If Prime Minister Mark Carney has is way, logging on to social media in Canada may one day require more than a password.

Critics say the Liberal Party's latest legislation is a backdoor attempt to normalize digital ID while creating a powerful new bureaucracy to police online speech.

Platforms that fail to comply could face fines of up to $10 million and an additional penalty of 3% of global revenue.

This is but the latest step in a years-long campaign to expand government oversight of the internet that began under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and appears to be accelerating under Carney.

Harm's way

Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, would prohibit anyone under the age of 16 from using social media platforms. To enforce that restriction, users would have to verify their age online, prompting concerns that Canadians could ultimately be required to use digital ID or comparable age-verification systems simply to access social media.

The bill also establishes broad categories of prohibited “harmful content.” Platforms that fail to comply could face fines of up to $10 million and an additional penalty of 3% of global revenue. Those companies may in turn seek to shift liability onto individual livestreamers and content creators, creating what this reporter has previously described as “trickle-down censorship.”

It remains unclear whether Bill C-34 is intended to replace the Trudeau government’s proposed Online Harms Act or simply add another layer to Canada’s growing regime of internet regulation.

Hate reach

Meanwhile, Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, awaits final approval before becoming law — a step widely expected to proceed without difficulty. The legislation expands Canada’s hate speech laws and removes the long-standing defense for good-faith religious expression in certain criminal hate speech cases, raising alarms among civil liberties advocates and religious freedom groups.

The earlier Online Harms Act (Bill C-63) never became law after Parliament dissolved before it could be passed. Even so, it remains one of the most alarming assaults on free expression ever proposed in Canada.

Among its most controversial provisions, the bill would have allowed courts to impose preventive peace bonds — including curfews, travel restrictions, electronic monitoring, and even house arrest — on people who had not been convicted or even accused of a hate crime, but who authorities feared might commit one in the future. In other words, Canadians could have had their liberty restricted not for something they had done, but for something the government believed they might do.

Pre-crime division

The legislation also would have revived Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, exposing citizens to steep civil penalties for certain forms of online expression, and expanded hate-related penalties elsewhere in Canadian law. It is little wonder that critics denounced the proposal as a form of “thought crime” or “pre-crime” legislation — a dramatic departure from the traditional principle that people should be punished for their actions, not for what governments fear they may think, say, or do.

Bill C-34 identifies seven categories of prohibited “harmful content”:

• Intimate content communicated without consent.
• Content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor.
• Content that induces a child to harm himself.
• Content used to bully a child.
• Content that foments hatred.
• Content that incites violence.
• Terrorism or violent extremism content.

Notably, the legislation does not define “hatred,” even as it devotes extensive language to defining “terrorism” and “violent extremism” as politically, religiously, or ideologically motivated acts intended to intimidate the public or undermine institutions or social stability.

The bill would also establish a digital safety commissioner, a position critics say could function as a de facto national internet censor with sweeping authority to assess and enforce rules governing online content.

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JCCF board member John Robson. David Krayden

'Blank check'

Among the organizations condemning the legislation is the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

“Greater transparency and accountability from tech companies is long overdue. But that must come through clear, targeted rules, not sweeping obligations and an open-ended government authority over any regulated service,” said Howard Sapers, the association’s executive director. “A blank check for federal power is the wrong answer to a real problem.”

“Bill C-34 introduces obligations which are so alarmingly broad that providers of regulated services will be tempted to over-comply at the expense of users’ freedom of expression and privacy rights,” Sapers added.

Another Carney government proposal, Bill C-22, would require technology companies to disclose user communications when requested by federal authorities or Canadian law enforcement agencies, potentially overriding their own privacy commitments.

Two Republican members of Congress have also raised concerns about the legislation. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.) have written to Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree warning that Bill C-22 could threaten privacy rights in both Canada and the United States.