The federal government will introduce legislation Wednesday addressing social media and AI chatbot safety, particularly for Canadian youth.
Culture Minister Marc Miller is set to hold a news conference at 5 p.m. Eastern after a technical briefing on the legislation, which the government is calling the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act.
The bill is expected to include a ban on social media for kids under 16, Global News reported earlier this week.
The government says the legislation will make social media platforms and AI chatbots safer for children.
“It’s obvious why it’s a priority. Kids are dying,” Miller told reporters Tuesday.
Liberal MPs have declined to give details about the bill before it’s introduced, citing parliamentary rules, but told reporters Wednesday heading into a caucus meeting that protecting children online is critically important.
An online harms bill introduced by the Liberals in 2024 would have created a digital safety commission to administer and enforce the legislation. That bill did not become law before the 2025 election was called.
Concerns about social media and AI chatbots have only grown since then. Ottawa’s AI strategy released last week included new online harms legislation as one of its pillars.
Australia last year became the first country in the world to ban children under 16 from social media platforms, prompting Canada and several other countries to explore a similar move. Several provinces are also considering their own age restrictions for social media.
Critics have raised privacy concerns about the data that would need to be collected in order to verify users’ ages, which could range from government-issued identification to facial recognition and even monitoring online behaviour.
Even advocates for youth mental health who support limiting kids’ screen time say a ban on social media could have negative consequences.
“A ban is never really typically the right approach,” Dr. Robin Baweja, a developmental pediatrician and author based in Ontario, told Global News on Wednesday.
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She said teenagers “are meant to be independent, they’re meant to be curious,” and should be encouraged to learn about safe online behaviour.
“I think what we need to sort of stray away from is talking about a ban, because that equates to punishment to teenagers,” she said. “I think what we need to really move towards is talking about digital health literacy and having them more responsible and resilient and making those right decisions when it comes to their social media and screen time use.”
Baweja added parents and educators themselves also need to model healthy social media and screen use, both by reducing their own reliance on these devices and platforms as well as incorporating screens into family or school activities in a healthier way.
Shimi Kang, a clinical associate professor in psychiatry and mental health at the University of British Columbia and the co-founder and CEO of Future Ready Minds, says the word “ban” itself should be avoided.
“What we’re looking at is it’s really a delay,” she said in an interview Monday.
“Ultimately we want to empower young people to make healthy choices, and that’s where education and parenting support comes in.”
Both Baweja and Kang said they welcomed any measures that hold tech companies accountable for the content they push through their algorithms, including government-mandated oversight.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters on Wednesday that he wants the online harms legislation to include strict penalties for non-consensual creation and sharing of AI-generated sexual deepfakes.
“We should also have tougher penalties and better tools to lock up online predators who target children,” he said, as well as “more tools for parents to keep their kid off dangerous websites that are particularly designed for predators.
Poilievre said he wouldn’t comment on whether he supports a social media ban for youth until he sees the legislation.
Conservative finance critic Jasraj Singh Hallan told reporters Tuesday that it will be important to scrutinize the bill to ensure any measures it proposes can be implemented safely.
“Look, I’m a parent, and it is a real concern,” he said. “The amount of screen time inside homes, it’s a topic of major discussion in households.
“But the other side to this is, what we’ve seen from the Liberals is every time they bring forward some type of bill, there’s always some type a poison pill in there, or there’s something that … overreaches on privacy or security of Canadians.”
—With files from the Canadian Press
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