Official Hansard
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-34 today, a bill that was first introduced back in June. Here we are, almost at the beginning of November, and we are dealing with what I believe to be a consequential piece of legislation that does not come without some concern. It will be good when this bill goes to committee, so that stakeholders, advocates of online safety and those who are concerned about civil liberties and rights can have their say. I expect that it will be a pretty long job for the committee to look at this bill to make sure that what comes back to the House reflects a balance in what should be the ultimate priority for any parliamentarian. I believe that most reasonable-thinking people in this country would agree that the protection of children online is paramount to our role as members of Parliament, as legislators, as those who make the laws. I know that parents, because I have heard from many in my riding, are concerned about the proliferation of online activity that involves bullying, algorithm effects and content meant to draw in young people, keep them online and keep them engaged for whatever reason. Of course, one of the biggest concerns is individuals who are contacting young people under the guise of being somebody else. They are doing it in many cases to bully them or for nefarious reasons. We have a responsibility to make sure that we are protecting our children. Nobody in this House would disagree with that, but as I said, there are some concerns. There are some principles we need to be looking at with respect to this. All of us agree that children should not be exposed to sexually explicit content online. Platforms have a responsibility to ensure that children cannot access this type of material. They should be protected from people who seek to exploit or harm them online. Children should also be protected from online content and platform features that contribute to poor mental health outcomes. That was outlined in Bill C-216, which was a private member’s bill introduced by the member for Calgary Nose Hill. It was done sincerely and with the intent to protect children online from poor mental health outcomes as a result of the online content that is bombarding young people day in and day out. I recall that recently, I was in Toronto riding on the subway heading downtown. I was on my phone, as most Canadians are, and I could see the age demographics of the people who were on that train. When we are on a subway, there is nothing better to do than look at our phones, and I saw that everyone was engaged in some sort of online activity. They would have been bombarded with algorithms. They would have been bombarded with content that was meant to keep them engaged. Platforms should also be held accountable for the swift removal of non-consensually distributed intimate images, including those generated by AI, while taking proactive steps to prevent them from being uploaded in the first place. As colleagues know, I chair the ethics committee. We just recently concluded a study on artificial intelligence and the impact that it is going to have. It went down a dark place involving superintelligence and computers talking to computers. That report, I expect, will be tabled in this House in the next couple of weeks. There were some very significant recommendations the committee made to harness the impact that artificial intelligence is having with respect to what I said earlier: superintelligence, computers talking to computers and how that is going to impact things. Already, we are seeing online that artificial intelligence is having a huge impact on people’s lives. I get phone calls in my office from people asking me whether content online is artificial intelligence or real. My own mom has called me, asking, “Johnny, I just saw this thing on Facebook. Is it true or not?” It is having a significant impact on overall online activity, but it is also having an impact on what the truth is. Oftentimes, we couch things as misinformation and disinformation. I have said it before and I will say it again: I am old enough to remember when misinformation and disinformation were known as lying. It is a serious problem when these algorithms pick up the content that people are looking at and then, as I said earlier, bombard them with more of this content. Oftentimes, things are not real. Online companies have a responsibility to swiftly remove, especially, the non-consensual intimate images that we have heard so many stories about, with young people’s images being put online. When they are online, they are online forever. We need to make sure that we are working as legislators to protect that as well. Ultimately, parents remain the primary decision-makers. Governments and platforms should support and not replace any parental autonomy when it comes to this stuff. Having four kids, I am often not aware, if at all, of what content they are looking at. They are adults, but it was like that even when they were younger. It seems that every child is getting phones so they can stay in contact with their family. I do not know what the minimum age is, whether it is eight, nine or 10, but what are they looking at? Parents have an obligation, but we also have an obligation to help parents in that regard. Frankly, parents should be empowered to use the tools they need to protect their children online, whether it is with granting permission or with buttons, whatever the case is and whatever we can come up with. Bill C-34 addresses many concerns in regard to that. We should be giving parents an opportunity to deal with it. Ultimately, as chair of the access to information, privacy and ethics committee, I know that privacy becomes paramount. We have an institution in this place that is led by the Privacy Commissioner to make sure that privacy is protected. That should be the ultimate goal of what we are trying to do. When this bill gets to committee, I am sure that privacy experts and those who are interested in the protection of privacy will testify. Canadians have the right to express themselves freely online. Governments and platforms should not restrict lawful speech. There are two sides to this. We are talking about the protection of children, but we are also talking about the protection of the rights and liberties of parents and individuals, even in the case of political discourse, to express themselves freely online without fear of any government involvement, or law enforcement involvement in this case, especially when we are talking about freedoms online. We need to protect, as much as we can, the rights and freedoms of individuals to express themselves freely. We need to protect children, but that should not be used as an excuse to invoke oversight on law-abiding citizens. That is the hallmark of any free and democratic society. Again, protecting children becomes paramount here. In conclusion, I will reiterate that as Bill C-34 progresses through today and progresses through committees, it will be vitally important that we protect children online and give parents the tools they need in order to do that, but we cannot do that at the cost of our civil liberties and the rights and freedoms of individuals to express themselves in a law-abiding manner.
