Promotion of Safety in the Digital Age Act

Summary#

Bill C-216’s proposed short title is the Promotion of Safety in the Digital Age Act. It would enact the Protection of Minors in the Digital Age Act and amend the 2011 internet-reporting Act and the Criminal Code. Its stated goal is to make online spaces safer for minors; that is a goal, not a guaranteed result.

• Online platforms: Owners and operators of platforms used, or reasonably expected to be used, by minors would have new duties. These include taking reasonable steps to prevent or reduce listed harms, providing safety and parental controls, and responding to reports.
• Settings and data: For users known or reasonably expected to be under 16, platforms would have to set safety and parental controls to their most protective defaults. The bill also requires privacy-preserving age-verification algorithms when restricting children’s access to inappropriate content, and bans requiring or requesting a digital identifier for online access.
• Reporting and accountability: Platforms would have to disclose data practices, keep records, and publish reports. Every two years, they would have to arrange an independent review of risks and harms to minors. The CRTC would set market-research guidelines.
• Internet services: Providers with reasonable grounds to believe their service was used for a child sexual abuse and exploitation material offence would have to report it to a designated law-enforcement body, as soon as feasible and under regulations. They would have to include transmission data when the material is manifestly such material and preserve related computer data for one year.
• Criminal Code: The bill would create an offence for knowingly sharing a false intimate image without the depicted person’s consent, or recklessly doing so. It would also add repeated online communications to criminal harassment, with special rules for anonymous or false-identity communications.
• Timing: The new minors’ safety duties would generally start 18 months after royal assent; record-keeping, independent reviews and reports would start on the second anniversary. Parts 2 and 3 would start on royal assent, unless the specified 2024 Act is not then in force, in which case they would start when it comes into force. The proposed provisions are not in force unless enacted and commenced.

What it means for you#

• Minors and parents: Platforms would have to offer controls over contact, access to a child’s personal data, recommendations, location tracking and features that encourage longer use. Parents and children would also get options to delete a child’s account or personal data and limit time on the platform. For users under 16, the strongest safety settings would be the default.
• All minors and parents: Platforms would have to provide parental controls for users known or reasonably expected to be under 18, including privacy and account settings, time-use information and controls to prevent purchases. For children under 16, these controls would be on by default. A parent could turn them off; a platform would have to notify the minor when controls are active and notify the parent if it had reasonable grounds to believe a minor turned off the defaults.
• Platforms: The duty to take reasonable steps covers physical harm; online sexual violence; sexually exploitative imagery; marketing of products or services unlawful for minors; mental-health harms, self-harm and suicide; addiction-like use patterns; accounts used by minors without reasonable efforts to verify parent contact information; and predatory or deceptive marketing. Platforms would also need a reporting channel and an internal process to respond to reports.
• Internet service providers: Reporting duties would apply to providers of internet access, content hosting and interpersonal communications, including email, subject to regulations. The bill says these duties do not limit privacy-law obligations.
• People depicted in intimate images: A person depicted in a false intimate image could have the same possible removal-cost restitution provision as for an intimate image. After conviction or discharge, a court could also restrict an offender’s internet or digital-network use.
• People facing online harassment: Repeated online communications would count as conduct relevant to criminal harassment. Anonymous or false-identity communication would be an aggravating sentencing factor. A court could order a recognizance (a promise to obey conditions) only if the conduct was threatening or obscene and involved repetitive or persistently aggressive behaviour; a no-contact condition would be required.
• The public: The bill does not require platforms to stop minors from deliberately searching for specific content, and it does not require disclosure of minors’ browsing, searches, messages or contact lists.

Money#

No cost information is in the available material.

• Platforms would have to fund controls, reporting, record-keeping, reviews and reports, but no cost estimate is provided.
• The bill sets maximum fines: up to $25 million on indictment or $20 million on summary conviction for offences involving the core duties and prohibitions; up to $10 million on summary conviction for certain information and record-keeping breaches. These are maximum penalties, not estimates of revenue.
• No estimate is provided for government costs, enforcement costs or the cost of implementing the reporting and regulation-making provisions.

What is unclear#

• Regulations would set important details, including the designated law-enforcement body, reporting procedures and records to preserve. The bill does not state what those regulations would require.
• Terms such as “reasonable steps,” “meaningful” protection, “addiction-like behaviours” and “inappropriate” content are not fully defined.
• The bill requires age verification that preserves privacy, while also prohibiting platforms from requiring or requesting a digital identifier. How those rules fit together is not explained.
• The bill does not specify how the new duties will be enforced in practice, or how they interact with existing platform rules and other laws.
• No specific start date can be given without knowing when, or whether, the bill receives royal assent and whether the named 2024 Act is then in force.

Case for#

• A possible argument for the bill is that it places direct duties on platforms to address risks to minors, rather than relying only on families to change settings.
• Default protections, limits on manipulative design and parental controls could make safety options easier to use.
• Public reviews and annual reports could make platform risks and responses more visible.
• Reporting and preservation rules could give law enforcement information and time to investigate suspected child sexual abuse material offences.
• The false-intimate-image offence and online-harassment provisions address conduct the bill specifically identifies as harmful.

Case against#

• The duties cover many areas but leave key standards open to interpretation. That could make compliance and enforcement uncertain.
• The bill requires extensive safeguards, reporting and reviews, but does not specify their cost or explain how smaller operators would meet them.
• Collecting parent contact information and verifying users’ ages may create privacy and implementation challenges; the bill does not set out the methods.
• The reporting and one-year data-preservation duties could involve sensitive information. The bill points to privacy-law obligations but does not explain how conflicts or handling requirements would be managed.
• The bill creates serious penalties and a private right of action for serious harm, while leaving important details of enforcement and how operators can show compliance to later rules or regulations.