Bill C-412: Keeping kids safe online, keeping civil liberties intact

A new bill provides clear safeguards for kids online, protects civil liberties, and moves the conversation about how online safeguards out of political backrooms. (Full text of bill included.)

Moments ago, I tabled, with the support of my party, Bill C-412 - a substantive piece of legislation that would protect Canadians online while protecting their civil liberties. (The link to the full text is included below, it will be officially posted on the Parliament of Canada’s website later today).

Last week, I shared the broad strokes of the bill in another article, which I encourage you to read. But now that the legislation has officially been released, I want to explain the thinking behind one of the three substantive areas of protections outlined the bill: protections for children when they are online.

There is now a growing body of evidence of potential negative consequences to children being online without safeguards. And, internationally, there is growing consensus for legislation to mitigate these impacts. The burning question for many is now, what should those safeguards entail?

The bill I tabled today aims to answer that question for Canadians. Bill C-412 is the first bill in Canadian history to comprehensively lay out a vision for what protections should be offered to children to keep them safe online, while preserving Canadian privacy and empowering parents. (Liberal Bill C-63 punts much of what would actually be required of online platform operators out of the public eye and into a future, opaque regulatory process). Bill C-412 attempts to strike a balance of the need to provide online access that prepares children for a life in adulthood that - unlike previous generations - will likely be lived as much online as in the physical world, with robust measures to prevent them from new threats to their safety. 

Our new Conservative bill takes a significantly different approach from Liberal Bill C-63 in addressing the issue of children's online safety. For starters, Bill C-63 has little chance of building consensus and becoming law, predominantly due to the lack of support for it even in left-wing circles, and the Liberal's dogmatic attachment to including a reinstatement of the highly controversial Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Rather than set up a costly $200M new bureaucracy that would move the conversation about online protections for children far into the future, and behind closed doors where tech lobbyists could manipulate the process, Bill C-412 proposes a clear, immediate legislated duty of care for online operators to keep kids safe when they're online. Our bill also involves parents in a much more meaningful way. And while Liberal Bill C-63 includes one supportable measure - strengthening mandatory reporting requirements of Internet child pornography by internet operators - this component could be hived off and passed on unanimous consent while the measures of our new legislation are considered.

The bill provides a broad definition of the type of service provider to which the bill's duty of care applies. The term "operator" is defined as "the owner or operator of a platform, such as an online service or application, that connects to the Internet and that is used, or could reasonably be expected to be used, by a minor, including a social media service and an online video gaming service." The broad term was used to ensure that any law passed about keeping kids safe will be able to capture a) a broad range of spaces where children are interacting with the online world and b) new forms of digital platforms as they arise. Said differently, this definition is meant to ensure that legislated protections for children move beyond the speed of government and at the speed of new tech development. It also acknowledges that children may be targeted on platforms beyond social media, including popular gaming platforms and other types of chat services. While I’m sure some tech companies will chafe at this definition, it’s meant to ensure that lobbyists for big tech firms can't escape a duty of care to children by setting narrow definitions of who laws apply to behind closed doors in a future regulatory process.

The bill also seeks to square the circle of age verification while ensuring user privacy by setting forth obligations for operators to use technology like computer algorithms to detect, within the reasonable ability of current technology, a user's age. The age of artificial intelligence means many platforms already do this to target advertising. Ever wonder how certain websites can show you an ad for something you were already considering buying? That's because what a user likes, clicks or searches, how long they linger over certain types of content, what emojis they use, language colloquialisms and more already allow operators and their AI to determine age without providing a single other shred of personal data. Knowing that the bill also sets out clear measures preventing operators from storing and using this type of data for kids, as well as putting firm guardrails on advertising to users an operator should reasonably know is a minor.  

And given many Canadian's concerns about privacy and the potential for misuse of digital IDs, Bill C-412 expressly prohibits using a digital identifier (defined as an electronic representation of an individual's identity and of their right to access information or services online) for things like age verification. If the tech community can invent an artificial intelligence that can independently reason through PhD-level math and science problems, it's clear operators have the technology to enable users to have their privacy and interact safely online, too.

The bill also clearly lays out what operators must prevent from happening to children when they are using their service, including preventing engagement that suggests patterns of addiction-like behaviour. It requires operators to have regular independent audits in their efforts to uphold this newly legislated duty of care towards children and set up easy-to-use reporting mechanisms for users who may find evidence of the duty of care being broken.

The bill requires parental consent before the first use of an operator's platform by a child (defined as an individual under the age of 16 years), parental controls, and the ability for parents to opt out of or override those controls' default settings. It also requires operators to clearly and prominently set forth on their platforms the safeguards that they offer to kids and how they comply with their legislated duty of care - which gives parents more information about what a platform does and how their kids might interact with it before allowing them to use it. These requirements acknowledge the diversity in Canadian families and children, leaving the decisions for how children interact with the online world in the ultimate hands of their parents, while providing enough safeguards to ensure that even if a child finds a way around their parents that operators still have a duty to protect them when they use their services. The bill also proposes that operators face steep fines and the possibility of lawsuits (a legislated private right of action) if they are found derelict in these duties.

So, the bill seeks to establish a novel set of checks and balances between the government, operators, and parents to keep children safe online. Under this new legislation, existing government regulators, law enforcement, and the judiciary will ensure operators follow their duty of care to keep kids safe online. Operators would be formally required to ensure they keep kids safe under a clear set of guidelines. Parents would have all the tools needed to understand what their kids are doing online and make informed decisions about what types of permissions to give them for their online use.

I realize this bill may provoke rigorous debate over things like the age at which a minor should be able to be online without any parental consent, the definition of what constitutes an online operator, what fines should be levelled against operators that break the rules, or what the duty of care of an operator should be. That's a very good thing, but it's long overdue. And that's what the Liberals have failed to do in nearly a decade of government: put Canadian families, rather than lobbyists and bureaucrats, at the centre of the debate on what protections the government should be providing to their children online.

I intend to closely monitor the debate this bill provokes, consider all feedback given in good faith, and if required, improve the bill’s content. The goal in presenting the bill today is to build broad, non-partisan consensus for common sense measures to protect kids online. My party believes the bill - the result of over a year of work which involved the input of many of our caucus members - provides the solid foundation to keep Canadian children safe online that the Liberals have failed to deliver in their entire tenure in government. Conservatives are tabling it as a private members bill, doing so knowing our members have seen private members legislation that never had a chance of being read in the House of Commons quickly become law because it provoked a necessary public debate and a smart solution to a problem that the government had previously failed to provide. And unlike the Liberals, we know this is an evolving area of public policy that needs both public debate and engaged, responsive legislators to quickly provide solutions that all Canadians can get behind.

So now it's over to you— you can read the full text of the bill here (it will be officially posted on the Parliament of Canada’s website later today, at which point I will update this link) and participate in the conversation.

Together, we can keep Canadians safe online while preserving their civil liberties.