet.

00:19:13.720 It's saying you can't register accounts with large platforms.

00:19:16.060 Well, what's that going to do?

00:19:17.340 that's going to incentivize kids to go to smaller platforms that are maybe less regulated and even

00:19:23.020 more dangerous. So I would say social media bans as a tool, they are not the thing that are going

00:19:30.820 to keep kids safe. What's going to keep them safe is requiring companies to put in place

00:19:36.600 safety standards, consumer protection standards, and holding them accountable.

00:19:43.060 The complication with social media bans would be that it's pretty popular.

00:19:51.020 So as a policy measure, there's a lot of support for it.

00:19:56.680 The other is I think long term, it could create a false sense of safety.

00:20:02.740 That's my worry.

00:20:03.720 That is a false sense that you ban it.

00:20:06.080 That means that once they're onto these sites, they're automatically safe and that's not necessarily the case or that they work. And so your kids are kept safe. But we know kids are devious. They get around it. I got my hands on all, you know, alcohol before I was vagued. Like we many did.

00:20:22.880 I know no that never happens yes this is our confession podcast and so I so my worry with

00:20:32.480 the ban is that it's going to create a false sense of safety what it could do though is precisely

00:20:38.340 what your friend mentioned which is it becomes it prompts a culture shift so not necessarily

00:20:44.240 the kids that already have accounts now are going to try to get around it but like the seven-year-olds

00:20:48.340 and the eight-year-olds where it's just not accepted culturally to use social media until

00:20:53.600 you're 16. Let me add a wrinkle to this. Canada's proposal is a middle path. It doesn't actually

00:20:59.840 propose a ban. What they're proposing is what I would call a pause, which is it's very in-between

00:21:07.740 an approach. It says if you're a large social media provider, you're one of the ones we regulate,

00:21:13.460 you don't get to access the market that is children

00:21:16.900 until you prove to us that you have safety standards in place.

00:21:21.700 And if you want to apply for an exemption, you can.

00:21:25.320 And if you prove that you're safe,

00:21:27.100 we will allow you to be available to children under 16.

00:21:32.000 Most TikToks and Instagrams of the world

00:21:35.060 say you have to be 13 to use their sites anyway.

00:21:39.340 So, I mean, telling them to enforce their own terms and conditions, I have no issue with.

00:21:44.060 So we're really talking about 13 to 15-year-olds here.

00:21:47.160 So in a way, we have to look at it and say, okay, is this actually a way to hold the companies accountable?

00:21:53.440 To say, no, no, no, prove you're safe.

00:21:55.840 Then you can access that market.

00:21:59.680 How much of this is parental responsibility?

00:22:03.880 Yeah, parental responsibility is always going to be a key part of this.

00:22:07.040 I mean, we see that with the ban, because if they allow their kids to use their accounts or help them, you know, circumvent it, that's an issue.

00:22:14.740 At this stage, though, social media and just big tech in general, this is so far beyond parents.

00:22:21.680 This is a whole of society problem.

00:22:24.040 This is a massive corporate industry that hasn't really had that much regulation.

00:22:32.120 And so this is a way to address that and fill that gap.

00:22:37.800 There's always an important role to play for parents.

00:22:40.680 But I do receive that response sometimes saying, oh, parents should just do a better job at parenting and be involved.

00:22:47.840 And it's like there's nothing that they could do, though, to keep their kids safe and make these better spaces for their children beyond a few key steps.

00:22:59.620 And that's not even going to go far enough.

00:23:01.260 and well we need to take a break but when we come back i will ask you you know do we as adults even

00:23:09.180 know the platforms that the kids are on because you know we're talking about facebook well kids

00:23:15.440 aren't on facebook we're talking about instagram facebook is for the olds um instagram is for the

00:23:21.080 middles you know i mean in probably a lot of them are looking at tiktok and saying oh that's for old

00:23:27.400 people. Now, there are so many different platforms that I think people just don't realize. So we'll

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00:25:48.740 Emily, you probably know a lot more about these platforms than I do

00:25:51.940 because this is what you study.

00:25:54.100 I know about the platforms that I'm on due to my work

00:25:58.900 and I may not be on any of them if it wasn't for my work,

00:26:01.860 but Facebook, LinkedIn, X, TikTok for a bit.

00:26:09.480 I checked out Snapchat, didn't see a use for it for my business,

00:26:12.480 So I'm not on Snapchat, but even that is different than it was 10.

00:26:17.320 It's 10 years old now.

00:26:18.520 So the kids are onto something new.

