“Children seeing pornography online harms them. This bill only covers social media, but kids see this material on other websites too. We need to work together to protect kids everywhere online, not just on social media.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am very concerned about the implication of children being exposed in particular to pornographic content online. This is a major and still underdiscussed issue and problem. Many children are exposed to pornography online at the age of nine, 10, 11 or 12 years old, and it has significant negative implications for them, their understanding and their expectations. In looking at this bill, my understanding is that it deals with some of this content if it is on social media websites. It does not deal with other situations outside of social media where young people may encounter this content. I think it is incumbent on us to work together to look at this and/or other legislation that addresses it. I wonder if the member could comment on ensuring that children are not accessing this material not only on social media but anywhere else.”

“I want a committee to study this social media safety bill before we vote on it. Kids are being harmed and bullied online, and tech companies have failed to protect them. This bill has some good ideas, but it leaves out private messaging, lowers fines for tech companies, and leaves too many decisions to be made later. We need parents and experts to help us fix it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am going to split my time. In 1965, The Who sang The Kids Are Alright. In 1998, The Offspring answered that with The Kids Aren’t Alright. That was before Instagram and Snapchat and before strangers across the world could come into a child’s bedroom. Today, that answer is truer than ever, and I think most would agree in the House the kids are not all right. They are being hooked by algorithms engineered on purpose to keep them scrolling past midnight because every extra minute they scroll is worth money to somebody on the other side. They are being bullied in ways that never log off, and they are being hunted in their own bedrooms by predators who never have to pass a parent’s bedroom. A generation ago, a child’s bedroom door was a wall, and now it is a window to the entire world. There are no Liberal kids and there are no Conservative kids. There are no NDP kids. There are just kids, so I want to approach this bill, Bill C-34, in a way that any parent would: not asking whether it sounds good, but whether it actually keeps people safe. Every member of the House knows the name Amanda Todd. She was 12 years old when a stranger in the Netherlands hiding behind 22 different aliases found her online. He coerced her. He captured images of her. He threatened to send them to everyone she loved, and then he did. Weeks before she died, Amanda held out flash cards to a camera one at a time and told the world what was happening to her. She was 15 when she took her own life, and she carried all of that alone. Then it took 10 years to put the man responsible behind bars, and by then he had been convicted of crimes against 33 other young people. We told ourselves that this would not happen again. Then came Carson Cleland, 12 years old, from Prince George. A sextortionist found him on Snapchat, an app whose own rules said that he was too young to be on there. Nobody stopped him from signing up. Nobody stopped the stranger from finding him. My colleague from Cariboo—Prince George told the House it was just 12 hours from the first threat to his death. His father said it best when he said our kids are “not built for adult problems in a kid’s world.” For Amanda, justice took a decade. For Carson, the harm took half a day. The predators get faster and the laws do not keep up. Amanda and Carson are not rare. They are just names that we know. Behind them, there are thousands of names that we do not know of thousands of other cases. In 2023, Canadian police recorded almost 20,000 incidents of online sexual exploitation, up 59% in a single year. That is more than 50 cases a day. Sextortion reports to Cybertip.ca rose 300% between 2020 and 2025. Where the victim is known, more than four out of five are boys, boys like Carson. Nearly two-thirds of cases happen on Instagram or Snapchat or some app on some kids’ phones tonight. These companies have the data, the engineers and the billions, but they have lacked will. One in four Canadian youth has been cyber-bullied. In a classroom of 28 people, that is seven kids. Every one of those numbers is a child on the edge of their bed at two in the morning with a phone glowing in the dark, scrolling and too ashamed to wake their parents up to tell them what happened. Here is a number I want every member of the House to remember: Nine in 10 Canadian teens who were sexually victimized online were harmed in private messages. It was not the public feed and not in the DMs, but behind a closed door on a screen that no parent can see. There are ideas in this bill that deserve our attention, there is no question, such as a duty on