“This bill protects Canadian children from harmful content online. It creates a digital safety commission that can fine companies that break the rules. I want to know if the member supports this bill and the commission.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is really important that we recognize that Bill C-34 is all about protecting the children in Canada. It would complement the wonderful job that parents and guardians provide, but it recognizes that the Internet is seven days a week, 24 hours a day, and that there is harmful content there. What we are hoping to see from the Conservative Party is support in principle for a digital safety commission so that when we have the regulations, they would actually be enforced with, potentially, things like fines. There has to be a consequence that gives the legislation teeth in its actions to protect our children. In principle, does the member support the legislation and, in particular, the commission?”

“I want the House to pass this bill to keep Canadians safe online. Social media platforms spread harmful content, and their rules are not consistent. This bill sets basic safety rules for all platforms and defines what harmful content must be stopped, including content that sexually abuses children.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to participate in second reading debate on Bill C-34, the safe social media act. Our government is focused on supporting victims of crime as well as the important work of protecting Canadians online. My time today will focus on how the bill would address these priorities through the types of harmful content covered and why it is necessary in protecting Canadians online. While the online world continues to evolve, and our digital reality continues to change, platforms, self-expression and the exchange of information have given rise to a new set of challenges. Online platforms have algorithms designed for harmful content to spread and multiply, exposing users to terrible harm. Some platforms have limited rules, community standards or terms of service. However, those definitions, thresholds and practices vary hugely from service to service. One platform may label or remove content, but another may even promote it, creating visible inconsistencies and significant gaps in protection. Canadians should be able to rely on a minimum baseline safety standard across all platforms. Bill C-34 would do this by defining specific categories of harmful content, including the following seven categories: content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes—”

“I want the House to pass this bill. It makes social media platforms protect Canadians from seven kinds of harm, like bullying kids, spreading hate, and sharing private photos without consent. It also keeps children off adult websites and labels fake content made by computers.”

“Mr. Speaker, I was addressing the following seven categories, which are outlined in the bill: first, content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor; second, intimate content communicated without consent; third, content used to bully a child; fourth, content that induces a child to harm themselves; fifth, content that foments hatred; sixth, content that incites violence; and, last, terrorism or violent extremism content. The first category is content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, which is among the most serious harms that this bill would address. I have travelled across the country and talked to law enforcement, and of course to the RCMP here in Ottawa, and cases involving this type of harmful content are on the rise. The pain caused by this kind of content is profound, ongoing and not limited to the original act of victimization. When such material is communicated, reproduced, circulated or re-encountered online, the harm is continuously experienced over time, each reappearance reviving the pain of the original trauma to the victim. The second category is intimate content communicated without consent. This category has a particular gender dimension. Online harassment affects women at a much higher rate than men. This may take the form of revenge porn, which is a specific type of intimate content shared or posted without consent. It also manifests itself through sexual extortion, in which victims are forced to pay sums of money to have images taken down. In this category, the harm is deeply personal, often immediate and in many cases particularly devastating for the victims, whose dignity, privacy and autonomy are violated in an online world accessible to their friends and family. The third category is content used to bully a child, which addresses the harm that many children experience online, but is not currently adequately or expeditiously addressed. Content used to bully a child can have significant cumulative and negative impacts on a child’s physical and mental health, development and self-esteem. Over time, relationships can also be impacted by this type of harm. Bill C-34’s definition does not catch mere rudeness or criticism. The act’s definition focuses on content that could cause serious harm to a child’s physical or mental health. General expressions of opinion are not captured, and this carefully bounded definition addresses serious cyber-bullying while respecting broader expression. The fourth category is content that induces a child to harm themselves. This addresses content that advocates for, or advises a person to engage in, self-harm, disordered eating or dying by suicide. In fact, over the past decade, depression has doubled among Canadians aged 15 to 24. Anxiety has quadrupled, and emergency room visits for self-harm among teenage girls has risen by 138% in my home province of Ontario. The fifth defined harm is content that foments hatred. The definition of “hatred” abides by the Supreme Court’s now widely accepted definition, as set out in R v. Keegstra. This content expresses extreme detestation or vilification on the basis of a protected characteristic under the Canadian Human Rights Act. The sixth category is content that incites violence and captures content that actively encourages real-world harm and pain. Violence and the threat of violence have spiked online, enabled by circulation and amplification. I am sure many of my colleagues have witnessed this themselves. It should be noted at this point that Bill C-34 would not newly criminalize this. Death threats are already illegal, as they should be in a free society. This inclusion in the bill would simply strengthen online platforms’ obligations to address it and to remove it. The seventh and final category is terrorism or violent extremism content. Here, the definition captures content that actively encourages, promotes, facilitates, offers training for or recruits for violent extremist or terrorist activity. Training, encouragement, operational assistance and recruitment play a role in international terrorism networks, festering and predating online. In addition to the seven types of harmful content, the act tackles access to pornography, requiring covered services to ensure that pornographic content is not accessible to children. It would do so by requiring age verification or estimation measures to be used to prevent access to pornographic content. The act also addresses an emerging technology with potential for significant harm: synthetic content. In the bill, synthetic content is defined as computer-generated content whose depiction is likely to be mistaken as authentic. This captures content like deepfakes and AI-generated materials that look real. Synthetic text is excluded from the scope of the bill. Only synthetic images, audio or video would be subject to the labelling requirement. The safe social media act also addresses coordinated, inauthentic behaviour or bot campaigns. Under the duty to act responsibly, social media services would have to mitigate risks to exposure and label content from bot campaigns, combatting disinformation and foreign interference campaigns. Bill C-34 would combat the most damaging types of harmful content online in a manner that aligns with other regimes and other jurisdictions. The safe social media act is in line with our government’s commitment to supporting victims of crime, as well as the protection of Canadians online, while respecting rights, institutional roles and the realities of today’s online world.”

