Bill C-34, which would ban social media accounts for under-16s, is now before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, which just approved plans to hold at least 16 hours of hearings starting the week of November 16th. The government’s position on the bill became clearer during several days of debate last month at the House of Commons, revealing a shift in how MPs describe the ban (it’s now euphemistically called an “exemption model”), how they defend the decision to leave dozens of key issues to future regulations (one implausibly claimed that addressing all the issues would create a 1,500 page bill), and what they think of mandated age verification (some admitted to concerns about it). The takeaway was that the ban and the uncertainty in its implementation will be difficult to defend at committee.
Post Tagged with: "charter"
The Missing Charter Statement: Why Hasn’t the Government Explained How Bill C-34’s Social Media Ban Complies with the Charter?
Four months ago this weekend, the government introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, with the headline promise to establish a social media ban for those under 16. The bill has attracted enormous attention from supporters and critics alike, yet the government still has not released the Charter statement that is supposed to accompany it. The Department of Justice Act requires the Minister of Justice to issue a Charter statement for every government bill that sets out its potential effects on Charter rights, with the express purpose of informing both Parliament and the public. Charter statements have been released for bills tabled after Bill C-34, including Bill C-36, the privacy reform bill that works in partnership with Bill C-34. Yet nothing has happened in four months on Bill C-34 and the social media ban.
Why the Government’s Plan for a Social Media Ban in Bill C-34 Is Unconstitutional
he debate over the government’s proposed social media ban for under 16s has raised several difficult questions, including doubts about whether it will work, which services it will cover, and what risks to privacy mandating age verification could create. But beyond the operational questions is a more fundamental one: is the ban constitutional? Bill C-34 contains some signals that the government knows there are serious constitutional vulnerabilities, given the obvious implications for freedom of expression that come from blocking an entire cohort of Canadians from accessing information and expressing themselves on social media. The bill contains several provisions that are seemingly designed to act as safeguards that could be used to argue that the ban is proportionate. These include guidance on age verification technologies to address privacy concerns, promises that the verification obligation does not require measures that “unreasonably or disproportionately” limit expression, a requirement that the new Digital Safety Commission consider freedom of expression, equality, and privacy when it establishes regulations and guidelines, and the ability for services to seek a ban exemption if they can demonstrate adequate safeguards for children.
Even with these measures, the ban might still be found to be unconstitutional. But if you think they provide a plausible argument that the ban can be justified (as Emily Laidlaw argues here), the problem is that none will be operational when the ban takes effect. In other words, there is a major disconnect between the law the government says it is establishing and the one it plans to implement. If the safeguards are not implemented and millions of Canadians are required to verify their age to express themselves on social media, I believe the ban is likely to face an immediate court challenge and that a court will rule it violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
A Standard That Doesn’t Exist: Parliamentary Secretary for Justice Offers Misleading Defence of Bill C-22’s Lower Threshold for Subscriber Information
The lawful access debate continued for a third day on Friday with Bloc MP Claude DeBellefeuille asking Patricia Lattanzio, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, a critical question: why has the government chosen “the lowest possible threshold for obtaining information, that of reasonable grounds to suspect, rather than the more stringent threshold of reasonable grounds to believe.” She added that she did not understand the choice and would like a clear answer (I focused on this issue in a previous post). In keeping with the government’s discouraging defence of lawful access thus far (my posts on day one and day two of debate) Lattanzio’s response went for deception rather than clarity. After noting that reasonable grounds to suspect already appears in parts of the Criminal Code, she offered the government’s substantive defence of the lower threshold in a single sentence: “We also think that ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’ is higher than the threshold of mere suspicion.” The problem is that mere suspicion isn’t a threshold for search at all, but rather the standard the courts point to when a search is unconstitutional.
Federal Court Approves Consent Order Requiring Minister Steven Guilbeault to Unblock Ezra Levant on Twitter
The Federal Court has approved a consent order requiring Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault to unblock Rebel News publisher Ezra Levant on Twitter. The order stems from a 2021 lawsuit filed by Levant which argued that blocking “violated the Applicants’ constitutional rights under section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in blocking access to official governmental Twitter accounts, and thereby limiting the Applicants’ ability to, inter alia, access and communicate important information, participate in public debate, and express views on matters of public concern.” The order also includes a $20,000 cost award to Levant. Regardless of your views of either Levant or Guilbeault, the principle that government ministers should not block access to their feeds given the implications for freedom of expression is an important one.
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