Will Greaves

In response to a question from William Stevenson

“We should pass this bill. Younger Canadians grew up with the internet, so they may not see how it changed life compared to the past. But younger members of Parliament support this bill, and I believe most young people do too.”

“Mr. Speaker, certainly we have much to learn from Canadians of different ages on this subject. We all have different relationships to technology depending upon our age. I do think there is much we could learn from members of gen Z, but I will say that as a generation that, in many instances, perhaps most instances, would have grown up with ubiquitous Internet and ubiquitous digital technologies in their life, gen Z may not be best placed to actually reflect upon how their experience of technology has differed from those of previous generations who did not have that access and whose relationship to the Internet was very different. That said, I will note the speech earlier tonight from the member for New Westminster—Burnaby—Maillardville, who is a member of our generation Z caucus and one of the four 21st century babies in this chamber. We have heard from the younger members of our caucus directly based on his experience, which is shared, I am sure, by many others of his age. He spoke very strongly in support of this bill, as I am sure most members of generation Z would as well.”

In response to a question from Wade Grant

“I support this bill. Parents should not have to protect their kids from internet dangers on their own. National rules for social media would set standards for everyone and take that burden off individual families.”

“Mr. Speaker, I shared this reflection earlier in response to a different question from a different colleague. At the moment, many parents across this country share these concerns. We know the dangers that await our kids on the Internet, and we are concerned in particular about increasingly young children having access to unfiltered information through the devices that are increasingly common in their classrooms. Having parents bear the responsibility to monitor their children’s Internet use, but also to control their access to digital devices, really does individualize this problem. It makes it a problem for individual families and for individual parents. As all parents know, our kids are extremely good at placing pressure on us to come to their preferred outcome or decision. By having strong regulations at the national level, by having a national framework around social media use for young Canadians, individual families would no longer have to make this choice. As a society, we would draw a line and say that enough is enough.”

“I want the House to pass this bill. Too many children face bullying, sexual exploitation, and other harms online. This bill makes tech companies responsible for keeping kids safe. It bans children under 16 from having accounts unless the platform proves it is safe. It blocks minors from pornography, covers AI chatbots, and creates a commission to hold companies accountable.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here this evening, hearing from my hon. colleagues in this debate on this important topic, which is one that speaks to me very directly as the father of a young child. I rise to speak in favour of the safe social media act. During debate tonight, we have heard extensively about the merits of the bill, and I echo many of those sentiments. I will speak to the legislation in a moment, but I wish to reflect first on the nature of the digital world that our children today inhabit, which is fundamentally different from that which most of the members of the chamber grew up in, in some cases just a few short years ago. I have worked with young people since I was a young person. As a teenager and as a young adult, I worked with children and youth across Canada in after school programs, in summer camps and as a member of the Royal Canadian Army Cadets. For days and weeks at a time, we would hike, camp, swim, march, paddle, bike and climb. Endless hours were spent outdoors, in nature, interacting with our peers face to face, with nary a cellphone, touchscreen or digital device to be seen. Later in my career as an academic, a university professor and an educator, I worked with thousands of young adults pursuing post-secondary education without ever having heard the words “generative AI”, or “ChatGPT”. I confess that I am an elder millennial, so I remember when dial-up Internet first arrived in my family home, and I remember as a late teenager getting my own first cellphone, which flipped open, could display two colours and was decidedly not smart. The hon. member for Scarborough—Woburn stole my joke about the snake game earlier, so I will move right along. Today, at this stage in my life, it is a great joy but also a great worry to be father to an extraordinary almost 11-year-old daughter, who is growing up in a world that is not only different from the one that I was raised in but is meaningfully different even from the one the hon. generation Z members of the House experienced, as I said not long ago. The reality is that today’s children are growing up in a world fundamentally different from that of previous generations. The Internet has become woven into nearly every aspect of their lives, even if they do not yet have a device. Online is where young Canadians learn, connect with friends, explore interests, create content and engage with the world around them. It is also where they spend vast amounts of their time and attention, consume misinformation and disinformation, encounter strangers, discover pornography and experience a range of negative social experiences, including isolation, bullying, exploitation and in some cases, sexual and psychological abuse. We know that the digital world offers tremendous opportunities, but we must also confront the difficult truth that for too many children, the online world is a place of significant risk. Data that has been widely discussed in debate this evening shows that 52% of Canadian teens have received unwanted sexual images online, while 44% report being pressured to send sexual photos. In 2023 alone, police in this country reported nearly 19,000 incidents of online child sexual exploitation, representing a 500% increase since 2014. Clearly, this goes in tandem with the massive explosion of social media in our society, and we know that young people who experience bullying and victimization online are three times more likely to contemplate suicide. These are not just statistics. They represent real families, real children and real communities dealing with the consequences of online harms from an underregulated, corporate-controlled Internet that does not have their best interests in mind. We know that these harms are also evolving rapidly. The rise of artificial intelligence, conversational chatbots and increasingly sophisticated digital platforms presents new opportunities but also new risks, which our laws have not fully addressed because they were not designed to do so. Parents, educators, advocates and experts are clear: Children’s safety online cannot be an afterthought any longer. As legislators, we have a responsibility to ensure that our laws keep pace with the digital world and provide meaningful protection for young Canadians. This is exactly what the safe social media act seeks to achieve. At the heart of this legislation is the simple principle that digital platforms, and the tech companies that own them, must take responsibility for protecting children who use their services. For too long, responsibility has fallen primarily on parents, teachers and young people themselves to navigate systems that were never designed with the well-being of children in mind. This bill would change that. It would establish a clear duty to protect children that applies to regulated social media services and chatbots. Rather than waiting for harm to occur, platforms would be required to proactively design and operate their services in ways that prioritize the safety of younger users. This represents a fundamental shift in approach. Children’s safety would not be optional. It would not depend on whether a company or its foreign owner chooses to act. It would become a baseline expectation for those companies to operate in Canada. Importantly, the legislation recognizes that children are not all the same. The social and emotional development of a 12-year-old differs in meaningful ways from that of a 16-year-old. That is why, instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the safe social media act would allow for flexible, evidence-based requirements that can evolve alongside technology and keep up with emerging online risks. The legislation would establish important protections regarding access to social media and digital content, and I wish to highlight five, in brief, in particular. First, regulated social media services would be required to prevent children younger than 16 years old from creating or maintaining accounts unless the platform can demonstrate that it provides an appropriate, safe environment and qualifies for an exemption. This approach would create a strong incentive for companies to build safer platforms, while ensuring that children’s interests remain at the centre of decision-making. A second key aspect of the legislation is protecting children from exposure to pornographic content online. Under the bill, regulated services would be required to implement age verification or age estimation measures to ensure that individuals below the age of 18 cannot access pornographic content. At the same time, the legislation would rightly place a strong emphasis on privacy protection, requiring that any information collected for age assurance be limited, used only for that purpose and not retained any longer than necessary. A third important feature of the bill is recognizing that social media is no longer the only digital environment where children spend their time. Increasingly, young Canadians interact with artificial intelligence systems and chatbots. While these technologies can offer certain benefits, they also present unique challenges. There have been troubling reports of chatbots promoting self-harm, encouraging harmful behaviours, providing inappropriate content, fostering unhealthy dependence and even inciting individuals to violence. A most egregious example of this is the unspeakable tragedy that occurred at the start of this year in Tumbler Ridge in my province of British Columbia. My heart still goes out to all the families affected by that horrible event. This is why the safe social media act would extend to chatbot services. These services would be required to act responsibly by mitigating the risks of communicating harmful content and by implementing crisis intervention protocols when users express intentions to harm themselves or others. Fourth, the legislation would address specific categories of content that can have devastating consequences for children. This includes content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor of sexual violence, content that induces a child to self-harm and content used to bully a child. The other parents in the chamber and parents watching at home will know how pernicious cyber-bullying is and how devastating it can be for our children. Simply put, social media platforms currently amplify and monetize harmful behaviour. When this happens to a young person, the effects can be severe and long-lasting. Finally, the legislation includes strong accountability measures. The new digital safety commission would play an important role in ensuring accountability, handling complaints, strengthening protections and promoting online safety awareness across Canada. Ultimately, the bill is grounded in a simple belief that we have overlooked for far too long: that children deserve to be safe online. The safe social media act would establish a modern framework that recognizes both the opportunities and the risks of the digital age. It would create clear expectations for platforms, introduce proactive protections, address emerging technologies and place the safety and well-being of children at the centre of our government’s approach. Frankly, as a society, we should probably aim to have our children spend less time on the Internet, but as a society, we have a responsibility to ensure that when children are online, they are safe and protected from the harms that we know await them there. I encourage my colleagues to support the bill as it moves through committee and comes before the chamber for a vote.”

