“Children face growing dangers online, and parents cannot protect them alone. I support making social media safer, but this bill needs to answer hard questions before we pass it. We need to know how safety rules will be measured, how age verification will protect people's privacy, and how parents will still get to make decisions for their own families.”

“Mr. Speaker, there are many parents and grandparents in this room and listening who, I am sure, all want the same thing: to know that when our children or grandchildren go online, they are safe. We want our children to be able to talk to friends, learn new things, play games and research their interests without worrying that someone might be trying to exploit them, bully them or expose them to things they are not ready to see. For many parents, that peace of mind is hard to find. Parents can do everything right. They can set rules for screen time, monitor what sites their children visit and even teach them about online harms and safety or what to do when they feel uncomfortable. What parents cannot control is what a social media site recommends to their child. They cannot personally review every single message that their child receives, and they cannot make a tech company remove harmful content just because it puts their child at risk. That is the challenge we are facing today. Children are spending more of their time online than ever before. The risks they are facing change as fast as the technology does. One in four Canadian children between the ages of 12 and 17 has experienced cyber-bullying. In 2024, police reported that online child exploitation reached 16,905 children, up 347% from 2014. Behind those numbers are real families and real children who have real trauma from it. We have seen the consequences of online harm in cases like that of Amanda Todd. As AI becomes more common and more integrated into our children’s lives, we need to know where the responsibility lies when something goes wrong. This brings us to Bill C-34. The bill proposes responsibilities for social media companies and AI chatbots. It would require them to take steps to protect children and address harmful content. It would also establish the new digital safety commission of Canada to oversee compliance, investigate complaints and enforce the rules. I think we can all agree that we want our children to be safe online. The question is, how do we get there? Good intentions are not enough. For too long, parents have been expected to manage these risks alone. We can think about how social media works for one second. What is recommended is not random. It is designed to keep people watching. It is designed for children to keep scrolling, the video playbacks to be played based on what they are viewing, and constant ads or continual use by children as they scroll through the platforms. These features can make it difficult for young people to put their phones down. It can also affect what content a child will see next. Technology companies make decisions about how their products work, but they also need to take responsibility. Bill C-34 proposes requirements for safer design, but that raises a question. What does safer design mean, and how will we know what changes are working? Parents do not have the comfort to wait years to find out what these changes will bring. We need clear expectations, measurable results and a way to hold companies accountable when they fall short. This brings me to another part of the bill, on age restrictions. Bill C-34 would require social media apps to verify age to prevent users under the age of 16 from having accounts. The intention is understandable. There are legitimate concerns about the effects of social media on young people. Many parents today are already doing what they can to limit or restrict social media use. My question is, what if a teenager is determined to still use these platforms? They may move to a site that is less known and has fewer safeguards. They may end up giving their parents even less visibility into what is happening. A restriction is only effective if it can be enforced and it keeps children safe in the process. We also need to ask how this verification would work. If Canadians have to provide some sort of identification or other personal information to prove their age, how will that information be protected? We need to make sure that in the effort to protect our children, we do not create unnecessary risks for everyone, including our children. We also need to consider the role of parents. Parents know their children. They understand their needs better than anybody else, especially in ways the government cannot. A parent may decide that their 15-year-old is not ready for online activities, while another says that potentially theirs is. We do not know this yet. Not all families will come to the same decision, and the law needs to account for how these rules would affect them. Parents cannot be expected to solve every single online problem on their own, and they have to be a part of this conversation. Online safety should be a shared responsibility. Yes, parents need the tools to help them make the best decisions for their own families, but big tech companies also need to do their part. The government must do its part as well. Would these measures actually make children safer? Would tech companies be held accountable for the risks that these platforms create? Would parents have the tools needed to protect their children while their privacy is being respected? We need to have the answers as the bill moves forward. Parents are asking for help, and technology companies should not be able to ignore the harms that their products are causing to children. Our responsibility is to make sure that the rules we put in place work to protect children and respect the rights of Canadians. At the end of the day, parents do not want another empty promise that the Internet will be safer. They need protections that actually work.”

“I agree that we must keep children safe online and hold tech companies accountable with strong rules. But people have emailed me with concerns about the new commission's powers. We need to look closely at those powers in committee.”