00:26:19.980 You've got Roblox, you've got Discord, you've got all these places that people congregate.

00:26:26.240 Are we even focusing on all of the different platforms?

00:26:30.820 Do we understand, do the adults in the room that are saying, hold on, we got to, we got

00:26:35.960 to figure this out.

00:26:37.120 Do they even fully understand all the different platforms?

00:26:40.440 because it seems like, not to sound like an old school guy talking about kids in their rock and

00:26:45.920 roll orchestras, but it's like we can't even keep up with all the different platforms.

00:26:53.160 Well, no, we can't. And I work in this area and I'm constantly learning about new platforms that

00:26:58.640 I didn't know about. And I think that that's one of the challenges. And so let me frame it

00:27:03.740 a different way, which is how do you write laws about this then? Our expert group constantly

00:27:10.300 had conversations about how do you keep this practical? How do you build out a regulator

00:27:15.540 that's just appropriate, but doesn't take on the world? How do you write a law that's flexible for

00:27:21.960 the future and the evolving threat landscape? I mean, when we first all met in 2022, we were

00:27:27.300 having zero conversations about chatbots. And now that's a major source of tech facilitated harm,

00:27:34.800 Right. So one of the things that you have to do is figure out who you're you're aiming at.

00:27:41.920 The legislation targets large platforms.

00:27:46.180 So a lot of these smaller, newer ones that are coming up that kids might get on would not be regulated by this, except if the government designated them or the regulator, at least, as of a significant risk of harm.

00:28:01.720 The two that I just mentioned, Roblox and Discord.

00:28:04.300 I mean, my kids who are now grown and young adults, I mean, they're on Discord playing games.

00:28:10.680 You hear about Discord showing up occasionally in criminal investigations.

00:28:14.000 I would hope something like that might be included in the legislation.

00:28:17.840 Roblox.

00:28:18.460 God, they're not.

00:28:20.180 They're not.

00:28:21.500 Yes.

00:28:23.280 So when I see my nephews or my niece, this is where they are at.

00:28:30.100 And they're young.

00:28:30.920 And they're, you know, we might just view it as playing games and yet they're talking to their friends on it.

00:28:38.840 It becomes a social media channel.

00:28:41.980 Yes.

00:28:42.560 And so there's a few ways to think about this.

00:28:44.860 If you're trying to be practical and you are standing up a new regulator, you've got to keep it narrow.

00:28:50.780 And so in that spirit, they really kept focused on large platforms and ones where you can communicate to the world at large.

00:28:58.440 Like you get on Instagram, you get on X, and it's capable of communicating to the world at large.

00:29:03.960 If it's not capable of that, all Discord servers have a max, they have a cap.

00:29:11.140 Roblox, you're not talking to the world at large, it's a game, and games are excluded in this.

00:29:17.140 Private messaging like Snapchat, the private messages back and forth, all of that is currently excluded.

00:29:23.880 The way that they dealt with that was to create a category called online services.

00:29:28.480 And basically, in the future, you could add different types of technology as the regulator's ready, as you see that there's a significant risk in those areas.

00:29:39.920 And that they, you know, when it comes to kids, the governor and council could add it.

00:29:43.940 So it wouldn't be going through parliament and debated.

00:29:46.480 I give you all this detail because choices have to be made.

00:29:49.740 I look at it and I think some were very disappointed and I wanted to see gaming added to that space. Criticisms are, though, you don't want to include all gaming. Not all games are a threat. We're really talking about things like Roblox. I would like to have seen something like Discord included. But how do you figure out the caps on something like that?

00:30:10.060 So these are choices and they're hard ones.

00:30:13.840 And I think that people should have strong views and express them about what the government should be doing with these decisions that they made.

00:30:22.120 The ability to communicate in games is far and above what it was for my kids when they were young and playing on Club Penguin, which, by the way, great Canadian company that got sold and then got shut down.

00:30:32.500 But it was a fun game while it lasted.

00:30:35.400 And so I'm surprised that they didn't go in that way.

00:30:38.000 But there are critics, such as the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, I want to read off to you part of what they preambled with their petition asking the government to stop Bill C-34, which hasn't passed.

00:30:53.820 There's a whole bunch of bills that did pass at the last minute.

00:30:56.460 Many of them relate to online issues.

00:30:59.820 Bill C-34, not one of them, still at first reading.

