FIRST READING: The worst-case scenarios that Carney’s ‘social media ban’ could enable

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The terms of Bill C-34 would be enforced not by law enforcement or the courts, but by a newly minted Digital Safety Commission of Canada with wide-ranging, unilateral powers over social media platforms.

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“The breadth of its influence can’t be overstated: it will set the standards that millions of Canadians must satisfy to verify their age in order to use social media services. It will establish what platforms must do about harmful content, including the removal of certain material,” wrote Geist in an analysis.

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In doing all of this, Bill C-34 specifies that the Commission is “not bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence.”

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The commission is also mandated to make all these decisions quickly. “It must deal with all matters that come before it as informally and expeditiously as the circumstances and considerations of fairness and natural justice permit,” it reads.

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Ottawa will be empowered to tell AI chatbots what they can and cannot say

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According to Bill C-34’s official backgrounder, it will subject AI chatbots to a series of new controls designed to ensure they don’t “engage in harmful behaviour.” Amid reports of AI programs such as ChatGPT counselling suicide or legitimizing psychotic delusions, the implication is that Ottawa will now be able to tell them to stop.

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But here again, the government would receive broad powers to control what AI chatbots are allowed to say.

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While Bill C-34 specifically bars chatbots from encouraging “suicidal ideation” or “self-harm,” it all subjects them to a generalized ban on communicating any kind of “harmful content.”

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This includes a ban on anything that “foments hatred,” which Bill C-34 defines as “detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”

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It would be up to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to figure out the distinction, but Canada has no shortage of quasi-judicial government bodies finding creative and politicized interpretations of what constitutes hate speech.

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As one example, it was only in March that the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered a former school trustee, Barry Neufeld, to pay $750,000 for his publicly expressed view that “separating gender identity from assigned biological sex is a fiction and an ‘ideology’ to be opposed.”

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The cited violation in that case bore language similar to the “foments hatred” clause included in Bill C-34. Neufeld was found to have uttered statements “likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt.”

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It would force Canadians to pepper the internet with sensitive personal information

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At the time of publication, the Government of Canada is running the Be Scam Smart campaign, a program warning Canadians to be vigilant about the personal information they upload to the internet.

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“Any personal information shared online is at risk of being compromised or stolen,” reads a 2024 backgrounder published by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. It adds, “think twice before sharing personal information.”

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Bill C-34 effectively mandates Canadians to do the opposite. Right now, everything from Facebook to YouTube to TikTok can be accessed with minimal disclosure of personal information. Under C-34, all those platforms could potentially be required to collect IDs, photos and other personal information.

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This potentially means that if a major internet company gets hacked in the post-C-34 area, users wouldn’t just have their emails and usernames compromised. Rather, hackers could be breaching a treasure trove of home addresses, government IDs and personal photos.

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IN OTHER NEWS

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Canadian public support for capital punishment is usually pretty high, but a new Research Co. poll finds that the idea of executing criminals now ranks as one of the most popular issues in the entire country. Sixty per cent of respondents wanted the death penalty reinstated as punishment for murder, and 70 per cent saw it as appropriate in some circumstances. What’s more, sentiment was virtually uniform across demographic cohorts, with Canadians of every single age, sex, race, region and political persuasion expressing majority support for executions.

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First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

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