“Mr. Speaker, I wholeheartedly agree that we absolutely want to keep our children safe. The whole principle of the bill is keeping our children safe on the platforms they are continually using. Every single day, this is where they gather. It is where they play. We need to ensure that tech companies are held accountable. We also agree that this legislation needs to have real teeth in it, absolutely. One of the things, though, that I have received emails about is the commission’s powers and accountability. These are the things we are going to need to discuss in committee moving forward.”

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“This bill would make social media companies and chatbots reduce the risks of seven kinds of harmful online content. When this bill goes to committee, we must make sure these companies are truly held accountable, not just pretend to be.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is a piece in the legislation on the duties of operators, which would hold big tech accountable, and in there is the duty to act responsibly. It would require social media and these platforms and services like chatbots to assess and mitigate risks associated with seven categories of harmful content. Those categories are intimate content communicated without consent; content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor; content that induces a child to harm themselves; content used to bully a child; content that foments hatred; content that incites violence; and terrorism or violent extremism content. A piece of this that we will have to look at when this moves to committee is ensuring that there would be true accountability by these content providers and that it is not just an illusion. As such, this is something that we will be talking about as this moves forward.”

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“A commission cannot fix online harms on its own. Some online harms are crimes, and the police should handle crimes. We must look at this bill carefully and get it right. Does the member agree that a committee should study these questions and change the bill?”

“Mr. Speaker, earlier in the debate, the member was asked about support for the creation of a commission, which is part of the act. I do not think a part of this, like the commission, could be or is a complete answer to the question of online harms. Some online harms are criminal acts. When crimes are committed, the commission of crime is a matter for law enforcement, not a commission. I think it is really important that we examine all of the issues around this bill and that we get it right. Does the member agree that there are many questions that a parliamentary committee needs to address? Does she think there is likely room for amendment?”

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“I agree. A committee must look closely at this bill. The new commission would have too much power and might just add more bureaucracy to avoid real blame and criminal accountability.”

“Mr. Speaker, yes, I agree. This is absolutely something that needs to be scrutinized as we move into committee. The commission would be a superregulator and be able to make its own decisions. Would there really be accountability in that, or is it just going to be another excuse, another layer of bureaucracy, where we would be able to pass blame instead of having real, true criminal accountability for a few of the items just discussed?”

“We do not need this bill. Things like terrorism, hate, and death threats online are already serious crimes. When people do these things, they should be reported to the police and prosecuted. We do not need a new commission when we should just enforce the laws we already have.”

“Mr. Speaker, in different parts of her speech, the member described some online harms that are criminal acts. As she said, they do not require changes in law. There is harmful content online that involves terrorism, fomenting hatred, threats and death threats, and these kinds of things are already serious crimes. When a serious crime is committed, a person should be sent straight to the police and prosecuted. The Liberals would make this commission a separate new structure, but should we not have more efficient enforcement of our existing laws?”

“I want my colleague to talk about what consultations happened with Quebec. I also want him to say if the government will work with the opposition on this bill in committee, or if the majority will just force its decisions through.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would like my colleague to circle back to the consultations with Quebec. At the same time, he could say a few words about the government’s co-operation on this bill in committee. Does he expect there will be co-operation, or will the majority make a decision against the opposition?”

“Children are being harmed online, and parents want solutions. Big tech companies have avoided accountability for too long. Will this bill actually hold them accountable?”

“Mr. Speaker, we agree that children are being harmed, and parents, I know, are desperate for a solution. Tech giants have operated without accountability for far too long, and it is important that we hold big tech accountable. Would this bill do that?”