00:31:02.180 But the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms has a petition that reads,

00:31:06.580 Bill C-34 will violate the privacy of all Canadians, undermine parental authority,

00:31:12.860 damage freedom of expression, and access to information,

00:31:17.040 and grant the federal cabinet broad authority to regulate the internet in the future.

00:31:22.320 While Bill C-34 has noble aims, such as protecting children from online harms,

00:31:27.740 this legislation threatens the civil liberties of all Canadians.

00:31:31.280 So if you were sitting across from John Carpe or the folks from the JCCF, what would you say in response to them?

00:31:42.320 So I will say, I mean, and I come at this as someone who's been a free expressionist scholar for a long time.

00:31:49.000 I think that they're wrong.

00:31:50.980 I think that there are some important questions that they're asking, though.

00:31:54.660 The setup of the regulator itself and the appointment of the commissioner is pretty typical for a regulator. It's the same as the Competition Bureau, for example. So the CRTC is the same. So it is independent. If we want to push for something even more independent from government, yeah, absolutely. That should be something that's advocated for.

00:32:18.600 I don't see how it undermines parents rather than reinforcing it.

00:32:23.980 And I know that that's an argument that has been made that we should just leave this to parents and it's undermining parental choice.

00:32:31.020 One avenue for something like the ban is to say parents should be able to provide permission for the kids to be able to use these spaces.

00:32:40.680 So that is one option.

00:32:41.620 I will say most feedback from parents had been, dear God, no, don't like ban it, but then put it on me that I'm still the one having to navigate.

00:32:49.980 Don't make me the heavy.

00:32:51.980 Don't make me have to deal with this some more.

00:32:55.980 Also, if you actually read carefully the legislation, it provides a lot of user empowerment tools.

00:33:01.420 It's more about providing tools to be able to block users.

00:33:05.980 And so it's actually trying to help them navigate this space.

00:33:09.940 It isn't a lot about content regulation as much as one would think, right?

00:33:16.380 Although I think we should have important conversations like should they have taken on hate?

00:33:20.480 I absolutely think that they should.

00:33:22.560 There's always the devil in the details about, you know, how you look at the gray areas of offensive expression that isn't actually illegal.

00:33:32.320 They have raised the point about privacy, though.

00:33:34.460 And let's talk about that, because for social media bans to work, they need to use age verification. And that's the privacy argument, that it forces social media platforms to put in place some mechanism to figure out who the kids are so that they can then ban them, or including age verify them to ensure they're not accessing pornographic material.

00:33:59.320 So there are really important privacy and cybersecurity questions about age assurance. The bill itself doesn't specify the method of age assurance, but it does require that the companies put in place best practices that protect privacy and cybersecurity.

00:34:19.160 I think many of the arguments out there see all age verification as just a non-starter. It's an automatic privacy invasion and it's no-go zone. I don't agree. I think that there's a lot of developments with age assurance. I think there's a risk. So the risk is that a company puts in place sloppy solutions, collects our IDs, knows who everyone is. It makes it vulnerable to hacking. We've already seen that hacking happen.

00:34:44.900 but in practice there's a lot more trade-offs here there are a lot of choices how would you do

00:34:51.640 age verification though um yeah so i mean so that if you're whether it's saying kids under 16 can't

00:34:59.100 go uh on instagram or we need age verification for a pornography site i mean do you have to

00:35:07.020 scan your driver's license if you're under 16 you don't have one do you have to scan your id

00:35:12.680 in to visit these sites?

00:35:14.840 And if so, yeah, that would be a privacy concern.

00:35:18.560 I mean, where does that data go?

00:35:20.120 And is it vulnerable to hackers?

00:35:25.360 I mean, so you're not required to implement collection of ID.

00:35:32.120 That is one method.

00:35:33.400 It's the clearest method to actually verify who someone is.

00:35:38.100 The question is what a company does with it.

00:35:40.340 So do they keep that data?

00:35:42.680 they shouldn't be keeping that data once they have verified who somebody is.

00:35:46.740 And so that's what makes it vulnerable to hacking.

00:35:48.620 Now, I'm not saying I'm for that approach or for all forms of age verification.

00:35:52.560 But I mean, C22 might require them to keep some of that.

00:35:57.260 Yes.

00:35:58.100 That's something I hadn't thought of until now.

00:36:01.480 Well, and that's a really good question.

00:36:03.640 I actually don't know the answer to that one because I haven't thought through the connections between Bill C22 and these companies.

00:36:11.980 I would say that for the most part, that wouldn't be required because the act itself actually requires data minimization and best practices developed through the privacy commissioner.

