Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault

“Mr. Speaker, today, young Canadians are growing up in a digital world. They spend hours every day online, watching videos, connecting with friends, exploring ideas and posting memories of their lives. It allows them to connect, to create and to access information that was simply not possible just a generation ago. However, we must recognize a difficult reality: The modern online environment is not safe, especially for children. Children and young people face risks online that are different from those faced by adults. Children are more vulnerable when exposed to harmful content. Increasingly, they are drawn into interactions that are targeted to their vulnerabilities, which escalate into anxiety, depression and even suicide. That is why the safe social media act has been designed to prioritize the protection of children online. At the heart of this act is a clear principle: Platforms must take responsibility for protecting children, which applies across all regulated platforms. This includes social media and chatbot services. This duty is proactive, not reactive, and the act would establish clear and enforceable obligations by building safety measures directly into their design and operations, rather than responding only after harm occurs. This is a crucial shift from the current legislation. Child safety is not an afterthought. It is not optional. It must become part of the standard when operating in Canada. A key pillar of the duty to protect children is an obligation to prioritize age-appropriate design, including features that protect children online. These may include default safety settings for younger users, tools that limit exposure to harmful or sensitive content, and controls that allow parents or guardians to care for younger users. Rather than relying on one specific solution, the act proposes a digital safety commission to work with experts, industry and Canadians to develop appropriate measures through regulations. An important aspect of this is to recognize that children are not a single group. A 13-year-old, a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old do not interact with online services in the same way. Different age groups require different protections. This model is grounded in the realities of childhood development. To that end, measures should be implemented to ensure that children under the age of 16 cannot create or own accounts unless exemptions occur. This recognizes that some services, especially those built around open interaction and content sharing, may not be appropriate. At the same time, incentives for services that do innovate in safe environments must be enhanced. A key protection in the act is children’s exposure to pornographic content and ensuring that children under the age of 18 cannot access it. This type of content is explicit and is not appropriate for children. Parents should not have to worry about their children stumbling across it through social media or interacting with it via a harmful chatbot. Therefore, appropriate measures must be effective at reducing exposure, while also respecting user privacy. Hence, the bill emphasizes limiting the collection of personal information, ensuring that data collected for the purpose of age is used only for the purpose of age assurance, and ensuring that information is not retained. The bill acknowledges the need to protect children from harmful exposure, while also recognizing the importance of privacy and freedom of expression. I also want to talk about artificial intelligence, which is becoming ever more prominent. Children are spending more and more time interacting with chatbots. Chatbots can pose unique risks to children, who are acutely vulnerable to techniques that encourage an emotional connection and trust. We have heard of incidents of chatbots sending sexually explicit content to underage users and promoting suicide or anorexia. By introducing measures that create safer interactions between children and chatbots, this bill would allow children to experience technology safely. As such, across social media and AI chatbots, the bill would identify specific categories of harmful content that disproportionately affect more profoundly, and with lasting impacts, their well-being. This includes content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, content that induces a child to harm themselves and content used to bully a child. Under this duty, regulated services would need to follow a specific protocol to make this type of content inaccessible on their platforms. In parallel, the act also addresses content that induces a child to harm themselves. For example, this could include a social media post that encourages a minor to injure themselves physically to cope with stress. For children who are still developing emotionally and psychologically, exposure to this indoctrination can be especially harmful. This is particularly important in the context of emerging technologies that interact directly with users, respond to sensitive situations and influence behaviour. Another critical area of concern is cyber-bullying. Social media platforms can contribute to the spread and escalation of cyber-bullying. The viral spread of hurtful posts can magnify the emotional impact on victims and can turn a single incident into widespread public humiliation. This type of content jeopardizes the ability of a child to fully express themselves online. To be clear, the definition used for bullying a child in the act targets content where there is an intention to threaten, intimidate or humiliate a child that could cause serious harm to their physical or mental health. The commission would provide guidelines on understanding the threshold of content that is reasonably perceived as threatening, intimidating or humiliating. For example, a group of 16-year-olds might create an Instagram account devoted to mocking a student, including posting photos or making fun of their appearance and abilities to exclude them from social events. Such content can spread through reposting. In this example, the child being bullied online could experience long-lasting humiliation, social isolation and depression. The platform would have an obligation to reduce users’ exposure to that content, breaking the cycle of engagement and exposure to harm. The safe social media act would establish a comprehensive approach to protect children online. It recognizes children’s vulnerability. It would set clear expectations and obligations for platforms. It would build a system that is proactive, adaptable and accountable. This bill would take meaningful strides to create a safer online world for young Canadians. Children are spending more of their lives on the Internet, and we accept that. This bill does not intend to prevent children from having access to valuable information or positive social experiences online. The goal is to make the online environment as safe as possible for them to explore. The duty we share, all of us in this House, is to protect children. The act would do just that.”