man in brown jacket and white pants standing beside white and blue wall with blue by Smitty (@thetrentonsmith) Unsplash license, https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-brown-jacket-and-white-pants-standing-beside-white-and-blue-wall-with-blue-and-0SGG-ttbuTw

News

Regulator First, Rules Later: Bill C-34 Debate Shows the Government Wants a Digital Safety Commission Before It Figures Out What It Will Do

October 22, 2026

Second reading debate on Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, began yesterday in the House of Commons, with the government pressing opposition MPs on whether they support creating the Digital Safety Commission, its proposed Internet regulator. While there was some broad acknowledgement that someone needs to administer the regulatory plan, it was striking to see the government focus on the regulator rather than the regulation. Liberal MP Kevin Lamoureux asked Conservative critic Rachael Thomas whether “in principle, the Conservative Party recognizes the value of having such a commission” and later asked Bloc critic Martin Champoux whether his party sees “the principle of having that commission as a positive thing.” When Culture Minister Marc Miller was asked what standards a platform would need to meet for an exemption to the under-16 social media ban, he responded that the way to protect kids is “to make sure we have a regulator in place that can put together precisely these guidelines.” That is a bug, not a feature of a bill that, as I wrote when the bill was tabled, punts roughly 50 key decisions to cabinet and a commission that does not yet exist. The initial debate confirms that the government plans to build the regulator first and work out the details later.

Uncertainty over the exemption from the social media ban came up several times. Thomas noted that the under-16 ban is “only in place temporarily until social media companies meet a set of guidelines that are yet to be determined” and asked the minister what those guidelines might be. Miller said the “bar would be quite high,” and suggested there is “a legitimate debate to be had here and in committee as to what those regulations would be and whether they would be determined by the regulator or perhaps even by committee.” As I wrote in June, the age of 16 is fixed in the statute and takes effect on the government’s fast-track timeline, while the exemption that is supposed to make the ban “temporary” has no defined criteria, will be established by a commission that does not exist, and by the minister’s admission will be hard to meet. Miller’s suggestion that the criteria could be determined by committee may open the door to the government working at committee to fill in some of the blanks.

The debate revealed the inconsistency between the harms the government describes and the emphasis on a social media ban, which targets accounts rather than access. Miller and Parliamentary Secretary Rachel Bendayan cited the Canadian Centre for Child Protection’s 100,000 monthly reports, a 347 per cent increase in police-reported online child sexual exploitation, and rising luring and sextortion. Bendayan rightly argued that “infinite scroll is a design choice. Autoplay is a design choice. Recommendation systems are design choices.” Yet when Conservative MP Lianne Rood raised parental concerns, Bendayan explained that the bill only prevents under-16s from creating accounts and that “if a parent would like their child to see something online, that would still remain possible.” That means underage users will still engage with the recommendation algorithm, autoplay, and infinite scroll, since an account ban leaves the harm in place but shifts the focus to identification of all social media users.

The debate was also notable for what it did not discuss. MPs debated restricting the expression and association rights of every Canadian under 16, and imposing identification requirements on millions of people, without any substantive discussion of whether the ban is consistent with the Charter. That silence is hard to explain given that the government tabled its Charter statement for Bill C-34 two days before the debate.

The bill will clearly pass second reading and the real work will happen at the committee hearings. The government wants support for its regulator before those hearings even begin and before it has figured out its powers, the exemption criteria, or the list of services it will regulate. That puts the proverbial cart before the horse, since we should start with the powers, standards, and constitutional questions, then work toward agreement on an effective regulatory model.