Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I am rising, of course, to say that in relation to Bill C-34, which would enact the digital safety act, I want to vote for it, I want it to get through second reading and I want it to get to committee, but I am not wildly enthusiastic about the bill. I am desperately upset and nervous. I hear from all my constituents. I have to say, I hold a lot of community meetings in my riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands. In nine different locations, in a compressed period of time, I saw hundreds of people between Labour Day and when Parliament resumed. At every single one of those meetings, constituents expressed concern about amounts of screen time, about how to protect kids and particularly about artificial intelligence. From the time we first started looking at this kind of legislation with Bill C-63 to now, looking at Bill C-34, the inclusion of chatbots in this legislation reflects the degree to which the government recognizes that it is not just that kids are being exposed to horrible images. Kids, and seniors for that matter, are tricked by fraudsters who may not be real people at all. A real live human being, whether they are a troubled adolescent or a senior, can be drawn into deep harm by things that are accessible on websites and on platforms, or whatever we want to call them, and damage is done on gaming sites across the spectrum of what is available on the Internet. With what young people see, and the ways that it affects mental health, the harms that are done have outraged Canadians from coast to coast to coast and people around the world. We have already had many members reflect on the experiences in Australia, the U.K. and New Zealand, and other efforts by other jurisdictions around the world, other democracies, where there is outrage. I think of the tech giants and the “tech bros”, as they are referred to, whether it is a Zuckerberg or a Sam Altman, as almost, in a historical sense of the growth of human civilization, a cancerous growth that is nothing but harmful. They do well for themselves, but they harm everything all around our society. The reality of their business model is that they harvest private information. They dive deep into our lives. They have damaged Canadian democracy. We should never have given up the digital services tax. We must find a way to try to extract back for Canadian society some of the damage they have caused, but in the meantime, the damage gallops ahead, and now we are looking very seriously, and heartbroken, at the loss of life of our children and the mental health crisis in a number of kids. I would refer to speeches I have heard in this place, which were excellent, from people across the spectrum, like the hon. member for Lethbridge, who was one of the first speakers on Bill C-34; the member for Outremont, the parliamentary secretary; and just recently tonight, the member for University—Rosedale. Many of us speak not just as parliamentarians but as mothers and, in my case, as grandmothers. I am, as I mentioned earlier tonight, enraged by what these corporate pirates have been able to get away with. Bill C-34 is a good-faith effort. I have met with parent groups that have self-organized, groups like Unplugged Canada, who say that if Australia can do it, we should too. It is true that Australia’s ban for kids under 16 has not worked entirely; 70% of young kids under 16 in Australia are still accessing social media. Frankly, though, if 30% of kids who were on social media in Australia are off, that is better than nothing. These places are dangerous. I would prefer not to call them “platforms”. Members may have heard me mention this before. We let them call themselves something novel, and in doing so, we allowed them to escape responsibility for what they do. We should have, as a society and across many countries, said, “Hey, you guys. You made up this name, ‘platform’. What does it mean? You’re a publisher, aren’t you?” If we called them publishers, there is abundant jurisprudence in common law for what to do with a publisher who publishes scurrilous and libellous content. The publisher and the originator of that content are jointly and severally liable, and that has been very effective in making sure that newspapers do not publish anonymous attacks that amount to libel. Instead, we have this sort of neutral term, “platform”, like it is friendly. That is what we thought at first, right? Facebook is friendly. We can make friends on Facebook. Facebook has managed to evade a lot of basic legal principles. Getting past my outrage as a mom and a grandmother, I look back to my law school background and when I practised law. Where are the principles here from which we can draw some background knowledge, some tools that work? We are here as parliamentarians making laws, so I would like to rely on some solid background jurisprudence that works here. Obviously, we know there are flaws in Bill C-34. I want to get it to committee. I think the largest flaw is the degree of unknowns in passing the piece of legislation. We do not know what the regulations will look like. We are giving a lot of power to an idea of a commission. It may be the best idea since sliced bread, but there is the digital safety commission and the notion that there will be digital safety plans and that they will be able to evolve things in a magical way that is not yet entirely described. It does not mean I am not going to vote for this at second reading, but it means I would like to see some buttressing. I thank the Minister of Canadian Identity, who has been consistent since the bill was tabled in June in saying we are going to take time to study it. There are competing interests. Where are we on the civil liberties side? Where are we on groups like OpenMedia? Where are we with enraged parents, with Unplugged Canada? Can we not find some way to improve the legislation in committee to such an extent that we have societal consensus that this will work? To do that, I started, again, looking at it like a lawyer, as I tend to do, and wondering why on earth we would decide to say, as the bill says at clause 85, “The purpose of a penalty is to promote compliance with this Act and not to punish.” Why would we not want to punish a corporate actor, a private sector profit-making pirate? Why would we not want to punish them if their negligence leads to a child’s death? I would like to punish them. Do we think these penalties are going to encourage compliance with the act? The maximum penalty is found at clause 88, at $10 million. To these guys, it is a slap on the wrist. It is the cost of doing business. I would like to make the legislation have some teeth that would guarantee that whatever platform or gaming or new device they dream up, whatever it is they put out there, they will think, “Uh-oh, we’re in Canada. We’d better be careful. We can’t allow a child to be harmed. If we allow a child to be harmed, that’s catastrophic for our bottom line.” There are ways to do that. I think one of them is to not say that the purpose of penalties is to encourage compliance. Let us say that the purpose is to punish the hell out of them, and if they, as corporations, think they are going to come into Canada and not understand the duty to protect children, again, let us look at our precedents. We have a lot of laws on consumer protection. The member for Halifax earlier said it was like passing a law that said we had to wear seat belts. Well, guess what. It was illegal to sell a car that did not have seat belts. It was not just a slap on the wrist. One could not do business. If we are regulating a product that is inherently dangerous, and these social media platforms are inherently dangerous, we had better make sure we have teeth behind our regulation. Here is a well-worn principle: strict liability. Let us attach strict liability to making sure that children are protected. Let us not just say “an operator” has a duty to protect children, but the directors of a corporation. Personal liability attaches to directors. At that point, we have their attention because maybe they are going to jail. Criminal negligence and strict liability are principles I would like to see added into the act when it goes to committee, as amendments. We need to get this right. We need to move ahead. We cannot afford to wait. These companies will come up with new tools and new toys and new tricks. We cannot outsmart them, we cannot outrun them, but we can hold them to account.