00:36:21.360 I'd also say around the world, they're pushing for age-appropriate design for kids.

00:36:27.460 Well, to do that, you need to know who kids are.

00:36:29.560 So the money question in the next five years is figuring out who kids are.

00:36:33.240 But let me give you examples of other ways that age assurance works.

00:36:37.140 I've had a Facebook account since 2007, so I'm over 16.

00:36:42.520 They might look at your Gmail account and be like, oh, you've had that for 20-odd years.

00:36:46.720 Okay, so you're definitely over 16.

00:36:49.280 Now, the less reliable measures are kind of age-estimating, where they look at the faces of the kids and the behaviors of the kids, and they're like, I guess that you're 12.

00:37:02.080 because you look 12, you've just announced that you graduated elementary school and you're like

00:37:07.460 TikTok video, fairly certain you're not supposed to be on here. That's less reliable. And so

00:37:13.200 Australia's implemented a waterfall approach to say there's different tiers and you have to think

00:37:19.260 of them as kind of different reliability and different privacy risks. So it is not automatic

00:37:27.720 that this is a privacy invasion.

00:37:30.060 It's about doing it the right way.

00:37:33.740 We don't want to age gate the entire internet,

00:37:36.820 but if we're ever going to talk about

00:37:38.880 an age-appropriate space for kids

00:37:41.060 without cleansing the whole internet for all adults,

00:37:44.580 we're going to have to start thinking about

00:37:46.260 figuring out who those kids are.

00:37:47.680 And a lot of people are working on trying to do this

00:37:49.700 in a privacy and cyber-score way.

00:37:52.000 Yeah, and just the collection of data

00:37:56.200 is so far advanced from where it was years ago.

00:37:59.280 And I remember trying to set up my kids with emails

00:38:03.040 so they could, they wanted to be able to send emails

00:38:05.840 to grandma and grandpa and to their cousins

00:38:08.020 when they were little.

00:38:09.320 And this tells you how long ago it was

00:38:11.140 because we were trying to set it up on Yahoo

00:38:12.900 and they wouldn't let kids have it back then.

00:38:15.980 But Yahoo, of course, wasn't set up

00:38:18.360 on the social media algorithm

00:38:19.900 of trying to keep you there with sticky content

00:38:22.400 and trying to feed you in a loop.

00:38:24.880 It was a very different internet back then.

00:38:27.640 I honestly don't know what the answer is there.

00:38:31.100 Let me read to you.

00:38:31.900 So I read to you what the JCCF said from the right.

00:38:35.400 Now, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association from the left is also critical of this bill.

00:38:41.080 And Howard Sapers writes,

00:38:43.260 Bill C-34 introduces obligations which are so alarmingly broad that providers of regulated services will be tempted to overcomply at the expense of users' freedom of expression and privacy rights.

00:38:58.600 I can see that happening where companies just say, well, I don't know.

00:39:06.200 So let's just err on the side of caution and we're going to take this approach.

00:39:09.820 Is that a real concern?

00:39:11.320 Yeah, it's always been a concern in this space. And I'll say that law I mentioned from Europe back in 2000, their initial approach, and it is still law in Europe, is that these platforms have to, if they're notified that they're hosting any illegal content, they have to take it down or they risk liability.

00:39:30.400 And so that incentivizes companies to err on the side of caution and just start taking down anything, right? That looks vaguely illegal. That isn't the approach taken in this legislation, but I take heart what is being said about the free expression point.

00:39:47.520 So the law says that it leaves a lot to the regulator, and that's been criticized, right? I think it's the only way this is really going to work, but the commission, the Digital Safety Commission, will develop regulations and guidelines.

00:40:03.880 They are required when they develop those to do so, taking into account freedom of expression and privacy. So when they detail how companies go about compliance, they set out that they should be ways to balance out to ensure freedom of expression is met.

00:40:21.740 One thing that can be strengthened in this law, and I have pushed for this for a while, was that the company should have obligations to part of their digital safety plans should be reporting on how they're respecting fundamental rights. This is part of the European law. I think it could be part of the Canadian law.

00:40:41.300 So the regulator will be required to enforce it on the companies. The companies up front aren't necessarily required to take that into account. Throughout the legislation, there are comments saying you are not in any way required to disproportionately impact freedom of expression and how you comply with this.

00:41:01.600 that that might be viewed as too woolly. I think that it likely is the only approach that then

00:41:08.840 kicks it to a regulator to detail. But you also have to have faith in the regulator to do so.

