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Ursula von der Leyen, Mark Carney and António Costa, © European Union, 2026, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Carney_at_the_20th_EU-Canada_Summit_-_2025_-_P067331-991490_(cropped).jpg

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 281: Mikolaj Barczentewicz on Europe’s Digital Sovereignty Push, CADA, and the Implications for Canada

Canada’s pivot to Europe took another step at last week’s Canada-EU summit in Montreal, where the two sides launched what they call an “Alliance for the Future.” The announcements ranged from critical minerals and firefighting aircraft to supercomputing and payment systems. The digital commitments received less attention, but they raise many of the same sovereignty questions that have dominated the Canada-U.S. relationship this year. Indeed, the leaders committed to reciprocal access to each other’s cloud and AI markets and concluded Canada’s first Digital Trade Agreement.

Mikołaj Barczentewicz is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Surrey, where he is research director of the Surrey Law and Technology Hub, and a Senior Scholar at the International Center for Law & Economics. His recent work has examined how the EU has addressed cloud and AI policy and what it means for its allies. He joins me on the Law Bytes podcast to discuss Europe’s digital sovereignty push, its proposed Cloud and AI Development Act, and the implications for Canada.

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November 2, 2026 — 0 comments — Podcasts
Guess my age by Devin Smith https://flic.kr/p/droNwy CC BY 2.0

Ofcom Did the Work Canada Plans to Skip: What the UK’s Age Verification Report Reveals About the Bill C-34 Social Media Ban

The most contentious aspect of the government’s Bill C-34 social media ban for under-16s is that millions of Canadians will need mandated age verification to create social media accounts. The bill tacitly acknowledges that this raises privacy concerns, as it includes a mandatory consultation with the Privacy Commissioner and leaves the future Digital Safety Commission to set the necessary standards. But as I wrote in June, the problem is that the government plans to bring the ban into force before the Commission even exists, meaning the age verification will proceed without established standards or the privacy consultation the bill itself requires. The United Kingdom, which is pursuing a similar ban with a spring 2027 start date, has adopted the opposite approach by asking Ofcom, its regulator, to assess what effective age verification would look like before Parliament sets the rules. The resulting report, released this week, is the most candid regulatory account of a social media ban to date. Ofcom identifies four methods capable of establishing whether someone is 16 or over and it finds that each of them requires using photo ID either directly or as the backstop given the ineffectiveness of age estimation for younger users.

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October 30, 2026 — 4 comments — News
Adult content 18+ confirm your age by Zulfugar Karimov, Unsplash licence, https://unsplash.com/photos/adult-content-18-confirm-your-age-gETrmMc0G_I

The Age Verification Bill That Won’t Die: How Bill S-209 Complicates the Government’s Bill C-34 Online Safety Plan

Bill C-34, the government’s Safe Social Media Act, was touted as its approach to online age verification, adding a mandated age check for social media account creation for those under-16 and age verification for under-18s for access to pornographic content, all overseen by a new Digital Safety Commission. But it now appears the government is prepared to let Bill S-209, Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne’s age verification and website-blocking bill, proceed alongside it, creating new complications with inconsistent definitions and expanded regulatory powers. Bill S-209, which I have warned about since its predecessor Bill S-210 and opposed before a Senate committee last fall, passed the Senate in April and received its first hour of second reading debate in the House of Commons last month. The Liberals previously opposed Bill S-210, citing privacy and freedom of expression concerns, but this time the government supported sending the bill to committee and the House has now referred it on division to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. The shift surprised even the bill’s sponsor, and it opens the door to a two-pronged regulatory model that doubles down on age verification, features inconsistent definitions of pornography, establishes a second penalty regime, and could give the future Digital Safety Commission the power to seek website-blocking orders.

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October 29, 2026 — 4 comments — News
Text by Matt Taylor, Unsplash licence, https://unsplash.com/photos/text-6iCIB3WSFIE

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 280: A Fall Update on Where Things Stand on Canadian Digital Policy Reforms

Parliament is back in full swing and with it debate on a wide range of digital bills, including lawful access, social media rules, AI regulation, and privacy reform. This week’s Law Bytes podcast provides an update on recent developments and highlights what to watch for in the weeks ahead as […]

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October 26, 2026 — 1 comment — Podcasts
BAN'; by Sean Lamb https://flic.kr/p/52DbrG CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Wrong Ban: The Heritage Committee Backed a Targeted Ad Ban for Kids and Stopped Short of a Social Media Ban, Yet the Government Chose the Reverse

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage conducted an extensive study on the effects of influencers and social media on children and adolescents over the past year and released its report in June. The committee, which will soon lead the review of Bill C-34, produced 13 recommendations including a legally enforceable duty of care, an independent regulator with monetary penalties, safety-by-design requirements, defined categories of harm, and the inclusion of AI chatbots and deepfakes. Given the overlap with the government’s social media bill, it is no surprise that the government endorsed many of the recommendations this week. There is an outlier, however: the committee considered two potential bans, one on targeted ads for kids and the other on underage access to social media. The committee recommended the ad ban and stopped short of the social media one, but the government reversed the approach, declining the ad ban while legislating the social media ban for under-16s.

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October 23, 2026 — 1 comment — News
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