Reports

The Justice Centre supports the goal of protecting children from online harms. Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, pursues that goal through measures that unjustifiably limit Charter rights and freedoms. An under-16 social media ban will force every Canadian to provide ID or age-verification or both, violating the privacy rights of millions of adults and displacing parental authority. Vague duties to mitigate “harmful content” and to regulate AI chatbots will incentivize over-censorship and undermine freedom of expression. A new Digital Safety Commission, exercising sweeping and largely undefined powers without meaningful accountability to Parliament, will create new rules, order content removal, and impose severe penalties. Parliament should reject Bill C-34 and instead focus on alternative measures to mitigate harms to children online, including better enforcement of existing Criminal Code provisions that already protect children and adults from online harms.