platforms to act responsibly, a 24-hour takedown of child sexual abuse material and non-consensual intimate images and a duty on AI chatbots to connect a child in crisis with an actual real person. For years, we let these platforms police themselves. They buried the safety fixtures six menus deep. Self-regulation has had its chance and it has failed kids. Parents were too busy maybe to find it six menu items deep. An idea on paper has never really protected a child. What matters is how the law works on an ordinary Wednesday night like tonight when a stranger sends that first message. Those questions cannot be settled just on the floor in a short debate. The committee has to do some work on this. These are some of the questions. First, would it reach the harm where it happens? Private messaging where nine out of 10 victims are harmed would be expressly excluded from the bill’s duties. We want to know why. Committees should ask what safety-by-design duties, like stopping strangers from messaging minors by default, could protect kids in the DMs without anybody reading their messages. Second, what would the rules actually say? This has not been clear in the legislation. Roughly 50 key decisions in this legislation are left until after passage: 19 of them for cabinet and 31 of them for a commission that does not actually exist yet. Which platforms are covered? What is safety by design? Are gaming platforms in there or at all, or will that only come later? Parliament should vote on the whole house, not just a framework of it. Third, we all have seen the example of Australia. We want to know what it teaches us. Australia went first, so we do not really have to guess. Platforms there shut down 4.7 million children’s accounts in the first month, but three months in, its own regulator found that teen social media use had barely moved. It went from 86% to 81%. About half of the teens still online said that nobody even checked their age. As a result, parents became less aware about what their kids were doing because of it. A ban with a weak age check is not really a ban at all. It is like leaving the key under the mat at the front door. It does not really keep kids out. It moves them out of their parents’ sight, or it moves them, in the case of Australia, to other platforms that are not captured within the legislation. Fourth, we want to know if the penalties are strong enough. The last online harm bill, which was a terrible bill in this House, set the minimum fees at 6% of global revenue. This one would cut that to 3%. There are some questions about why. For some of the richest companies in history, a fine that they can budget for is not really a punishment. It is like a licensing fee that they work into the cost of doing business. Fifth, does it touch the actual business model? On these platforms, kids are not the customers. Their attention is actually the product. That is the problem. Our own heritage committee recommended banning targeted ads and data harvesting aimed at minors. The government declined, while admitting that the algorithmic feeds drive the actual addictive designs. We want to know more about that, certainly. Finally, most importantly, the member before me spoke about the digital safety commission, but who will watch the watchdog? Who will write these rules? What judge would enforce this? Is it five people? Is it one person? The legislation really is not clear on any of that, so we would like to hear more from the government. Hopefully we will get that in the course of this debate in this House. What recourse does a family have when the platform fails a child? Through all of this, there is one principle that should guide everyone here: Parents know their kids better than any government or tech company ever could. A mother can tell her son to put his phone down and go to sleep, but what she cannot do is out-muscle an algorithm built by thousands of engineers to keep him awake at night. A good law does not take her place. It stands beside her. I hope that we have that conversation in this House. There must be a law that protects all privacy. It is the work of the committee not to blindly support something that needs clarity, but to hear from the experts and parents like Carson’s parents. It must be a law that protects adults’ privacy too. We cannot find every user under 16 without checking every user over 16, so there are some real questions about what that could mean for every parent and grandparent who would have to give their identification to a platform. Who stores that data and for how long? What happens when it is breached? It is not a question of if, but it is a question of when. I will end with this. A paper tiger does not keep a child safe. It does not stop a predator and it gives no parent peace of mind, so it is important to get this right. We owe it to the families of Carson and Amanda and thousands of others. I started by saying the kids are not all right and I mean it. The kids are not all right today, but if we ask the hard questions and put down good legislation to keep kids safe, then maybe they will be all right.”

