No Brainer: Bill C-216 Protects Kids Online While Preserving Civil Liberties, Solves Problems for the Liberals

A bill that's a non-partisan plea for the government to abandon flawed approaches to this issue and to pass smart measures to protect kids online.

Last week, Liberal cabinet ministers Steven Guilbeault, Evan Soloman and Sean Fraser were each asked which of their departments would be responsible for delivering some measure of protection for (the often ill-defined as a term) online harms in Canada. Their answer: unclear, but stay tuned.

Their comments will come as cold comfort to parents desperate for long overdue online protections for kids and likely also put a chill down the spines of civil liberty defence groups. That’s because comments underscore a Liberal government failure that incoming Prime Minister Mark Carney must grapple with. That is, can he promptly produce a bill that would provide greater protections for children against things like online sexploitation, while resisting the urge to resurrect previous Liberal civil-liberty impinging censorship laws that advocacy groups across the political spectrum have balked at?

My hope on that front has been diminished for several reasons. First, the Liberals already have two failed attempts on this front - a universally panned bill that died on the order paper before the 2021 general election, and the arguably even more troubling bill (Bill C63) in 2024. Then, during the election, Mr. Carney made comments about the topic that set off alarm bells in many communities about what his plans were for the file. But the lack of clarity on the matter from Mr. Carney's ministers on the topic this week is perhaps the biggest tell because it suggests that the matter was not specifically included in any one of their mandate letters.

So today, I took it upon myself create some hope on this front and table Bill C-216, cumbersomely entitled, "An Act to enact the Protection of Minors in the Digital Age Act and to amend two Acts."  (A big thank you to my colleague Andrew Lawton for seconding the bill).

As I drew high in the Private Members Bill lottery (a fancy way of saying I can table a bill that will actually be read), this matter will be read and voted on in Parliament in short order. This scenario means that there is now a viable bill in front of Parliament that should be supportable by advocates who are rightly demanding more online protections and also by groups that have also correctly argued that these protections do not need to come at the expense of Canadian civil liberties.

The bill builds on my previous bill, C-412, tabled last fall. But rather than just re-tabling that bill, I amended and strengthened it based on feedback from multiple different stakeholder groups.

This new bill is in three parts.

Part one creates a legislated duty of care for online operators regarding protecting kids online. Part two takes supportable language previously proposed by the Liberal government to strengthen legislation pertaining to the reporting of child sexual exploitation and abuse materials the previous Conservative government had passed. And part three modernizes existing laws that prevent the non-consensual distribution of intimate images to include deepnudes, and modernizes criminal harassment laws to allow victims to go to a judge to seek immediate action to protect them from their harasser.

Parts two and three create important, long overdue protections which I will write about in the days ahead (subscribe here for updates!). But since most of the immediate analysis of this bill will likely focus on part one, allow me to break down the thinking behind it.

With specific regard to part one, this new version of the bill tightens the language and the scope used in the duty of care for kids. It is designed to both make the bill manageable for online operators and acceptable to civil liberties advocates. It also is designed to provide children with safe access to online platforms, unlike outright bans proposed in other countries. The duty of care is also designed to be broader in application than just to the big social media platforms so that protections will be nimble enough to address future advancements in technology and other types of platforms where kids have been proven to be highly vulnerable to predation.

I admit that the duty of care will not satisfy online platforms who believe that they shouldn't be required to have a duty of care for kids who interact with their product, those who think that the status quo for online child safety is sufficient, or those who want an expensive new regulator with unfettered power to impose government-managed restrictions on online speech for adults which go well beyond existing hate speech laws. It also won't please big tech companies or unelected government officials who would rather have what the duty of care should entail being decided outside of Parliament in a closed-door regulatory process. None of these scenarios are in the best interest of my constituents, and as such, I did not write the bill to these ends.

However, the duty of care will provide immediate protection for children online and significantly more tools for parents to help them manage their children's online experience. The whole point of my decision to table this bill is to have this discussion quickly, in Parliament, enabling elected officials to decide what the scope of the duty of care should be. 

So on that front, yes, I am open to making reasoned amendments to this bill. The fact that I made substantive changes from the bill's first version should serve as proof to that point. I expressly wrote the bill intending to ensure it didn't contain any political poison pills for other parties represented in Parliament. That is how Parliament should work - someone tables a decent starting point, and then Members of Parliament work together in good faith to refine and strengthen it. 

I also hope this bill will solve a problem that the Liberal government might not yet be fully aware of. Previous iterations of the Liberal's online harms legislation proposed to essentially replicate the United Kingdom's online speech regulator, Ofcom. As that agency has asserted itself in the past year or so, it has been fraught with banana-crackers level speech policing controversy and accusations of scope creep and overreach, so much so that it has become a significant trade irritant for the Americans. 

So, as Canada pursues a new trade deal with the United States, pushing the same approach as the Brits (and arguably going much further, based on the content Liberal bill C-63)  on this issue may have negative consequences for Canadians well beyond the obvious infringements upon their civil liberties. Online protections are needed and warranted, but, putting it mildly, an expensive and ubiquitous regulator with unfettered powers to expand its scope and to police all manner of speech may not be the winner that initial proponents of Ofcom and its proposed Canadian equivalent thought it would be.

So to Mark, Evan, Steven and Sean - my bill allows everyone to win, and solves a big set of problems for your government while providing long overdue and urgently needed protections for kids. It is a non-partisan plea to your government to decouple controversial measures that would chill free speech in Canada from no-brainer measures to protect kids online that everyone in Parliament could support, which would finally ensure swift passage. 

Your move.