Official Hansard
Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for King—Vaughan. I am proud to rise today on behalf of my constituents in Brandon—Souris to speak to Bill C-34, the safe social media act. As a member of gen Z, I am among the few parliamentarians who grew up with smart phones at school and social media becoming part of everyday life. I got my first phone at age 12, the LG Rumour with a slide-out keyboard. We thought we were very cool. I then got my first smart phone at age 14, and entered high school with the rest of my cohort into the brave unknown of teenagers on social media for the first time and it certainly was the unknown. There were Snapchat messages in class and Instagram notifications constantly. This was long before the algorithms and ad campaigns got to today’s level of sophistication. It really was the Wild West. While there were certainly some positive features, there was also a dark side that every young person has seen. While we saw it, and young people continue to see it minute by minute, hour by hour, parents often do not. Their algorithms, understandably, just look a lot different. If they do see it, there is very little they can do about it. A parent can put a phone away at supper and make sure homework comes first. They can attempt to confiscate it at bedtime. However, regardless of breaks, they cannot rewrite the software that decides what their child sees or personally remove an image someone else has shared. They cannot control a predator who has mastered what it sounds like to imitate the voice and speech of a young person in order to lure kids in. That is the challenge facing all families across the country and that is why Conservatives believe children should be protected online, technology companies should be held accountable and parents should have the tools to keep their children safe. Those principles are clear, but whether Bill C-34 would actually deliver on them is the real question before us today. Kids are still figuring out who they are. They are learning how to handle pressure and how to separate what is real from what is not. That is difficult enough without constant comparison, online cruelty and a stream of content designed to keep them watching. An embarrassing moment at school used to be something someone could leave behind when they went home, but today that same moment can be recorded and shared with hundreds or thousands of people and follow someone everywhere. A cruel message can be shared long after the day ends, and for a young person being targeted online, putting the phone down does not erase the fear of what everyone else might have seen or might be saying. Most concerning is a place where predators have far too much access to young people with zero accountability. In 2024, police across Canada reported almost 17,000 incidents of online child sexual exploitation, and StatsCan warns that police-reported figures likely underestimate the full scope of the problem. The government is right to acknowledge it. Parents are worried. They know their children’s strengths, worries and maturity levels better than anyone else, but a child sitting quietly in their bedroom may be dealing with something that a parent cannot see. Taking harm seriously means being willing to examine this problem and the government’s proposed position clearly. Parents deserve more than assurances from a tech company, and they deserve to know exactly what the government intends to do about this problem. Bill C-34 claims to impose new safety standards on social media and AI chatbot services, and establish a digital safety commission to oversee a framework. However, many of the most important details are being left for future regulations. Here enters our concern. The bill says companies must introduce design features to protect children. What does that mean in practice? Will it change the algorithms that recommend harmful content or the endless scrolling that keeps kids watching? We do not know yet. This is something my constituents are concerned about. In a recent mailer, I asked the people of Westman their thoughts on this bill and whether, in general, kids should be banned from social media. A constituent named Jack, who opposes a ban, wrote to me and said, “Companies just need to be held accountable for the manufactured algorithms they run. Don’t ban kids.” Many others agree and I think that is an important point. Parents can set limits at home, but they cannot control the content that these algorithms push onto their children’s screens. That responsibility has to rest with the companies designing and operating these platforms. Will the regulations under Bill C-34 actually change how those companies operate? Will they simply be required to file a safety plan with the government and carry on? Bill C-34 also aims to give this commission the substantial powers to investigate companies, enforce compliance and impose penalties. Cabinet and the commission would each have regulation-making powers within the framework to determine what that compliance and those penalties are, not Parliament. I understand the need to move quickly and to hold technology companies accountable, but how can Parliament judge whether these powers are appropriate when we have not seen so many of the rules that would govern their use? Consider a parent who discovers, in the words of this legislation, that an intimate image of their child has been shared without consent, perhaps even generated by AI. Their priority is to get it taken down as quickly as possible. The bill claims to have a process for removing specified content, generally within 24 hours after it is identified or properly flagged, although future regulations could change those criteria, but even if they are not, 24 hours on the Internet is a long time. What happens if the platform rejects the complaint? If those 24 hours pass and the image is still up, does that family now have to go through another complaints process with the commission, all while the image continues to spread? If the platform simply fails to act, what consequences would it actually face? A parent in Brandon—Souris should not need a lawyer to navigate this system. We need to know that these protections will work in the real world in real time and not just on paper. This brings me to the proposed restriction on social media accounts for children under 16. Ronald, a constituent from Brandon, supported a ban, raising concerns about how easily children can encounter harmful content online, but he also made an important point. He wrote that parents would need to be a willing partner if this were to succeed. I could not agree more. We can pass all the legislation in Ottawa we like, but parents are still the ones raising their children and helping them navigate the online world. Kids are primarily their responsibility, far more than the government’s. That raises a very practical question: How would this proposed restriction actually work based on what is in the bill? The bill provides for age checks on social media services designated through regulations with possible exemptions for platforms that have “adequate safeguards”. What does “adequate” mean? By whose definition is it adequate? Is it the parents’ definition of an adequate safety plan for their kids, or would it be the commission’s or the government’s? We do not know, because so much of these decisions would be left to regulation after the bill has passed. Putting an age restriction into practice also means finding a way to verify people’s ages, and that raises another serious concern: the privacy of Canadians and the security of their personal information. If platforms must check people’s ages, how will they do it? Will Canadians be asked for government ID, a facial scan or information collected by an outside company? The bill does not include safeguards requiring information collected for age checks to be protected, used only for that purpose and destroyed afterwards. Who will collect the data? How will we know that it has been deleted? What happens if there is a breach? We only know from highly reputable organizations, like Crime Stoppers very recently, that the threat of a data breach is a very real possibility in today’s day and age. Once that sensitive personal info has been compromised, a promise to delete it later offers little comfort. Parents should not have to trade one concern about their child’s safety for another concern about their child’s personal information. After speaking with parents in Westman, I know they want their children to make friends, learn about the world and become independent enough to make good decisions, but most of all, they want their kids to be safe. Tech can be a tool, but it can also be a path to things that no child should face alone. As the bill proceeds through second reading, Parliament must remain focused on two things: holding powerful tech companies accountable without handing the Liberals a blank cheque on oversight, and, most importantly, protecting children by empowering, not replacing, parents. Conservatives will continue to fight for those priorities until we get this legislation right. The consequences are too significant for anything less.
