“I held a meeting with parents in my riding about online safety. Why is the member holding a similar meeting in his riding, and what does he expect to hear?”

“Mr. Speaker, I really appreciated my colleague’s speech. In our riding of Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park, we held a round table, as well as a round table with the member for University—Rosedale. The member mentioned a gathering he is hosting in Scarborough—Woburn on Friday. I wonder if he could share more details about why he has chosen to engage parents in this way and what he expects to hear.”

“My office is meeting with local experts, teachers, doctors, and faith groups to review this bill. We will gather their feedback and give it directly to the minister.”

“Mr. Speaker, I have the best constituency team in the country. There are incredible people working in my office, and they have engaged with psychologists, doctors, educators, superintendents, youth workers and folks from faith groups. We are asking them to come and meet with us to go over pieces of this legislation and to get feedback. We will collect a bunch of data points, put them together and present it to the minister on behalf of the people in Scarborough—Woburn. It is a simple model that we have been using more and more. We just did one on the fresh water review. It seems to be a model we can use to make sure that the voices in our community are collected and presented back to the government.”

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“A full ban on social media will not work. Instead, this bill makes companies prove their platforms are safe. Young people can only use the platforms that meet our safety rules.”

“Mr. Speaker, this bill is different from what took place in Australia. In Australia, there was a complete ban. I think this bill is a realistic approach. We are not going to be able to just ban social media. It is not going to work. We are attempting to work with platforms to ensure that they put in place the right type of safeguards, and the onus is going to be on them to prove they are safe. If they are approved, then they will be open for young people to use. If they cannot reach those specific guidelines or safeguards, they will not be able to present their social media for use with young people in Canada.”

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“Parents worry about the online dangers their children face. I want my colleague to explain how this bill protects kids and reassures parents, instead of letting the opposition mislead them for political gain.”

“Mr. Speaker, we know that all parents sometimes experience unbearable stress because of the dangers that our children may be exposed to online. As a parent, I know that feeling. To what extent can Bill C‑34 provide meaningful protection and a genuine sense of security for parents? Can my colleague provide parents with some reassurance and ensure that they are not misled by the opposition’s use of this bill for political purposes?”

“I support this bill. Spending too many hours online harms young people. Laws set the rules for our society, and this bill helps limit screen time and make social media platforms act responsibly.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is important for all members of the House to recognize that legislation is important. There is no question that legislation and law set the foundation of the tone and expectation of Canadians, reflected through the members they voted for in the House. This is an important element of our society. When it comes to young people and the home, there is nothing that replaces guardians, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, community members and neighbours when it comes to making sure that young people have what they need for success. The simple fact is that, if a young person is spending hours and hours each day online without the ability to go outside to play, interact and work with siblings to figure out problems in real time, it will pose a challenge for that young person. It is important that parents set children up for success by making sure that screen time is limited, and that algorithms and platforms are used in a responsible way, which is what this bill attempts to do.”

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“I want the House to pass this bill. Big tech companies design social media to hook kids and make money off their attention, even when it harms them. This bill makes platforms publish safety plans, face review, and give users a real person to handle complaints.”

