William Stevenson

“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today in the House of Commons to speak on Bill C-34 on behalf of the good people of Scarborough—Woburn. I want to acknowledge that we are having a consultation process on Bill C-34 on Friday and I want to thank all the participants in advance for agreeing to join that discussion. The times are changing. We have seen, and I have seen, much change over the last few decades here in Canada. It did not seem so long ago when we would spend half a day in a music store going through CDs, identifying a couple of CDs, picking them up, going home and listening to them, or going off to Blockbuster on a Saturday afternoon, finding a few DVDs, picking up some popcorn and going home and making a complete night out of it. Times have changed. Back then, there was technology. We had cellphones. We were lucky if we had a flip phone that could maybe send a text message. The most advanced technology on that was maybe playing the snake game on it. That was pretty advanced technology. However, we are in a world today where everything seems to be instant. There is such an abundance of content and unlimited choice. We are in a world of constant creation. So much has changed over the last few decades. Now most people have cellphones, tablets, some have virtual reality, smart watches, notebooks. These things are mobile. We can go out there and use them anytime. AI and processing power have increased so drastically and with that we have seen some incredible changes in society, and some of those have become incredible challenges. Everyone is impacted by these challenges, but I want to talk a bit more about and focus on gen Z. It is the age group that seems to be highly impacted, of course, not only with respect to this legislation, but also the advancements in technology. Bill C-34 is designed to protect young Canadians in online spaces, and to ensure that social media services and AI chatbots are safe by design. More specifically, it would ban social media for youth and children under 16, unless the service can demonstrate that it is safe. Platforms would be able to submit applications to the new digital safety commission to become exempt from the ban if they can demonstrate their product is safe for children. It would establish a new safety commission to ensure that platforms have safe policies and hold them accountable. There would be age verification, safeguards, a faster removal process for harmful victimization content and, of course, financial penalties. This is a different type of legislation than we have seen in other jurisdictions. Some members have mentioned Australia. I want to thank the members on all sides of the House, because this has been a really incredible debate to talk about the future of Canada, especially when it comes to our children. Australia introduced legislation, but this is very different, because it attempts to work with platforms to ensure their product is safe. If they can prove that, young people would be allowed to use it. If they cannot, it would not be available to them. We know there has been a constant increase in screen time for young people over the last few decades. Adolescents are spending literally thousands of hours a year online. The Canadian Paediatric Society and the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines recommend a maximum of two hours per day of screen time for young people between the ages of five and 17, one hour per day for young people between three and four, and no screen time under the age of two. However, according to recent data from StatsCan, more than half of Canadian children and youth exceed those daily recommended limits, and the average hours of usage are between five and seven hours today. We know there is a direct correlation between the amount of time a young person is online and things like mental health and the stress levels young people feel. Many colleagues have talked about this today. The more screen time, the more stress young people have. Sleep patterns and regulation get altered with increased screen time. We also know that platforms are using very sophisticated algorithms and AI chat boxes that can cause significant harm to young people. We all have a role to play. As lawmakers, we have a role and there are many things we can do, in addition to Bill C-34, to better position our young people for success. We know that Bill C-34 would, if it passes in the House, be put in place to protect young people online. The spaces we are talking about are online spaces. This is no different, if we really think about it, than how we protect young people at playgrounds. We make sure that playgrounds are safe. They are designed to be safe so young people, when they are using the equipment, are safe from harm. We have to design our online spaces the same way. We need to protect our children by making sure that those online spaces are designed so young people can find success. Parents have a role to play. We need to make sure that parents are restricting and monitoring how much screen time a young person has. I asked my youngest daughter before I left to come to Ottawa if she could show me how much screen time she had this week. I am not going to mention it because that is her personal business. It was interesting to reflect on those numbers. In addition to that, we can rely on our educational systems, the curriculum and pedagogy that is out there that goes to protect young people through digital literacy. This is an important piece as well. We need to make sure that digital literacy is at the forefront of this and that we put in place the best types of tools to protect young people. We know that if we jump online, any of us in this room, and we start going down a rabbit hole based on one or two choices, 30 minutes later we can be in a world that we did not want to be part of and we wonder how we got there. It has happened to every single person. In addition to what we can do as society members, as not-for-profit faith groups and as educators, the government is really looking for ways to better position Canadians for success. Bill C-34 is just part of a larger group of pieces of legislation that the government has come forward with to help better protect Canadians. Bill C-36 would protect privacy. It relates to deepfakes and AI. Bill C-16, which I believe we passed in June, is the Protecting Victims Act. It protects us, at the end of the day, from the non-consensual sharing of intimate AI-generated deepfakes. Bill C-25 has to do with our democracy: the Strong and Free Elections Act focuses on federal election rules and the use of AI. In addition to those bills, I introduced a private member’s bill in May of this year, Bill C-277. I believe this bill can play an important role in the challenges we have when it comes to artificial intelligence, chatbots and the use of deepfakes. The bill would regulate the online use and dissemination of deepfakes. It would increase transparency and better protect Canadians from serious harm in the digital age. The bill responds to a growing risk posed by artificial intelligence and emerging technology manipulation. At the core of this bill, Bill C-277, it acknowledges that we, as Canadians, as humans, have the right to our own image, our voice, our face and our likeness, and it puts the onus on technology companies to identify artificially created deepfakes that are online. We own our own images. Labelling can be used to ensure that people, when they see a label, know something is fake, but there is also the ability for us to have that information removed. In conclusion, Bill C-34 would move our society forward when it comes to placing well-thought protections in place to support the health and well-being of young people. We must remind ourselves that we all have a role to play. We must ensure that young people can benefit from technology without being exposed to its most harmful consequences. This means establishing the appropriate safeguards, which Bill C-34 would do. Technology will continue to evolve, artificial intelligence will become more powerful and the digital world will become even more deeply integrated into our lives. It is our responsibility to ensure that our laws, institutions and communities evolve with it.”