“This bill is not clear about who will run the commission. It could be up to five people, or just one person. Neither the member, the minister, nor the bill itself has made this clear to us or the public.”

“Mr. Speaker, the legislation is really unclear about the commission, and that is the answer we are trying to seek in the House. It could be three to five and it could be one, and that one is left up to regulation after the legislation. The question that we have in the House is to make it clear. I know the member opposite has read the legislation so I am not suggesting that he has not, but he has not made it clear to this House, the legislation has not made it clear to this House and the minister has not made it clear to the public.”

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“Children are facing terrible bullying and threats online, and we must protect them. I want to know if this bill will actually protect kids, or if it just creates more government bureaucracy.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member made mention of Amanda Todd. I have met the mother. Amanda lived in my community, Maple Ridge, and also in Port Coquitlam. At 12 years old, she was persuaded to expose herself, then she was blackmailed, went through years of bullying and ended up killing herself. What happened was terrible. I know that Conservatives want children to be protected online because they are vulnerable. I just responded to a letter today from a constituent. She said her 12-year-old granddaughter received communication through social media from two young men who, in their posts, threatened to kill and rape her 12-year-old granddaughter and said that she should kill herself. This is happening. This was reported to the police. Parents, families and children are feeling very vulnerable. I wonder if the member could talk a bit about this bill in the sense that we want something to happen, we want them to be protected, but how much bureaucracy is going to be involved as opposed to really getting the job done of protecting our kids?”

“We need to send this bill to a committee to study it carefully. It must have real power to protect kids, not just be words on paper. It should help parents protect their own children instead of having the government do it.”

“Mr. Speaker, Amanda Todd held up flashcards because she believed that the people who would know her story would then act. In the case of Carson Cleland, also from B.C., his parents spoke out during the hardest days of their lives because he had hoped that people would act. They did their part. I think it is incumbent on this House to truly look at this legislation very carefully and make sure that it is not just words on paper, that it has teeth, that we do not follow the example of Australia where it does not work, that we give parents the tools to parent, that we stand side by side with parents rather than letting the government parent their kids. That is what parents want to see from this legislation, and it is incumbent on the House to take this to committee and really study it.”

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“I do not support this bill. We do not have enough information about how the new safety commission will work. Similar rules failed in another country. Naming only 20 social media companies will just push people to other apps and give parents false hope. This bill raises too many unanswered questions.”

“Mr. Speaker, there is very much agreement with the member who just asked the question. It is hard to vote on something that you know halfway. We do not know anything about this commission. We do have a very live example in one of our country’s closest allies, where pieces of this did not work. We know that putting 20 different social media companies into a piece of legislation just drives people into other ones where they are not actually off and it drives parents to put trust in the government where it does not deserve trust. There are a lot more questions than answers in this legislation and that is exactly where we are on it.”