“I agree that we need to protect children online, but we must study this bill very carefully before passing it. Too many important rules are left to unelected officials instead of Parliament. I am worried about people's privacy if they have to prove their age, and huge fines might push companies to censor lawful speech. Other countries have tried these bans and failed to protect kids. We need to make sure this bill actually keeps children safe instead of just creating more paperwork.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to Bill C-34, the safe social media act, on behalf of the constituents of Richmond Hill South. Children need real protection online and parents need confidence that the services their children use are designed with their safety in mind. Children are being harmed, families are looking for answers and technology companies have too often left parents to manage risks that those companies are sometimes better positioned to address. Holding social media platforms accountable should be a shared commitment across the House, but would Bill C-34 deliver that accountability? If it is passed, how will we know whether it is working? Would success mean fewer children experiencing exploitation, harassment and harmful interactions, or would it mean that platforms have filed the required plans and completed the necessary paperwork? Those are different outcomes, and Parliament should be clear about which one matters. As lawmakers, we should examine its proposals seriously. At the same time, supporting the objective does not relieve us of the responsibility to scrutinize the approach. The bill shares important features with and seems to draw inspiration from the European Union’s model of platform regulation, including risk management obligations, transparency requirements and an oversight regulator. That comparison is particularly timely because the Canada-European Union summit begins today in Montreal, with digital co-operation among the subjects on its published agenda. What does the government intend that co-operation to include? Will it involve research, enforcement, co-operation and sharing evidence, or could it involve commitments to align Canadian legislation with European rules made overseas? Will we be ceding our authority in this Canadian Parliament to the European Parliament? Will the Canadian government retain our own regulatory authority in respect of Canadians, or will co-operation yield jurisdiction to European regulators? The EU’s proposed kids act provides an interesting comparison. It proposes independent accounts from age 15 and up, with supervised restricted accounts for 13- and 14-year-olds and a ban on access for children under the age of 13. Bill C-34 proposes an under the age of 16 account restriction for specified services. The Europeans have chosen to go with a different age threshold and a phased approach. The EU’s proposed kids act is also far more broad in scope, covering app stores, operating systems and gaming platforms, which are not contemplated in Bill C-34. Canadians should know whether their government is contemplating any commitment to follow the European proposal and how it intends to preserve the Canadian Parliament’s ability to make decisions suited to Canadian circumstances. Will Parliament see the terms of any proposed alignment, and will Canadian families have a meaningful opportunity to explain how those choices would affect them? That brings me to the implementation. The bill would require protective design features, but important details would be established through regulations by unelected government officials rather than legislation made by elected lawmakers. What would that mean for recommendation feeds and that repeatedly direct children toward disturbing material? What would it mean for autoplay, persistent notifications or design choices that encourage young people to remain online long after they intended to leave? How much of the practical protection would Canadians understand when Parliament votes, and how much would become clear only after regulations by this new digital safety commission are developed at a future date? There can be reasons to leave technical details to regulations, particularly when technology changes quickly, but elected representatives should still understand the specifics of the framework they are being asked to approve. What measurable outcomes would the government publish and what would trigger a change in approach if the evidence shows that children remain exposed to the same harms and that the unelected regulators and this new digital safety commission are failing to meet the stated legislative objectives? We should examine the proposed account restriction with the same seriousness. If teenagers lose access to familiar platforms, where would they go? Could some move to smaller services with weaker safeguards, less moderation and fewer opportunities for parents to understand what is happening? That is a risk to investigate rather than an outcome we should assume, but surely an implementation plan must consider what would happen after an account is blocked. Australia’s early experience illustrates why evaluation matters. Its online safety regulator reported that 70% of children under 16 who had accounts before the restriction were able to retain them or create new ones at the three-month mark, while also reporting that harm complaint did not decline at all. What lessons has the government drawn from that experience? What would Canada do differently where enforcement has proved difficult? How would platforms deal with false ages, borrowed accounts or attempts to evade location checks, including through VPNs? Would those efforts produce effective protection or repeated demands for more information from everyone using the service? Parents know their children in ways that politicians and regulators cannot and will not, so how would this framework give families practical tools while ensuring that companies retain responsibility for the risks they may have helped expose children to? The scope of the legislation also deserves careful examination. The bill provides for user thresholds established through regulations but it also allows particular, smaller social media services to be designated where significant risks exist. It contains a mechanism for bringing additional categories of online services into the framework. The question, therefore, is how effectively those powers would be used when children’s behaviour changes. Would elected members in the Parliament get a say? Would this inadvertently create uncertainty for industry? How quickly could government respond if young people migrated to a smaller service that fell below the general threshold but presented comparable dangers? We should also ask how interactive gaming environments would be assessed, as opposed to just conventional social media feeds. When a service combines gaming, public interaction, private communication and user-generated content, which features of the service would determine its treatment and how would parents know which protections apply? Those implementation questions become even more important when we consider privacy. Age assurance and verification call into question whether it would require every Canadian to upload a driver’s licence or photo identification and what sorts of technologies would be used in the process of verification and storage. The legislation would, however, contemplate age verification or estimation, which raises practical questions about what information would be collected, who would handle it and how compliance would be checked. The bill includes safeguards restricting the use of that information, requiring its protection and providing for its destruction once the age check is complete, but how exactly to ensure that? Those requirements matter but parents will reasonably ask how they would be enforced across contractors, verification vendors, backup systems and the data retention laws of other jurisdictions. What evidence would establish that information has been deleted? How would failures be detected and what remedy would a family have if sensitive information was exposed before the regulator discovered that something had gone wrong? No government can honestly promise that a data breach will never occur, which makes it essential to minimize collection and demonstrate why any information being requested is necessary. The governance of the new commission deserves an equally careful examination, particularly because rule-making, investigation, enforcement and decision-making functions place substantial authority within the same institution. The bill would assign substantial powers to cabinet and the commission rather than to Parliament. The new commissioner would serve as a sort of superregulator that will wield serious power by acting as a rule-maker, investigator, enforcer, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner all at the same time. When Parliament delegates consequential choices about the boundaries of an online safety regime, Canadians should be able to understand who makes those choices, what evidence supports them and how an error can be challenged. Would the opportunities to make representations, the reporting requirements and the available avenues of review be sufficient to provide meaningful accountability, especially for an individual or smaller business without extensive legal resources? How would Parliament assess whether the commission was exercising its authority proportionately and what information would allow members to distinguish effective protection from administrative activity? Freedom of expression must remain part of that assessment. Bill C-34 leaves the definition of regulated social media services to future regulations by unelected government officials. It defines some categories of harmful content but those definitions still require further interpretation and platforms still make decisions about individual posts in circumstances where context can be difficult for automated systems to understand. How would it distinguish the discussion of self-harm intended to help a young person from material encouraging it or distinguish reporting on hateful conduct from endorsing that conduct? How would the threshold of harmful content be determined and how would it be applied? The maximum administrative monetary penalty is the greater of $10 million and 3% of global revenue. Could the penalty create an incentive to encourage excessive restriction of lawful, educational, artistic or political expression? How would the government measure and correct that possibility? Would it inadvertently stifle freedom of expression and the creation of new services? Related legislation elsewhere has faced constitutional challenges just south of the border, including state-level laws on social media age verification and bans, with various provisions from at least half a dozen jurisdictions being suspended or subject to judicial scrutiny. The question is how the Canadian charter would apply to Bill CC-34. What has the government learned from those disputes in other jurisdictions? How has that analysis informed provisions intended to provide durable protection rather than years of uncertainty and litigation? These questions come from taking the objective seriously. Families deserve protection that works. Companies deserve clear obligations that can be held to. Canadians deserve confidence that privacy and lawful expression will receive meaningful protection throughout implementation. We should study Bill C-34 carefully and insist not on a mere compliance regime where success is measured by how much paperwork it produces but a framework where success is measured by safer children and accountable companies. That is the responsibility before the House.”

