Critics of Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s successive bills that ostensibly target pornography sites have for years warned of the privacy and equity risks that arise from mandated age verification and the dangers of over broad legislation that would extend far beyond pornography sites by covering social media, search, and AI services. The Senate committee reviewing the latest iteration of those bill – Bill S-209 – met yesterday to conduct a clause-by-clause review of the bill. That the bill passed through committee pending some supplementary remarks was not a surprise. However, that the privacy and equity concerns barely merited a mention and that regulating social media sites was viewed as feature not a bug was a wake up call.

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