Kesiah Beere and Paul Tuns:
On June 10, 2026, Liberal MP Marc Miller introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, in the House of Commons. The proposed bill seeks to protect children from online harm through preventative measures. “Regulated services,” which includes designated social media sites, AI chatbots, and other platforms, must adhere to new safety requirements and accountability measures that avert harm to children and those exploited online. Such measures can include age-verification to restrict individuals under 16 from accessing both social media and online services that could expose users to pornographic content. If passed, the bill will form a Digital Safety Commission “to enforce regulations, ensure compliance, make online services safer for children and support victims of online harms.”
Advocating for the bill, Miller said in a press release: “we have seen the very serious consequences that online harms can have…This legislation will introduce stronger responsibilities for online platforms to ensure their services are safe by design and include appropriate measures to keep children safe.”
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation whose Substack “After Babel” documents the role technology plays in the development of children and adolescents, says that smart phones and social media have seriously harmed children. Among the harms the New York University professor found were depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide. Haidt says the data proves that social media is responsible for these emotional and psychological issues because the design and content of social media affect self-esteem, destroy attention spans, and increase access to pornography, sextortion, and other harmful content.
Haidt has called on governments around the world to ban social media for those under 16.
Though Bill C-34 appears to aim at addressing legitimate concerns, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist highlighted numerous issues with C-34. Geist said that “a kitchen-sink approach” was used in crafting the Bill, making it “far more contentious” than it needed to be.
On his blog, Geist addresses the age restriction component. To ensure that minors under 16 are barred from social media platforms and other applicable services, operators are required to restrict access through age-verification measures. These procedures will require that all Canadians prove their age and disclose personal information to use the platform. However, the bill does not say how these measures should be implemented – requiring only that they be “effective.”
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms criticized the Bill in a news release, saying, “if the legislation passes, Canadians will be forced to surrender more of their personal information to the government or foreign social media companies in order to express their views, participate in public discourse, and access information about the world.”
While Bill C-34 does not apply the age restriction to AI chatbots, it does require any “regulated service” that could reasonably give users access to pornographic content implement age-verification measures. Since many chatbots have this capability, chatbot operators may ultimately have to enforce age-restrictions.
Furthermore, Geist explained the new rules that AI chatbot operators must adhere to, regulating how AI can respond to users. Administrators must program chatbots to immediately refer users to appropriate crisis intervention services upon any expression of suicidal ideation or self-harm. AI chatbots must also be prohibited from acting as a real human or a “licensed professional,” using manipulating language “to form or maintain an emotional attachment to the service,” or encouraging behaviour that could be harmful to the user or others.
Though those guidelines seem reasonable, said Geist, the chatbot rules apply to AI programs that are “capable of being used, by means of multiple interactions or sessions, to simulate a sustained human-like relationship with a user, including one that may resemble friendship, an intimate relationship or therapeutic support.” According to Geist, the “capability” component of the definition is problematic. He notes that “every general-purpose AI assistant with memory across sessions, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, would meet (the test)” – even those that are not intended for such a purpose.
The JCCF presented concerns over Canadians’ privacy in relation to new chatbot regulations, saying that “AI companies will be forced to monitor all Canadians’ private AI conversations and may increasingly report private, law-abiding conversations to police.”
Another concerning creation of the Safe Social Media Act is the new Digital Safety Commission of Canada. The Commission, comprised of three to five members appointed by the federal cabinet, “will be a super-regulator of the Internet, with greater influence over the daily lives of Canadians than perhaps any other regulator in the country,” Geist warned.
Geist explains that the vague language of the Bill leaves key details undefined. This empowers the Commission to create regulations answering 31 significant policy questions without Parliamentary participation or approval.
Notably, the Commission will determine how a user’s age must be proven in order to access a service, and how platforms are required to ensure minors under 16 are blocked from its use. The Bill also delegates to the decision of the Commission how online services will address “harmful content,” and which companies are counted as “regulated services.”
Geist adds that the Commission “will exercise investigative and adjudicative powers, complete with penalties, hearings, and formal, law-enforcement-style investigations. Yet despite all those powers, it will not be bound by the rules of evidence, will be free to conduct its hearings in secret, and, at least in the beginning, will be capable of operating as a one-person body in which the Commission and its Chair are one and the same individual.”
This Commission would create numerous regulations affecting Canadians and could levy penalties of up to $10 million or 3 per cent of a company’s global revenue for non-compliance. While enforcing penalties, it would also act as an advocate for platform users.
Though the Bill leaves many decisions to the Commission’s discretion, Geist suspects that the Commission itself will not be operational for a few years. Upon receiving Royal Assent, the ban is supposed to quickly come into effect; yet, there will be “no age verification standards, no privacy review, no exemption, and no effective enforcement” until the Commission becomes active.
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