“Mr. Speaker, we have the biggest companies on earth with the most sophisticated attention-holding technologies known to humanity, and we have a kid with a phone. There are the most dazzling, seductive, funny, curiosity-inducing images, texts and videos, and there is a family at the dinner table, hunched and shrouded in a blue glow, or there is a classroom of semibored learners. There is a predator, and there is a child on the other side of the world. It is time to act for these families, kids and learners, and to start to rebalance the playing field just a little. It is time to do what one parent said at the round table the member for University—Rosedale and I co-hosted with SickKids and other stakeholders. She said she wanted her kids to discover who they are, who they were, before their algorithms told them. This is the opportunity in front of us. This is why we are acting today. This is why we are acting now. This is why we are acting to get it right. Many of us have had different journeys to this piece of legislation. Many of us have had different journeys to the House. It was the prospect of bringing this bill, and this measure, over the finish line that helped inspire me to run for office. As a parent and a new educator at what was then Ryerson University, in the late 2010s we started to see the kinds of things that are causing such concern today, and that have resulted in the bill before us. I started a think tank that was then called the Ryerson leadership lab with colleagues Shoaib Ahmed and Sam Andrey. We decided to test what was happening in the world, what Canadians were thinking about the power of this technology and whether they wanted intervention on this. We did a survey. We put it out in 2019 in “Rebuilding Canada’s Public Square”. This is seven years ago now, and already the appetite was there. In that survey, it was found that 60% of Canadians believed that government should intervene with social media companies to require that they fix the problems they created in our political system. At that time, in 2019, social media companies were already amongst the least trusted companies in Canada when it came to doing what was in the best interest of the public. Seven years ago, 52% of Canadians already felt that they had little or no control over what they saw in their social media feeds. This was at a time when the social feed still had at least a bit of a chance compared to the algorithmic feed that has become so dominant in our feeds. I mentioned that 60% requested government intervention. Just two years later, the number of Canadians went up 11 percentage points, with 71% of Canadians supporting government intervention with social media companies. Canadians were already seeing the hateful content, the harmful content, seven years ago and five years ago. Racialized Canadians were 33% more likely to encounter hate speech and 52% more likely to encounter racist content online than non-racialized Canadians. Already, years and years ago, Canadians were telling us, Canadians were telling each other, young people were telling their parents and educators were telling parents that there was a problem, that these technologies were too powerful, that the machines guiding these technologies were too powerful and that we needed to act. Governments slowly attempted to do so. In the meantime, in that period of time, the information, the technologies and the research became even more convincing. From the social scroll to the infinite scroll, there is perhaps no more powerful tool in the world to monetize our attention, that most scarce resource, that most precious resource. New features were being added to social media platforms such as streaks, which was fun. I am going to click on this today, and I am going to click on it again tomorrow. I am going to click again, and someone will see that I saw them and I saw that they saw me. That is great. There were GPS connections within social media feeds. Great, now someone can find me wherever I happen to be, even if I do not know who they are. On the corporate side, what was happening? Trust and safety divisions were gutted. Content moderation was being rejected. The investment in the very AI tools that can be misused to make the existing tools even more dangerous was embraced by these companies. Companies were suppressing research, litigating or budgeting for the fines they would incur by failing in litigation. It was just a cost of business, as was attacking whistle-blowers. This adoption of the AI technologies that are being used to supercharge what was already a dangerous platform is kind of like owning the drugstore, buying the cigarette company, and then putting those cigarettes back at the front of the store, but then spiking those cigarettes with crack cocaine made in the pharmacy. The combination of social media and AI technologies was used in a potent way to monetize the worst forms of attention-seeking and of attention-grabbing content. This was the fundamental objective and the fundamental economics of the platform. The discovery pieces from the lawsuits coming in from the United States thankfully revealed that this was being used in a systematic way by platforms and continues to be used, in the case of X, or Twitter, to monetize our attention and to cause many of the harms we see in front of us. Meanwhile, what was the research telling us about about the kids, and what were kids and teenagers telling us? Very importantly, we were learning that the time of greatest vulnerability coincided with important life stages and that these differed by sex. For girls, the time of greatest correlation between social media use and lower life satisfaction was between the ages of 12 and 14, during those very key puberty adolescent years, and again at age 19, which is often the age when they take on higher education. For boys, the association between lower life satisfaction and increased social media use was highest between the ages of 15 and 17. Again, this correlates with their journeys through pubescence and adolescence, and into adulthood. The platforms knew this, and they took advantage of this to feed teens the very content that got them further hooked to these platforms, to their business models. Parents were at a loss. Parents were around dinner tables. Students, including the university students I was teaching at that time, were telling us that they were addicted and hooked to this content. They wanted alternatives they could not find. Policy-makers started to act. We started to act. Just in this Parliament in the last 12 months, as new MPs, we started to act. At the gathering the member for University—Rosedale and I co-hosted, we heard from Coleen Dudley from The Neighbourhood Group, a peer educator who was telling us about the solutions we needed to find. We heard from Jessica Besser-Rosenberg from Unplugged Canada. We heard from Dana Cramer from the Young Digital Leaders of Canada. We heard from the leaders who are on the front lines of these issues saying that it is time to act, that there are solutions available and that we must act. Recently, at the Attention conference at McGill, we heard Alex Munter of the Canadian Medical Association compellingly say that a parent’s no has no power because of the power of the biggest social media companies in the world and their biggest technologies. We heard from Ravi Iyer that AI-empowered chat bots are doing such a good job of easing the way into a false sense of socialization for kids, that kids are losing the ability to have the frictions that are required to develop social learning. Recently, we heard from Suki Huang, a youth champion at The Dais, who told us that the youth did not choose this system, but they feel that they need to be on social media. What alternatives are available to those kids? I think a complementary piece of work that we and the government have to be doing around news literacy is figuring out, if kids are not present on social media platforms, how they can get that news from other places. We need to put forward efforts to help them touch grass, enjoy the off-line world and be able to gather all those pieces. This bill, Bill C-34, is a culmination of the work that is a response to all those things I mentioned. I want to salute the former occupant of this seat, the hon. Arif Virani, former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, who brought a bill forward beforehand. There are so many aspects of this bill that are important, such as the requirement to file digital safety plans, the requirement to publish those plans and the requirement for the commission to review them. This would not just protect kids; this would protect all of us, because if the digital safety plans and the design features that need to be improved would be improved with a push from this bill and from the commission, which would need the crucial flexibility to adapt to changing technologies, then we would have a safer online space, not just for teens, but for everyone. There would be the requirement of a resource person to address user concerns. How nice that would be. Who has tried to reach out to a social media company and been deterred? We have learned so much over the last six to seven years. We have been able to experience and expose the harms that have been created. It is time to take our agency back. It is time to reclaim a greater share of digital sovereignty for Canada. It is time to claim a share of our humanity back. It is time to act now, and protect not just the kids, but everyone in Canada.”

