Michael Geist

In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas terror attacks on October 7th, Jewish communities around the world shared the shock of Israelis at the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. A year later, I wrote about learning of the attack in real time, hours after a Shabbat dinner, as the Israeli red alert app on my Apple Watch buzzed continuously. The barrage of alerts was so intense that I initially thought the app had malfunctioned. The pain of that day and the days that followed was shared by many who, despite being thousands of kilometres away, felt as if they too had been targeted and were left with a desperate sadness.

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.

Bill C-22 , the lawful access bill, was a focal point of debate in the Senate last week. While companies continue to warn they may exit Canada if the bill passes in its current form, the debate's biggest revelation was that it may take years for the government to pass the regulations needed to fully implement the law. The delay is notable for several reasons, including the government's insistence in the spring that passing the bill was urgent (to the point that it shut down committee clause-by-clause review ) and the regulatory uncertainty that it creates. Indeed, the Senate is effectively being asked to approve a surveillance and data retention framework without knowing who will be covered, what they will be required to build, what data about Canadians will be retained, or what any of it will cost. If this sounds familiar, it is because it has seemingly become the government's go-to approach on many of its digital bills, from privacy to social media regulation , where key decisions are left to regulations and regulatory processes that take years to complete.

The government's ever-increasing financial support for the news media was the subject of a non-public consultation earlier this year, with Canadian Heritage asking funding recipients what they think of the programs, what more needs to be done, and whether they have concerns about the risks to the independence of the press that can come with greater reliance on public funding. If you ask groups whether they want more money, they invariably say yes, so it may not surprise to learn the industry supports expanding the media funding programs and sees little reason to worry about independence concerns. The consultation, which focused on the Local Journalism Initiative (LJI) and Canada Periodical Fund (CPF), was not posted on the department's public consultations page . Instead, the department circulated it to departmental contacts and stakeholders that “included current CPF clients and LJI delivery organizations,” and encouraged them to share it within their networks. Because I was included on that list and provided my thoughts, I received the summary of the results this week. I have posted the document here , since the government has yet to make it publicly available.

The Law Bytes podcast returns after a brief hiatus in late summer and early fall by turning to the debate on data and digital sovereignty. Last week, I was pleased to deliver the dinner keynote speech at the NREN Assembly, an annual gathering hosted by CANARIE that brings together staff and leadership from CANARIE and all thirteen provincial and territorial partners of Canada's National Research and Education Network . With their kind permission, this week's episode features the keynote in full, titled Digital Sovereignty: Control, Choice, and Connection.

Last month's Public Safety progress report on the National Commitments to Combat Antisemitism notably included statements recognizing that antisemitism includes anti-Zionism. The National Council of Canadian Muslims wrote to the department to object and is now circulating a reply from Minister Gary Anandasangaree that former Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia Amira Elghawaby touted as showing that the “Government of Canada Clarifies Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism.” The reality, however, is that the response did no such thing: it does not retract or amend the report, states twice that the government's position has not changed, and links anti-Zionism to the denial of Jewish self-determination.

More than four months after Bill C-34 was introduced (and about ten days after I posted about it ), the government released its Charter statement for the Safe Social Media Act. While there was no doubt the government would insist its bill is Charter-compliant, the question was how it would defend the under-16 social media ban, which I have argued is unconstitutional and whose French counterpart the Constitutional Council struck down in August . On that front, the statement is noticeably weak, citing no evidence, case law, or foreign comparisons. In fact, by identifying less restrictive alternatives to the ban, it effectively concedes that less intrusive safeguards can adequately address the risks the ban is meant to target. In other words, this Charter statement makes the case against the government's own bill.

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.

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.

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 both the Senate and House launch hearings on high-profile digital legislation.