• Echo ×6

  A repeated line

  “Content that induces a child to harm themselves.”

  Said 6 times by 6 members since October 28.

  Every time it was said →

“I want the member to clarify his position. Does he want to ban social media for everyone under 16, or does he want social media companies to block harmful content so young people can still use the platforms safely?”

“Madam Speaker, I have heard my hon. colleagues mention several times, with a bit of fence-sitting, the question of whether the bill constitutes an age ban for young Canadians under 16. I am curious if the member is able to clarify that. In his view, would it be preferable to have a universal ban for Canadians under 16 on social media platforms, or would it be preferable to have social media platforms fix their systems such that there would be limitations on age-inappropriate content and young Canadians could safely use those platforms, given some of the benefits that we know exist? Which of those two options would the member prefer? I cannot tell based on his remarks this evening.”

“Parents feel pressure when other kids get phones, and they have to monitor what their kids do online. It is easier for families when schools or governments set shared rules. That way, individual parents do not have to make unpopular choices alone. I want the member to agree with that.”

“Madam Speaker, I have a pretween daughter, and there is a very real conversation that happens in our school, with the parents in our school community, about who is going to give their child a cell phone first because when that one parent gives that one tween-age child a phone, it creates the desire for this object among all of the other students and puts incredible pressure on us parents, so much so that we wish the school would simply ban the use of these devices so that individual parents would not have either the burden of monitoring their child’s social media and Internet use or the social pressure to keep up with the Joneses and the latest technology, etc. I wonder if the hon. member for King—Vaughan would agree, as a mother and a grandmother, as she said, that some of these decisions are actually made easier for parents and for families when they are taken at the collective level. When a school or an institution such as government makes an evidence-based, rational decision, that makes a standard common to everybody and relieves parents of the individual responsibility of having to make that unpopular decision that their son or daughter cannot have a phone.”

“Forestry is very important to the economy in British Columbia, and Canada's forest ministers met on Vancouver Island this week.”

“Mr. Speaker, across British Columbia, workers and communities know how important the forestry sector is to our economy. As Canada’s forest ministers met this week in Langford on southern Vancouver Island— Some hon. members: Oh, oh!”