“Our laws already clearly define what hate speech is. The new commission will follow those existing laws, just like the police do.”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate and identify with many of the desires of the freedom of speech and the fundamental protections that exist in the charter. We have provisions in our hate crimes legislation that are very clear about the difference between, for instance, speech that seeks to vilify or dehumanize and other forms of speech. I believe the existing pieces of legislation we have will be looked at closely by the digital safety commission, just as they are looked at by any police service that has to enforce them.”

“Children face online risks today that we never faced. We need rules to keep them safe online. I want my colleague to explain why we must act now and how this bill protects children.”

“Mr. Speaker, I do not have any children of my own, but I am an uncle and a godfather. These children will grow up facing risks that we never had to confront as children. As legislators, we must understand that and implement a regulatory framework that ensures our children’s online safety. Could my colleague explain why it is important to act now and how Bill C-34 represents a significant step forward in protecting children in the digital world?”

“Parents and teenagers do not have the tools they need to deal with social media. This bill will help families by giving parents guidance and support.”

“Mr. Speaker, as it stands, parents and teenagers themselves lack the necessary tools. Two or three years ago, my family met with other parents in our neighbourhood to share advice on how our four families could work together to help our children deal with these issues, while also helping us as parents navigate them. Teenagers and children are not the only ones affected by social media and its ability to connect us with others and share information. In my view, the commission will be responsible for providing guidance to parents and families, and the bill itself does a great deal to help parents.”

“I want my colleague to explain more about why creating the new digital safety commission is a good step forward.”

“Mr. Speaker, in answer to my question, my colleague began talking about the new digital safety commission of Canada that this bill will establish. I would like to give him the opportunity to elaborate on why he thinks setting up this commission is a positive step forward.”

“Helping people rely less on social media is good. The new commission will share research and check the platforms' plans. This will help social media be more positive and earn people's trust.”

“Mr. Speaker, anything we can do to reduce people’s dependence on social media will be helpful. The commission’s role is to publish research and review social media platforms’ plans. In my opinion, the commission will enable us to help social media platforms be more positive and earn people’s trust.”

“I support this bill and want it sent to committee. Social media algorithms push children toward dangerous content like eating disorders and hate speech just to keep their attention. Tech companies do not care about safety and ignore Parliament, and parents cannot protect their kids from these platforms on their own.”

