Conservatives Double Down on Support for Mandated Internet Age Verification and Website Blocking: Why Can’t Canada Get Common Sense Digital Policy?
The party that has championed Internet freedoms now supports a bill that features website blocking of lawful content and subjects millions of Canadians to privacy-invasive age verification technology.
Digital policy has been the source of seemingly never-ending frustration for years in Canada. The government chose to prioritize two flawed bills on online streaming and online news, both of which sparked considerable opposition, lengthy delays, and ultimately delivered few actual benefits (Bill C-11 faces at least another year of hearings at the CRTC, Bill C-18 is a disaster that has left many media companies worse off). Its 2021 consultation on online harms was so badly received that it was quickly shelved and has required nearly three years to recover. The policies it should have prioritized such as stronger privacy and competition rules were largely left to languish with Bill C-27 still in committee and now subject to mounting opposition over the decision fold AI regulation with minimal consultation into the bill.
Given that track record, it is hard to be optimistic as the online harms rules get set to take centre stage. There are two bills at play, one that will be backed by the government and the other by the opposition Conservative party. The government bill is the long-delayed online harms package that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says will be introduced next week. The specifics are not yet public, but it is a pretty good bet that the bill will be framed around protecting children by establishing new liability for digital platforms that fail to act responsibly with the focus on illegal content such as hate, terrorism, and sexual exploitation of children. Awful but lawful content – including misinformation or disinformation – is unlikely to be part of the bill. Further, as reported earlier this week, the governance framework from the 2021 consultation will resurface with a complaints mechanism overseen by a digital safety commissioner. The last proposal was so bad that many will rightly express skepticism about the bill. But details matter and how the government attempts to strike the balance between safety, privacy, and expression will require careful examination.
While the government’s support for the online harms bill is unsurprising given that it has been promised for years, the current political dynamics behind the second bill – Bill S-210 – are more difficult to explain. I’ve described the bill, which purports to restrict underage access to sexually explicit materials, as the most dangerous Internet bill you’ve never heard of since it mandates the use of age verification technologies that raise serious privacy concerns (Australia rejected a similar law on those grounds), contains no thresholds such that it covers social media (Twitter), search (Google) and chat sites (Reddit), and features a system of court-ordered blocking of lawful content. A better approach would be to focus on providing parents with filtering software, so that they could better manage their kids’ Internet use and prevent access to content they deem inappropriate. Alternatively, if the bill was narrowly targeted to pornography-only sites, there would be room to defend it (you can listen to Senator Julie Mivelle-Dechêne, the bill’s architect, do so on a recent Lawbytes podcast). As it now stands, Bill S-210 is likely be challenged on constitutional grounds and should be firmly rejected.
Yet despite its many flaws, the bill has already passed in the Senate and though opposed by the government, received support in the House from Conservative, NDP and Bloc MPs alongside a smattering of Liberal MPs. This sets up a head-shaking dynamic of the government opposing the bill and Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre supporting it. Yesterday, Poilievre reiterated his support for legislated age verification for pornography access, a decidedly off-brand approach in which the party that has championed Internet freedoms suddenly now finds itself supporting a bill that features website blocking of lawful content, subjects millions of Canadians to privacy-invasive age verification technology requirements overseen by a government agency such as the CRTC, and institutes regulations that apply to broadly used search and social media services. That can’t possibly meet the definition of common sense for many Canadians.
Post originally appeared at https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/02/conservatives-double-down-on-support-for-mandated-internet-age-verification-and-website-blocking-why-cant-canada-get-common-sense-digital-policy/
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Government is not our friend.
Tired of seeing all parties at all levels of government restrict our freedom.
Safetyism infects Canadian society.
I was shocked when I found out it is the CONSERVATIVES in favour of this bill . I honestly thought it was favoured by the Liberals. Really makes you think that we might be voting in the wrong party in the next election despite their very favourable polls at this time. What on earth is going on?