00:41:16.240 And I think that will depend on who is appointed. I was going to say my my mileage when it comes to

00:41:22.180 regulators does vary. And if you get someone who is overzealous, well, then.

00:41:28.480 you know, it could head in the wrong direction. This is just such an area where you've got to

00:41:41.820 tiptoe really. And you mentioned you lived in Britain for a decade and they had laws going

00:41:48.760 back to 2000. You know, we've all seen the stories of people being arrested in Britain

00:41:55.380 for social media posts

00:41:59.040 that might fit your definition of lawful but awful.

00:42:03.620 Does anything in this legislation go down that road?

00:42:08.160 Because, I mean, the direction that the UK has taken,

00:42:12.840 and I'm not sure about other parts of Europe,

00:42:14.520 of policing Facebook posts or Instagram posts,

00:42:20.160 it's quite frightening.

00:42:21.300 Do we have anything in this bill or other bills that the government has put forward recently that approach that zone?

00:42:32.480 No, the law in Canada bears very little resemblance to the UK besides the kind of core idea that companies should be responsible.

00:42:42.980 So the UK law is much broader, and it takes on all kinds of illegal content, including some, I think, of the more controversial clauses about commenting on, I don't remember the exact phrasing, but there is a clause about immigration, for example, which has become a hot-button issue.

00:43:04.640 And UK law, even before the Online Safety Act, they had all kinds of laws that were for kind of the olden days where poison pen letters were written that were repurposed for the digital age that were used to essentially show up on someone's doorstep because of something that they posted on Facebook or X back in the day.

00:43:27.860 And there are many instances of that. So that tradition in the UK about what I would say is at times over regulation of expression, that isn't in this law. So the law is focused on seven categories of regulated content and is for the most part, they reflect content that is criminal or criminal adjacent.

00:43:50.680 I think where it departs is more for child protection or in the area of chatbots, kind of concerns about the companionship side of chatbots.

00:44:01.180 So none of those other features you saw in the UK would happen here.

00:44:05.360 And so if we take hate speech, which is one of, I think, the more challenging areas when you're talking about illegal versus lawful but awful content, there would be no obligation for this regulator or no power for the regulator to order content takedown. 0.56

00:44:21.760 What it allows is for the regulator to investigate a company if it becomes obvious that at a systemic level, they have not been handling content that fements hatred. So they can investigate companies for that. And I think they should. And I think some would be disappointed that there's no avenue to take down what might at times be very obvious criminal hate speech. But that is the way that the act is structured.

00:44:50.240 You mentioned chatbots, and there was a lot of discussion after the horrific incident in Tumblr Ridge, trying to lay blame on a specific chatbot, saying that, well, this is why the shooting happened.

00:45:04.680 again i have to say is this a moral panic because in that instance we know that the perpetrator in

00:45:14.240 that case had been in contact with police numerous times had been sent to a mental health institution

00:45:20.840 social services were involved and in the end the government appeared to be blaming

00:45:27.720 a chat bot in saying, well, they asked about this. Well, the person had clearly expressed

00:45:34.360 similar sentiments to live humans and we didn't act. And so are we looking to make

00:45:43.480 technology a scapegoat here? I'm not letting the AI company in question off the hook,

00:45:53.720 But there were an awful lot of people before the chatbot was engaged that could have stepped in and said, oh, hold on a minute.

00:46:00.700 We've got something bad happening here.

00:46:03.640 Yeah, and it's a great question.

00:46:04.900 And I would say I think of it as different entities have different types of responsibilities.

00:46:12.240 So what do we know?

00:46:13.580 We know that the perpetrator, she was posting concerning comments on on ChatGPT.

00:46:25.440 And so if we think anything is private about using ChatGPT, it's not because those concerns then were flagged up to their trust and safety team.

00:46:33.660 And based on their policy, they did not report it to law enforcement.

00:46:37.200 And so that is a question of should these companies report to law enforcement when they see concerns? I mean, they're allowed to. A lot of companies haven't placed policies about that. Was the threshold wrong?

00:46:52.260 Like, well, clearly we know now in retrospect, this was a real danger. And if they could go back, they would have reported to law enforcement. But I think you can have obligations on the company and also have a look at law enforcement's role that there were failures by different entities when how they handled this.

00:47:13.880 Let me give you a different example, though. So it's not just Tumblr Ridge. If we look at companion chatbots like character.ai, there was –

00:47:24.540 These are people looking for friends or romantic relationships or what have you.