“Mr. Speaker, I start my speech, as many members have, with thoughts of my children. I have a 10-year-old son and an eight-year-old daughter, who are hopefully asleep by this point in the debate. I am living in this wonderful spot where they still like hanging out with their dad and do not have the device that many of us have in our pockets, with constant unfiltered access to the Internet. Having seen this debate before and having many colleagues and friends who have children who are older, I am afraid, like many Canadians. I am afraid of what will happen in a few years with the conversation when they ask, “Can I have a phone?” That conversation is coming. It is coming for all of us as parents. It is worrisome. We have ready access to the world in our pockets. I am old enough to remember the promise that this would be an enormous blessing, that it would be incredible for our society. In many ways it is, but in so many ways it is a curse. Like all of us in this place, I have talked to so many parents who are worried and who are afraid. When I was thinking about what I was going to say today, I was taken back to the last Parliament when I was on the justice committee, and we were doing a prestudy of Bill C-63, which was a previous iteration of online harms legislation. The topic was so important that despite a filibuster going on in the House, it was important for everyone at the justice committee to discuss it. I have been through a lot of difficult bills and studies in this place at committee, and I have to say that that one was the hardest by far. We had witness after witness and parent after parent who tried, who did everything they could, but whose son or daughter is no longer with us. They were children who felt trapped and cornered in these online spaces. We can talk about or suggest there was bad parenting, but these were parents who were paying attention. It should not matter, because our kids should be safe. We want our kids to be safe in all the spaces they occupy. I do not know that any member can stand up here today and say, and I am not suggesting that anyone has, that they are safe, because they are not. As the previous member said, these algorithms are dangerous. They take our kids to dangerous places. It was shocking to me that the algorithm knows. If someone is inclined to an eating disorder, it will show them people who are inclined to that particular affliction. If someone is inclined to hate speech, it will show them that as well, because the goal is to keep us focused on our phones as much as possible. It is the goal of the algorithm, and it is powerful. Having dealt with these social media companies, these big tech companies, through various bills, whether it was the Canada Elections Act, the Online Streaming Act or the various digital bills we have passed and debated over the years that I have been here, one thing has been certain to me: These companies do not care. These American tech giants do not care and have contempt for this place. I have watched them too many times come to parliamentary committees, be evasive, not answer members’ questions and have a complete disregard for what we are doing. These companies are so powerful that they can ignore a parliamentary summons. We are still waiting for Mark Zuckerberg to appear from a previous parliamentary summons. I do not think those carry over, but he was summonsed. He did not care; he did not have to. It does not matter. That was Meta. Google was slightly better before the heritage committee. Its representatives would come and be evasive. They would do their few minutes and move on. They did not care about the safety of Canadians. They even set up an astroturf campaign over one of our bills, with a fake individual who was arguing on behalf of artists. He had no members. He was just receiving money from Google and Meta, I believe. Basically, he was an unregistered lobbyist whom we caught lying to the heritage committee. Google did not care. It denied ever being behind it, even though this person testified he was receiving money from the company. To them, a bunch of kids dying is the cost of doing business. I hope that shocks all of us. I think it does. Having listened to many of the speeches here today, I hear there is a willingness to do something. It is important for Parliament to debate what that is, but it is shocking to see across the border the lack of willingness of our American friends and neighbours to regulate these companies, to rein them in. I do not know about everyone here, but I am tired of the harm. I am tired of the stories. Recently, a colleague of mine asked me to stop by a reception at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which does incredible work, against all odds, and is based in Winnipeg. We talked to parents who feel that their backs are against the wall and who have lost kids or had kids kidnapped. One of the parents had their child kidnapped through readily available software that was accessible in the child’s school. When I look to these parents, they look to us and ask what Parliament is doing. We need to act. I hear from members of this place that we should let parents parent, that it is not for the government to step in. I can appreciate that this is coming from a good place, but these companies are so powerful. Parents are busy. It is easy to let kids have some screen time. They cannot be over their shoulder 24 hours a day. The rabbit holes they can go down are incredibly dangerous and can lead to their deaths. Whether it is extortion leading to suicide, kidnapping, or all the horrific stories we have heard, we need to step up. We have a willingness to act, but it is shocking to me, and I hope it is shocking to everyone, having watched these companies do nothing, that we need to impose duties upon them: the duty to protect, the duty to act responsibly and the duty to make content inaccessible. They make so much money off of this. It should be shocking to all of us, to all Canadians, that Parliament needs to step up and say to these social media companies that they need to do the right thing, because they have been absent for so long. A member from Scarborough at our committee asked a Google executive, when Google came up, about a sign on the wall at its headquarters. It said “Do no evil”, which was probably mocking Microsoft. Google took down that sign. It was too embarrassing. I hope that we have a good debate, that we move forward with this legislation and that the committee has an excellent discussion about what moves forward next, because we owe it to our kids.”

“All parties need to work together to keep children safe online. I want the government and the Conservatives to vote for this bill so a committee can study it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his heartfelt speech. He spoke about the importance of Bill C-34, which seeks to keep children safe online. I think this is a good example of a bill where all political parties must work together. As parliamentarians, we all need to be mindful of this issue. Does my colleague think it is important for the government and the official opposition to vote in favour of the bill at second reading so that we can study it in committee?”

“We need to send this bill to committee so members can study it, change it, and pass it quickly. We all want to protect children, and Parliament must act now to keep them safe.”

“Mr. Speaker, absolutely, the bill needs to get to committee. I have been here a couple of years, and I have not seen a bill this size go through unamended. I imagine the committee will hear a lot of the same heart-wrenching stories that I heard, and I hope this compels committee members to act as quickly as possible. I do not envy them. I would not want to go through it again, but it is important work that Parliament will do. I know that every member of the House wants to protect our kids, but Parliament needs to act, government needs to step up and we need to do better for our children.”

“We need to send this bill to committee quickly. Free speech is important, but social media algorithms control what our kids see. These companies will not protect children on their own, because child deaths have been part of their business model. A committee can improve the bill, but we must act fast.”

“Mr. Speaker, to be honest, I am envious of the hon. member, and I hope I can find a way to jump my kids to that point through these difficult times. The member keeps talking about free speech, which is fundamentally important and protected by the charter. To paraphrase, I think it was Jon Stewart who said that social media is to free speech like twinkies are to food. It is highly processed garbage. The algorithm is controlling what we see and what our kids see. We cannot just wave this away as free speech and hope the social media companies will do the right thing, because we have seen, for too many years, that dead kids are okay to them and part of their business model. The committee will meet and do important things. Amendments will be made, and we will get to the best possible legislation we can, but we need to get the bill there as quickly as possible.”