Elizabeth May

“Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time this evening with the member for Toronto—St. Paul’s. It is a privilege to rise this evening to participate in this important debate about Bill C-34, the safe social media act. As a member of Parliament representing an urban riding where social media has had a profound impact on every aspect of city life, as the mother of a teenager who lived through the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic just as she should have been building her in-person community, and as a family doctor who cared for people whose lives were changed both for the better and for the worse by digital tools, I support this bill and want to thank the minister for the extensive and thoughtful work that has gone into its development. The use of social media has completely transformed all our lives, and many platforms have played and will continue to play positive roles in our communities. For a person trying to connect with others affected by the same rare disease they struggle with, for a community seeking to organize in support of a charitable cause, or for a friend group trying to gather to discuss its next favourite book, social media platforms have offered ways for people to connect with one another and to build community. However, we also all know that to leave platforms unregulated is to put our kids in harm’s way. The activity on these platforms can teach young people to hate others. It can teach them to hate themselves. Platforms can offer a window for predators engaging in human trafficking and violence, and they can stunt the development of the very skill they are ostensibly designed to support: the skill of socializing with other human beings. Leaving these platforms unregulated amounts to putting our children at risk. We owe it to our communities and to our children to demand better from platforms that enable harmful activities and use algorithms that jeopardize mental health. In communities across the country, parents are concerned about the impact of social media on their children’s health and well-being. They are asking us to take action, and we have a responsibility to listen to them. At its core, the purpose of Bill C-34 is to protect Canadians in online spaces. It would ensure that social media services and AI chatbots are safe by design. The major pieces proposed in the bill include a ban on social media for people under the age of 16 until a service can prove that it is safe, a new digital safety commission that would ensure that these platforms are held accountable and are working for Canadians, and the ability to remove harmful or victimizing content quickly. While everyone came to the conversation with their own experiences and perspectives about what getting it right looks like, just as we are hearing in the House tonight, there were some very clear messages that I took home with me. First, we need to make sure that platforms are held accountable for the harms they enable. Second, we need research and evidence in order to understand whether our protections are working, and the generation of that evidence must be ongoing. Third, we need to make sure that, in protecting children, we do not take away access to the safe spaces and communities our young people depend on. I want to touch briefly on each of these. With respect to harms, it is clear that social media platforms as currently used have negative impacts on the health, mental health and well-being of our children and youth, and there is a very wide range of evidence to support this statement. We have heard some of it in the debate today already. The Media Technology Monitor research report of 2023 reported that one in five teens has experienced bullying or harassment online. StatsCan, in 2023, found that anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation increase with more frequent use of online platforms. As many parliamentarians have, I have really engaged with my community on the subject of making the online space safer for our kids. People feel very strongly about it, and they want to make their voices are heard. As part of that engagement process, over the summer, I held a round table on the proposed bill in my community of University—Rosedale, along with my colleague, the member for Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park. Participants in that round table included the leadership of organizations such as Kids Help Phone, experts from SickKids Hospital, academics, parents, local community organizations, and importantly, youth. We heard from dedicated professionals who work directly with children, from experts studying the impacts of social media and AI chatbots, and from people who understand how these platforms are designed and how they are operated. The feedback was clear: Canadians support this bill, and they want to make sure it is done right. There are negative impacts on girls and women in particular from the unregulated use of deepfakes and sexual violence online. There is proof that these apps are enabling human trafficking and targeting vulnerable people. Social media apps are being used to track and target youth and kids for the purpose of committing violence and for the purpose of social exclusion. I think we have all heard these stories, and the experts at our round table spoke compellingly to these harms. The bill would establish the mechanisms for holding these services accountable. As outlined in the bill, we would have three core duties for social media services. The duty to act responsibly would require regulated services to assess and mitigate risks linked to harmful content. The duty to protect children would require services to build age-appropriate safeguards into the design and operation of their products. The duty to make certain content inaccessible would require faster removal and action on the most serious victimizing content, such as child sexual exploitation material and intimate content that is communicated or posted without consent. Further to that, because I know we have heard this evening that we need to have detail, we would have the ability to instruct services to regularly identify and assess certain risks, to mandate transparency in chatbot services and to require services to transparently inform the new digital safety commission of their policies for referring conversations to the RCMP and to emergency services in case of threats to seriously harm others. As a health care provider, that is one I feel particularly strongly about. There would be an obligation on the part of the services to publish a digital safety plan. If these services can prove that they are safe spaces, we can have a conversation. We can work together. One of the things we need to recognize is that these harms do not always come from what we or our kids believe to be safe and innocent spaces. The online world is constantly changing, and this is one of the reasons why having a regulator is so important. We cannot legislate for every possible future. A platform that might look like a new place to have fun, play games or share pictures can suddenly become a place where young people are exposed to harmful content, contacted by strangers or targeted by people who want to take advantage of them. During our round table, we heard concerns about platforms that may not be traditionally thought of as social media, including gaming platforms, where some of these same risks can exist. We need to look at how these platforms actually function, how they are used and what risks they create for children and youth. We cannot rely only on what a platform says it is designed to do. We need to look at what is actually happening to the people who use it when they are on these apps or these sites, and we need to be continuously keeping up with that technology, which is why passing legislation is only one part of this work. We also need to understand whether the protections we put in place are actually making a difference. This was the second take-home from our round table, that we must invest in research to monitor the impacts of these measures and the ongoing identification of the gaps. We need to study what young people are experiencing online, ongoingly, and learn from other countries. In other words, our policies must be informed by evidence. We must contribute to that growing body of evidence in this field, which is quite new to the human experience. This brings me to the last lesson I learned at our round table, which is, at its core, about not overcorrecting. I heard from Kids Help Phone that the online universe can, at times, be the only safe space for many kids and youth who have nowhere else to go. For a young person who has questions they cannot safely ask the adults in their life, for a child who is not safe in their own home, we need to be thoughtful about ensuring that we do not close the doors a child may knock on to ask for help. Our aim must be to make digital spaces safer, without depriving vulnerable young people of the connections and resources they need. Bill C-34 has emerged from the grassroots of our communities. As a government, it is our job to listen to parents, youth and experts, and to hold accountable powerful companies who have not seen it as their job to protect our kids. Bill C-34 is Canada’s response to that reality, and I am proud to support it.”