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“Social media harms children, but this bill is flawed. It is too vague, its rules can be easily dodged by kids, and checking people's ages risks their privacy. I want us to fix this bill with clear rules for tech companies that protect children and put control in parents' hands, not the government's.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-34, more commonly known as the safe social media act. I believe that everyone in the House agrees that the rapid development of social media has created enormous challenges for families across Canada and the world. What is the answer to this challenge? The vast web of global connection it has brought us has also created serious mental health and addiction challenges for children and teens. As a mother of two grown children, I saw the beginnings of this phenomenon, with the Internet’s opening and expansion into digital spaces, when my children were very young. As early as the mid-1990s, the centre for online addiction was established and Internet addiction disorder was first recognized. In 1997, the New York Times wrote that psychologists are beginning to treat patients who spend 40, 50 or 60 hours a week in chat rooms and online games, ignoring spouses, children and jobs. They described the classic cycle of tolerance, withdrawal and a desperate reliance on the glowing terminal for emotional gratification. This could well describe the same challenges we face today but, instead of just addicted adults, it is children whose health and development are being harmed. The Internet’s uniquely absorbent nature, along with chat rooms and online games, has only become more dangerous because of smart phones, algorithms and AI models. Nowadays, these addictive and mind-altering spaces have become available anytime, anywhere. Ask any parent or teacher, and we will find that children view their digital lives as intertwined with their everyday lives. Purely online friends and hangouts have become commonplace. These spaces let them educate and express themselves. It is why children and teens report the longest screen time and highest social media use of any age group. We know that spending seven-plus hours on personal screen time is significantly more likely to lead to anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts. These platforms were never designed for children, yet children are vulnerable to their design. Recommendations for algorithms, push notifications, endless scrolling and autoplay can repeatedly direct them toward content that keeps them engaged. These design choices can amplify exposure to harmful material and make it difficult for young users to disengage. At the same time, AI chatbots and digital companions are becoming increasingly integrated into the platforms young people use, creating new and largely untested risks. Parents who once set computer time now know that these barriers do not exist when children under 10 can readily access TikTok, Instagram and ChatGPT. They cannot control their children’s algorithms or be notified when harmful material appears. One of the most tragic case studies on this subject involves the death, last year, of 13-year-old British Columbian Maddy Croswell. Her parents and the coroner’s office found this case of teen suicide to have occurred after a social media platform she was using repeatedly pushed hundreds of hours of harmful content onto her feed advocating self-harm and eventual suicide. Her parents thought they had done everything right. They had parental controls on her phone. They monitored her screen time. They believed they had created a safe, loving home environment, but it was not enough. Sadly, many more cases like this exist across Canada. Parental involvement is not enough to challenge the enormous reach of social media algorithms that can push dangerous and harmful content to young children and teens. According to Stats Canada, one in four children aged 12 to 17 experienced cyber-bullying. Police reported that online child sexual exploitation incidents reached 16,000 in 2024, up 347% from 2014. I have heard from many parents about the helplessness they feel and the fear they have for their children. They feel they are in a David versus Goliath battle with Meta, Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube. AI companies and their algorithms are also increasingly dangerous in this respect. Reports that the shooter at Tumbler Ridge was assisted in planning this deadly shooting by ChatGPT is sickening for all Canadians. OpenAI’s failure to report clear warnings of violence has left a community devastated for generations to come. Parliament must act on this, but as lawmakers we must ensure that what we pass is good law, not just good intentions. For myself, I would like to see legislation that accomplishes three main goals: protect children and teens from harmful content online; set clear rules on tech giants that affect all our lives; and put more control in parents’ hands, not the government’s. Canada also has the opportunity with this legislation to review other jurisdictions that have established similar measures and see what has worked and what has not. Australia, which was the first to move forward with the social media ban for those under 16, has found that the measure it chose to restrict access has frequently been circumvented. Surveys by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner showed that 61% to 70% of young Australians aged 12 to 15 who previously used restricted platforms still have active accounts. Children still using the apps report that it is easy to bypass the restrictions and still have active accounts. If we were to ask children nowadays what they think about this type of bill, they would say that they would find a way to get through if they have to. Teens easily dodge the rules by lying about their birth year, having older teens create new accounts or using facial recognition workarounds. Platforms also do not always enforce regulations consistently across their sites. We have also had concerning evidence that bans in other countries led to a spike in teenagers using virtual private networks, VPNs, to mask their country of origin when accessing social media platforms. Using VPNs often means youth are accessing unregulated underground platforms that could lead them to more unsafe content rather than less. What can we do to get ahead of this? We have to consider the downstream consequences. If we ask any teenage visitor to the House of Commons today whether a ban we enacted would discourage them from accessing Instagram or TikTok, they would probably laugh and say no. That is why we need to ensure the bill has real teeth, not just vague regulation for future bureaucrats to interpret. For example, Bill C-34 leaves the definition of “regulated social media services” to future regulations, but will it be based strictly on active Canadian user accounts, annual revenue or specific platform features? Will the age restrictions be determined by facial recognition, ID uploads or credit cards? What about privacy? Who will be asked to store this information? Would it be government, third parties or tech giants themselves? How long can they store it, and how secure will it be? The bill’s regulations for chatbot services will soon face open-ended AI models that let almost any website create a functioning chatbot service for everything from customer service to online shopping. Given the Liberals’ poor track record on online regulation and censorship, the House must move carefully as it considers Bill C-34. Previous failures and fiascos, such as Bill C-11 and Bill C-63, infringed upon Canadian civil liberties. This cannot be allowed to be repeated when so many parents are asking us to help them hold dangerous digital platforms and addictive social media companies to account.”

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“We cannot rush this bill. Children's lives are at stake, and we cannot just redo it if we get it wrong. We need to study it very carefully in committee.”

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member’s passion for this. I know how important it is to him that this bill passes, that this bill goes through and becomes legislation, but he must also understand that, if we do not do this right, it is not just something we can do a redo on. There are children’s lives at stake here. There are families’ lives at stake. We need to do this right, which means we need to bring it under careful scrutiny, and we need to make sure this is brought under careful scrutiny in committee.”

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“This bill is very important for children and families. We need to listen to parents, kids, and every province. We should also learn from other countries so we get this law right.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think everyone in the House knows that this could be one of the most important bills during our mandate that could affect the most people, in particular children and families. Yes, we need to get input from all provinces, including Quebec. We need to get input from parents. We need to get input from children. We need to look at what other countries have done, because we are not the first to approach this situation. We need to make sure we learn from past mistakes, from countries like Australia, to learn from them and, again, make sure this legislation is done right for the sake of our children.”