The government will introduce the Digital Safety Act later today, with the headline being a ban on social media for those under 16. I’ve posted extensively on why a social media ban is an ineffective and harmful policy that raises privacy concerns for tens of millions of Canadians by mandating age verification. Yet beyond bad policy, the forthcoming bill may also become the source of the next Canada-U.S. digital policy collision. The Canadian pattern of struggling with U.S. trade pressure on digital issues is well known, starting with the Digital Services Tax that the government rescinded last summer to the recent move to reverse the CRTC’s Online Streaming Act ruling. But what has not been discussed is that a ban might be the next source of friction. The U.S. just told UK officials in an official submission that it stands against broad social media bans, strongly opposes regulations that require or create conditions that compel platforms to collect government-issued IDs, and that it is skeptical of using technical age estimation for 13-to 16-year-olds. In other words, it is opposed to much of what the Canadian government reportedly has planned in Bill C-34.

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