Bill C-34’s proposed social media ban for kids has rightly attracted considerable criticism since the bill was tabled last month, given that it requires age verification for most Canadians to use social media and the government plans to implement it before privacy safeguards are in place. Moreover, as I wrote last week, mounting data from Australia indicates that bans simply do not work. Thanks to a reader for pointing to a new Australian study that identifies yet another cost: young people’s access to news. The concern has resonance in Canada, where youth access to news on social media has already been undermined by the Online News Act, which prompted Meta to block news links on Facebook and Instagram. Bill C-34 would exacerbate the problem by cutting kids off TikTok and YouTube, which emerged as important news sources after the Meta news link block.
Post Tagged with: "c-34"
The Data on Australia’s Social Media Ban: The Better the Privacy Protection, The Less Effective the Ban
As regular readers know, the Canadian plan to establish a social media ban for under 16s in Bill C-34 is based largely on the Australian model that took effect last December. With more data on the ban’s effectiveness continuing to roll in, multiple studies now confirm that it simply hasn’t worked as the majority of under-age users still have access to social media accounts. Yet rather than treating that as a reason to reconsider the model, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament in late June that his government is working “as a priority” to strengthen the law. The failure highlights a troubling correlation: the better the privacy protection, the less effective the ban. In other words, since users will find ways to circumvent the ban, “strengthening” the law likely means less privacy and more surveillance.
The Two Weeks That Reshaped Canada’s Digital Policy
It started with an unexpected early-morning announcement on June 3, 2026, from Marc Miller, the Minister of Identity and Culture. Mr. Miller said that the government planned to direct the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s broadcast regulator, to review its two-week-old decision that imposed hundreds of millions in new investment requirements on internet streaming services. My Globe and Mail essay that appeared over the weekend notes that the move came as a surprise, not only because he had chastised the commission a month earlier for moving too slowly, but also because it marked a major reversal of a core Canadian digital policy that had been years in the making. The decision sent shock waves through the cultural sector, but it was only the start.
Soft Ban or Hard Verification Requirement?: Why Bill C-34’s Social Media Ban Exemption Gets the Incentives Wrong and Comes Too Late to Matter
The debate over Bill C-34’s social media ban for those under sixteen has largely focused on the impact on users, including mandated age verification for millions, the privacy risks of verification technologies, and experience elsewhere suggesting the policy is ineffective. Defenders of the ban have characterized the Canadian approach as a “soft ban” that will allow social media companies to obtain exemptions provided they meet yet-to-be-determined safety standards. This approach is said to create incentives for companies to address safety concerns and qualify for the exemption. But a closer look at the bill reveals that the approach does not work, as even “safe” services will be required to implement age verification for tens of millions of users. By the time the Digital Safety Commission has figured anything out, the services will have verified most of the country and likely lost users in the process. This is true not only for services that require significant design changes, but even those services that today would be widely acknowledged to be safe for children.
New Rights, New Powers, Long Delays: Bill C-36’s Seven-Step Process for Privacy Reform to Take Effect
The government’s recently tabled privacy reform bill would modernize many aspects of Canadian privacy law, including establishing privacy as a fundamental right in the purpose clause of the new law, creating a data mobility right for individuals that would enable them to move their data from one company to another, and giving businesses the potential to use approved codes of practice. These and many other changes will be subject to intense debate at committee, but the biggest challenge facing the bill is the long sequence of steps required for it to take effect. The government may claim that privacy is an urgent priority, and its recent national AI strategy, overseen by AI Minister Evan Solomon, declares trust to be its “north star”, yet a careful review of Bill C-36 confirms that the law will take years to take effect. This post and the accompanying infographic unpack the many steps built into the bill that, cumulatively, are likely to result in no substantive privacy reforms for Canadians until 2030 or later.
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