00:47:29.680 Yeah, and I will say I've tried out character.ai on myself, right? I said I was 20 and I wanted to have a friend and wanted to flirt. And like suddenly you're getting pushed all these different sort of romantic exchanges.

00:47:44.920 But for a 14-year-old boy, which was this case, it was a pretty horrific result. And the problem with the companionship, it is becomes don't talk to your parents about that. I'm, you know, come meet me on the other side, essentially encouragement.

00:47:59.400 And some of the problems with general chatbots like ChatGPT have been how-to guides of how to take your life and, again, encouraging individuals to not seek help from family.

00:48:11.680 And so there is this interaction with the chatbot that is not a risk for most people, but is a risk in some instances.

00:48:20.640 And so this is that question of safety standards.

00:48:23.660 A lot of these companies are developing, you know, putting a lot of work into some of these safeguards, but not all of them. So the question you have to ask is, are we OK just leaving it to the companies to decide for themselves how to address this?

00:48:39.660 And I land on the side of no, because I have spent decades watching as they have implemented inconsistent safety measures and sometimes really lax commitment to trying to address this.

00:48:53.040 And sometimes they just get slapped around no matter what they do. Right. So I have some sympathy, too.

00:48:59.020 So I think that there needs to be some safety standards for and safety safeguards for AI chatbots.

00:49:04.980 What I'm really glad about is that they didn't ban them because there was discussion about that.

00:49:11.060 And I think you could perhaps consider companion bots, although I'm not for any ban for chatbots, but you absolutely could never have banned just access to general purpose AI like ChatGPT.

00:49:24.140 I'm glad that they're not trying to ban chatbots at all.

00:49:27.360 I don't use ChatGPT a bunch, but I use several others on a daily basis.

00:49:31.960 It's, you know, if you use it right, it can be a great tool for doing what you do in a day.

00:49:41.500 Let me ask you about this.

00:49:43.340 There have been several bills.

00:49:45.720 Bill C-34, the one that we're talking about, the, you know, I guess loosely it used to be called the Online Harms Act.

00:49:53.260 Now it's called, you know, I think this short title is the Safe Social Media Act.

00:49:58.400 You've got Bill C-36, which deals with data and privacy.

00:50:03.740 Bill C-9, to a degree, touches on social media posts in terms of, you know, hate speech and such.

00:50:13.880 You've had the Online Streaming Act.

00:50:16.900 There are so many different bills that this government has put forward or championed that touch on the Internet.

00:50:24.260 Are we in danger of over-regulating the Internet?

00:50:29.120 When you look at them cumulatively, are we headed in that direction?

00:50:34.800 I would say back in, when was this, 2018 or 19, the liberal government had published their digital charter, which wasn't really a charter.

00:50:46.840 It was just these are the things that we want to address.

00:50:48.900 And they didn't address all of those commitments, but it was a suite of reforms all about digital policy. I would say we 100% need to look at our laws to make changes to address the current issues that we're seeing.

00:51:11.020 I think it is a fair question to ask whether each individual law is achieving the objectives or is going to have unintended consequences.

00:51:24.120 And those are really important debates.

00:51:25.600 I mean, some easy ones to my mind would be things like, I think it was Bill C-16, and I think that just received royal assent a few days ago, which adds deepfakes to the criminal coprovision for intimate image abuse.

00:51:39.820 I think we can all agree on that.

00:51:42.240 Yeah, that's an easy one, right?

00:51:44.700 Far more controversial would be Bill C-22 and the questions about how long data should be retained, what kind of access should be provided for law enforcement.

00:51:57.880 Is this really requiring backdoor access or undermining encryption or is it not?

00:52:03.740 These are all really important debates, and I have been in rooms that seem to argue all kinds of different sides of that particular one. So I don't think that they're doing too much, but I think that each one needs to be interrogated closely, and then the determination is whether that individual piece of proposed legislation is just going too far or unnecessary.

00:52:27.340 I mean, you never want to introduce a law that you don't need. Bill C-34, we need this one. It is, I teach my students basically a course about non-law because we have very little in this space. But other areas, I mean, you could ask yourself, okay, do we need some of these amendments when it comes to hate speech? Is the criminal code good as is? Is there something missing? Does this have unintended consequences?

00:52:51.280 Emily Laidlaw, Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law at the University of Calgary.

00:52:58.220 Thanks so much for the time, Emily.

00:52:59.880 Yeah, thank you.

00:53:00.800 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:53:02.640 My name's Brian Lilly, your host.

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Full Comment - July 06, 2026

Canada waited too long to rein in dangerous Big Tech platforms

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