“Parents want their children protected online and tech companies held accountable. But this bill just creates more paperwork without actually keeping kids safe. In Australia, a similar law did not reduce complaints about online harm. The government needs to answer these concerns.”

“Mr. Speaker, these are questions that Parliament should be asking and that parents are demanding answers to. Parents expect their children to be protected. They expect technology companies to be held accountable. What Canadians do not want to see is a new online regime that creates more paperwork and more compliance, and where success is measured through mere compliance with those requirements, as we see in the case of Australia, where the effects have not been wildly positive. As a matter of fact, harm complaints are at the same levels as before the legislation was enacted. These are serious questions that should be asked, questions that the government should be able to answer.”

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“I want the government to explain how this bill deals with other countries' laws. Canadian rules on keeping private data might clash with laws in other countries. The government needs to answer this.”

“Mr. Speaker, the question the member brings up is about the issue of jurisdiction. That is a question that should be asked as well. Jurisdiction is an issue that perhaps applies to laws that are made even outside of Canada. There may be laws from other countries that these social media platforms have to adhere to about data retention. For example, if there is a Canadian law that says that these companies have to retain the private information of individuals and that this Canadian law may require it to be destroyed, rightly so, after the purpose has been met, it might actually contravene another law of a different country. These are questions that are worth asking and that the government needs to answer.”

