Braedon Clark

“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour, of course, as always, to rise on behalf of my neighbours in Oshawa. Today I do so to speak about Bill C-34. We know that social media has fundamentally changed how young Canadians communicate, how they learn and how they interact with one another. It has created opportunities for connection, education and creativity that previous generations, such as mine, could never even have imagined, but we know it has also introduced serious risks, particularly for children and teenagers, who are still developing the judgment and experience needed to navigate an increasingly complicated online environment. It should be noted that when this legislation was first introduced, my daughter was still 15 years old. She is 16 now. I asked for her thoughts on whether we should we ban social media outright for children under age 16. She said that, yes, we could do that; it would not hurt. She said, though, that she did not have any struggles, because she knows I guided her through what she was supposed to do. This is a girl who asked me to put limits on her Instagram, so she may be a special case. Nonetheless, I think parenting is a big part of this. Cyber-bullying, online exploitation, harmful content and the growing influence of artificial intelligence are no longer distant or hypothetical concerns, though. They are real challenges affecting Canadian families, and parents should not have to live in constant fear about what their children might encounter when they open an application on their phone. Conservatives believe that children deserve to be protected, that parents deserve to have confidence in the platforms their families use and that technology companies, big tech, must be held accountable for the risks associated with their services. Those principles should and will guide our examination of Bill C-34. Protecting children also means getting the legislation right. It means ensuring that the measures Parliament adopts are effective, enforceable and consistent with the fundamental rights and freedoms Canadians expect their government to respect, because we know that good intentions alone do not make good legislation. As the member of Parliament for Oshawa, I recently asked residents in my community to share their thoughts on Bill C-34 and the government’s approach to protecting children online. The response revealed something important. Oshawa residents want children protected. There is no doubt about it, but they are deeply concerned about how we get there safely. When asked whether the federal government should ban children under the age of 16 from social media platforms, residents were actually almost evenly divided, with 48% supporting such a ban and 47% opposing it. This tells me there is no simple consensus on how government should approach this issue or how we should get there safely. Parents, grandparents, teachers and young people recognize the dangers of social media, but they also have legitimate questions about how far government intervention should go. One father in Oshawa raising two teenagers near Lakeview Park wrote to me to express his desire for stronger protections against online predators. He also urged me to urge Parliament to ensure that responsible parents would not be subjected to unnecessary government surveillance simply for supervising their children’s Internet use. A teacher in Oshawa similarly emphasized the harm that online platforms can cause young students, while raising concerns about age verification systems that could require families to surrender potentially sensitive personal information. These are all reasonable concerns, and they deserve to be taken seriously. We must ensure that efforts to protect children do not inadvertently create new risks for their own privacy and personal information. Bill C-34 proposes several measures that are intended to address online harms. It would establish new responsibilities for regulated social media platforms, including requirements to reduce exposure to harmful content, provide users with tools to report material, and introduce additional protections for our children. It would also address artificial intelligence chatbot services and establish mechanisms for dealing with intimate images shared without consent and material involving the sexual victimization of children. These are serious issues, and they absolutely deserve serious consideration. No child should have to experience online sexual exploitation. No parent should have to fight an endless battle to have exploitive material involving their child removed from the internet. No tech company should be permitted to simply look the other way when serious harm is occurring on its platform. We must ask whether the proposed measures would actually make children safer or whether they would simply create another layer of bureaucracy without delivering the protections that Canadian families are truly asking for and, frankly, need. This brings me to one of the most significant questions surrounding Bill C-34. The legislation proposes establishing a new digital safety commission of Canada with extensive regulatory and enforcement powers. While Conservatives recognize the importance of holding online platforms accountable, we have to also recognize that the powers Parliament grants to any government body must be accompanied by appropriate safeguards. Under Bill C-34, the proposed commission would have significant authority to establish certain requirements, investigate compliance, conduct hearings, issue orders and administer financial penalties. These would be substantial responsibilities for the proposed commission. Indeed, they would combine powers that in other contexts are often exercised by separate institutions. This raises an important question: Who would hold the regulator accountable? It is not simply a hypothetical question raised by members of the opposition. It is a concern being expressed by Canadians. In my recent Oshawa survey, 64% of the people who answered the question about the proposed commission said they were worried about powers being potentially excessive and the risk of creating an unaccountable Internet regulator. We have lots of questions. Only 21% of people selected the response favouring the powerful government watchdog to hold large technology companies accountable. This should give every member of the House reason to want to examine these provisions very carefully and make sure that we get it right. Canadians are not simply asking whether the government intends to protect children. They are asking whether the government can be trusted to exercise the powers responsibly. There are several provisions in the legislation that deserve much closer examination. Subclause 74(1), for example, provides that the commission would not be bound by the legal or technical rules of evidence when exercising certain powers under the act. Subclause 75(1) would permit the commission to conduct hearings in private in specific circumstances, and under the transitional provisions in part 2, clause 23, a single chairperson could temporarily exercise the powers of the commission before other members are appointed. We do have to watch for and and ask for some safeguards. Taken together, these proposed provisions raise legitimate questions on the concentration of regulatory authority and the safeguards that would govern its exercise. To be clear, the issue is not whether online platforms should be held accountable. They absolutely should be. The issue is whether the government has struck the appropriate balance in this legislation between effective enforcement and the checks and balances essential in a free and democratic society. A regulator responsible for overseeing powerful technology companies must be subject to meaningful oversight. There must, I feel, be clear standards for decision-making, appropriate procedural protections and effective opportunities to challenge decisions. Canadians should not have to choose between protecting their children and their freedoms. We are capable of doing both, and I hope that we can come to a legislation that makes both possible. We should be asking the question of whether Bill C-34 would give parents the practical tools they need to protect their children. Would it make it easier for families to understand? Conservatives want legislation with real teeth and a clear, effective enforcement mechanism, but those enforcement powers must be proportionate, transparent and accountable. We need to hear from parents, victims, survivors, privacy advocates, legal experts and people with technical expertise. We need to examine the proposed commission’s powers, the safeguards governing its decisions, and the mechanisms available to ensure accountability. Above all, we need to ensure that the legislation would remain focused on delivering meaningful protections for Canadian children. Those are the principles that should guide our examination of Bill C-34. Canadians deserve effective protections, they deserve clear answers, and above all, they deserve legislation that gets the balance right.”