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Court Ordered Social Media Site Blocking Coming to Canada?: Trojan Horse Online Harms Bill Clears Senate Committee Review
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.
An Illusion of Consensus: What the Government Isn’t Saying About the Results of its AI Consultation
The government quietly released a “what we heard” report this week discussing the response to its 30-day sprint AI consultation from last October. Described as the “largest public consultation in the history of ISED”, the report relies heavily on AI for its analysis as the government notes that it used “Cohere Command A, OpenAI GPT-5 nano, Anthropic Claude Haiku and Google Gemini Flash to read through the submissions and identify common themes.” Given that it received 64,600 responses to 26 questions, it says AI enabled it to shrink a process that would typically take many months into a matter of weeks.
In addition to the public consultation survey, AI Minister Evan Solomon formed a 28 person expert committee that provided the government with 32 different papers and reports. Those documents were similarly subject to AI analysis with the “what we heard” report devoting several pages to the expert analysis and recommendations. Yet unlike the public survey responses, the government has posted all the experts’ reports, which allows the public to see the actual advice alongside the government’s summary of it.
Since the government used AI to summarize the expert reports, I thought I would do the same.
Government Says There Are No Plans for National Digital ID To Access Services
The government has confirmed that it has no plans to create a national identification system. The issue arose in a sessional paper response released this week to a question from Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu. Gladu asked “With regard to the government’s implementation of a digital identification that will be mandatory to access government services and pay taxes: what is the plan and progress of the government on the implementation of a digital identification and what are the implementation dates for each phase?” The government’s short answer: “the Government of Canada is not implementing a federal or national digital identification credential.”
Government Reveals Digital Policy Priorities in Trio of Responses to Canadian Heritage Committee Reports
The Canadian government has responded to three reports focused on digital policies from the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, shedding new light on potential future policies and priorities. The three reports – on tech giants, local media, and harms caused by illegal sexually explicit materials posted online – recommended a wide range of measures that include new laws, regulations, and government programs. The government sidesteps some of the recommended legislative reforms in its responses signed by Heritage Minister Marc Miller, suggesting limited interest in committing to broad-based platform liability rules.
Canadian TikTok Ban Called Off as the Government Hits the Digital Policy Reset Button Once Again
The Carney government’s steady reset of Canadian digital policy continues as it has now backed off plans to ban TikTok from operating in Canada. The government’s approach, first announced in November 2024, never made any sense since the TikTok app remained available without restriction and the corporate ban weakened privacy enforcement and resulted in millions in lost cultural support. The policy was a true lose-lose-lose and seemed premised on piggybacking on U.S. legislation to ban the app. The change in U.S. administration effectively nixed those plans, leaving Canadians with the worst of both worlds: a corporate ban that created real harms with no discernible benefit and a Canadian TikTok app that would ultimately offer fewer safeguards than the U.S. equivalent.
The reset on the TikTok ban came through what amounts to a settlement between the government and TikTok that was made official yesterday by the federal court.
Recent Posts
Court Ordered Social Media Site Blocking Coming to Canada?: Trojan Horse Online Harms Bill Clears Senate Committee Review 
An Illusion of Consensus: What the Government Isn’t Saying About the Results of its AI Consultation 
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 256: Jennifer Quaid on Taking On Big Tech With the Competition Act’s Private Right of Access 
Government Says There Are No Plans for National Digital ID To Access Services 
Government Reveals Digital Policy Priorities in Trio of Responses to Canadian Heritage Committee Reports