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“I want the House to pass this bill. Harmful online content has increased a lot over the last 10 to 12 years. This bill helps police by removing harmful posts while they investigate crimes, which protects victims. The police want this change.”

“Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, the increase in these types of situations has been severe over the last 10 to 12 years, with more people in these online spaces and the changes that have happened to social media. This bill would augment the work of law enforcement. It would not hinder it. It would help support the work they are doing. Giving this commission a clear threshold and removing this type of harmful content online would, as I mentioned in my speech, help victims not be revictimized while the police are doing investigations and the work they need to do when criminal thresholds have been met and criminal charges can be laid. This would complement the work of law enforcement, and they welcome this change.”

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“Our government is committed to holding big tech companies accountable and protecting children from online harms like sextortion. We showed this by passing another bill that makes tech companies keep evidence to help police solve crimes, even without the opposition's support. All our online safety bills are meant to regulate these companies and punish people who harm others online.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think people can see our commitment just by looking at Bill C-22, which is currently in the other place. It took over a year of debating that bill in the House of Commons to finally get it through committee and get it passed, without the support of opposition parties. That bill is going to be crucial in helping to solve a lot of cases and going up against the big tech companies, which can preserve the information needed in an online space when harm is done to someone. Take sextortion as an example. Many children have lost their lives over sextortion in our country. Those cases could be prevented and solved quicker, and people could be held accountable. All the pieces of legislation that we are putting forward are for making sure that these companies are better regulated and are accountable and that the person who does the harm is charged and convicted.”

“I support this bill. It protects Canadian children and helps make our communities safer. I thank the secretary of state for her work on it.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to personally express my appreciation for and thanks to the secretary of state. She has been leading the fight here, with a number of legislative initiatives to make our communities safer, on behalf of the Prime Minister and the entire government caucus, working with a couple of other ministers. I believe she is right when she says that this is a very important aspect of protecting the children of Canada, and it complements many other initiatives. This Parliament has brought forward a historic number of pieces of legislation to make our communities safer, and I want to express my appreciation, as I know many of my constituents do, for what she has been able to accomplish.”

“I agree with my colleague. We need to pass these bills together to fight harmful online activity and better protect children.”

“Mr. Speaker, to my colleague, who has done a lot of heavy lifting in debating these issues in the House, I appreciate the feedback on these important bills. He is right. They are all complementary. We need to put all of these things together so we can combat this type of activity and protect our children better.”

“The federal government has the power and the duty to protect young people on social media. Taking action at the federal level does not stop Quebec from passing its own rules to protect children too.”

“Mr. Speaker, some aspects of my colleague’s speech were clear, but others were not. One thing he made clear is that the Government of Canada has both the jurisdiction and the responsibility to protect our young people when it comes to social media. Less clear were his suggestions that the Canadian government could prevent the Government of Quebec from doing the same. How does the fact that the Canadian government is providing strong leadership to protect our children prevent the Government of Quebec from implementing its own measures to protect our young people, if it chooses to do so?”