Child safety or speech control? Critics sound alarm about Bill C-34
Author: Alex Dhaliwal
The Liberal government has introduced Bill C-34, its third attempt in five years to regulate legal internet content and its second framed as child safety.
Ottawa is back with another attempt to police the internet and critics are saying that the Safe Social Media Act mirrors the Liberals’ previously abandoned online harms bills, using child protection as political cover for sweeping new powers over what Canadians can say online.
Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, proposes a permanent framework that shifts decisions about acceptable public discourse from citizens to regulators, bureaucrats, and major tech companies.
Earlier internet regulation proposals included Bill C-36 (2021) and Bill C-63 (2024), both of which were dropped after snap elections. The former called for a chief censor with powers to block websites, while C-63 proposed a “digital safety ombudsman” with more limited content-monitoring powers.
Dr. Michael Geist, a law professor with the University of Ottawa, called it déjà vu, noting he urged removing C-63’s “contentious provisions” in Feb. 2024 to focus debate on platform regulation.
In Dec. 2024, then-Justice Minister Arif Virani said Bill C-63 would be split to speed passage after civil liberties pressure. The first part focused on child online safety via a Digital Safety Commission; the second, covering Criminal Code and Human Rights Act reforms, died after prorogation in Jan. 2025 and again last month.
Meanwhile, the latest bill consolidates C-63’s first part into a single commission that sets rules, enforces compliance, handles complaints, audits platforms, issues penalties, and grants exemptions.
Combined with a social media ban under 16, porn age verification (Bill S-209), and a Digital Safety Commission, Bill C-34 becomes an “everything-at-once” approach to online safety, according to Geist.