Mark Carney’s government introduced the safe social media act canada on Wednesday, and the bill would compel social media companies to ban the creation of accounts for children under 16. It also sets up rules for AI chatbots and creates a Digital Safety Commission to oversee the new regime.
The bill covers traditional social media networks, livestreaming services and adult content services. Companies could avoid the age restriction rules if they show they have "sufficient safeguards" in place to protect children, but that exemption would not apply to platforms offering adult content, including pornographic services.
Mark Carney’s Wednesday bill
The introduction adds a new version of an online harms bill the Carney Liberals said was revamped on Wednesday. The legislation replaces a Trudeau-era effort that never became law, bringing the issue back through a different package with a narrower age rule and a formal oversight body.
Carney is the named government actor behind the proposal. The bill would restrict access to social media for those under 16, while giving platforms a route to compliance through safeguards if they meet the standard set out in the text.
Digital Safety Commission powers
The new Digital Safety Commission would develop the standards, oversee compliance, levy financial penalties and manage complaints. That means the bill is not only a content rule for platforms; it also builds the enforcement structure that would judge whether companies have done enough to meet the new obligations.
The legislation also tackles content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, content that induces a child to harm themselves, content used to bully a child, content that foments hatred and incites violence, extremist content and intimate content shared without consent.
AI chatbots and youth access
Unlike the under-16 account ban, the bill does not bar youth from accessing AI chatbots. Instead, it subjects the tools to regulation, defining them as "public-facing conversational chatbots that can mimic human-like relationships."
AI companies would need to curb the risk of chatbots conveying harmful information, put crisis protocols in place when users share concerning content and reduce the chance of the tool itself engaging in harmful behaviour. A separate bill introduced late last year created new Criminal Code offences for threatening to distribute child sexual abuse material and sexual deepfake images.
For platforms and families, the immediate change is the account ban proposal for children under 16, not a full shutdown of online services. The open issue is whether companies can meet the safeguard standard well enough to qualify for the exemption, while adult-content services are left outside that route entirely.