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“We cannot put this bill into action without clear definitions. This bill leaves those key details to unelected bureaucrats. I want my colleague to explain the dangers of doing that.”

“Mr. Speaker, whenever my colleague gives a speech in this House, it is very dense and full of facts. With his legal background, I would like to ask him about something that is very important. He mentioned two things: one was implementation and one was definitions. We cannot get into the implementation until we have strict definitions. He said that the defining features of this legislation would be in regulations that are to come from unelected bureaucrats. Could he maybe expand on that and on the dangers of that?”

“This bill gives decision-making power to unelected officials instead of Parliament. Elected members are the ones who answer to Canadians and parents. Parliament should make these decisions, not regulators.”

“Mr. Speaker, this is one of the alarming features of the government. It tends to trust unelected bureaucrats, and its members tend to defend those decisions. They tend to forget that they are elected by the people. They are elected by Canadians to work for Canadians, to listen to Canadians, to express the concerns of Canadians and, in this case, to listen to parents and protect the interests of children. Parliament is right to be able to ask those questions rather than ceding our decision-making authority to unelected regulators that these Liberals love to defend.”

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“The member misunderstood me. Success should be measured by actual results, not just by companies following rules. Australia has rules that companies follow, but it did not get results. The government keeps creating rules and making announcements without getting any real results.”

“Mr. Speaker, that Liberal member clearly has not heard the entire speech, because what I said was “mere compliance should not be the measure of success.” It is the outcomes that we need to measure. We can see that in the Australian context where they have a lot of compliance but not a lot of results. That seems to be a theme that the Liberal government likes to follow. It wants to announce and announce, comply and comply, and create these legislative frameworks with no results to show for them.”

“We cannot track progress on this bill if we do not clearly define key terms. What exact definitions is the government using for social media platforms?”

“Mr. Speaker, the Liberals brought forward this bill, and there are a lot of things resting on it, but the most important is definitions. I mentioned this to my colleague who gave a speech previously: How can we measure outcomes and how can we measure progress if we do not even have strict definitions with respect to what the bill is intended to do? Can the member enlighten us about exactly what definitions the government is going for when it comes to social media platforms?”

“We must protect children online, but this bill gives too much power to a new government commission without enough oversight. Most people I surveyed in Oshawa worry this regulator will be too powerful. We need to hear from parents and legal experts in committee so we can add clear limits on its power.”

“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.”

“We want to protect children online, but we also need to get the balance right. A committee needs to study this bill very closely first.”

“Mr. Speaker, as the member has children aged nine and six, I commend him that they are not on online platforms already, because it is a difficult task as a parent to make sure their kids are protected in that way. I would say that Conservatives, on the whole, want to make sure the balance is struck. That means the bill has to be studied in committee and be examined very closely. We want to make sure kids are protected, but we need to get the balance right.”

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“The government should have consulted the provinces before bringing forward this bill. It needs to find out what rules they already have and how this bill affects them. I want to learn who was consulted and study this bill carefully in committee.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague from the Bloc is absolutely right. I do think that whenever the federal government seeks to undertake such substantial legislation as this, individual provinces should be consulted. They should be spoken to about what they already have in place and how a bill would impact their provincial legislation and how it would not. The member brings up a good question. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of who exactly was consulted and have more in-depth discussions when we potentially take a look at the bill in committee.”

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“I believe in strong punishments to stop people from committing crimes before they happen. That is why I support mandatory minimum penalties for gun crimes and sex crimes, which the Liberals removed. People who commit terrible crimes should face harsh penalties so we can protect our kids.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am a Conservative, so I believe in things such as preventative measures to make criminals think before they commit a crime, which is why I believe in things such as the mandatory minimum penalties for gun crimes and for some sex crimes, which the Liberals took away. In juxtaposition with this, yes, if someone has committed a horrific crime, the penalty should be great in order to prevent these things from happening to our kids in the first place.”

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“This bill deals with a serious issue, and we need better rules. But it leaves too many details out. I want to know if the member thinks the details left for future rules have been handled well enough.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear from the speech we just heard how important it is. We are talking about a serious public policy concern, and there is a need for better public policy, which is what the bill intends to put forward, but there are an awful lot of details needed. Is the member satisfied that, for example, the things that would be left to regulation in the future have been adequately addressed so far?”