Canada Reopens Debate on Social Media Rules for Children in Winnipeg

Canadian Heritage Minister Mark Miller brought the issue of children’s online safety back to the public agenda on Friday, June 26, 2026, during a formal discussion in Winnipeg on Bill C-34 / the Safe Social Media Act, a federal bill that would regulate social media platforms and some artificial intelligence chatbot services operating in Canada.

The discussion comes about two weeks after the government introduced the bill in the House of Commons on June 10, 2026. The proposed legislation aims to require digital companies to take stronger steps to protect children from harmful content, cyberbullying, online sexual exploitation and risky interactions with some AI services. Parliamentary records show that the bill remains at first reading and has not yet become law.

One of the bill’s most significant proposals would prevent children under 16 from holding accounts on regulated social media services, unless a platform receives an exemption by proving it has sufficient safeguards to protect minors. The government says the goal is to place more responsibility on platforms themselves, rather than leaving children and families to deal with online harm after it occurs.

The proposed rules would require platforms to assess the risks of harmful content, provide reporting and blocking tools, label certain types of synthetic content, and act more quickly against material involving child sexual exploitation or non-consensual intimate content. Some obligations would also apply to AI chatbot services that may provide harmful content or engage in high-risk interactions with users.

The bill would also create a Digital Safety Commission of Canada to oversee compliance, issue orders and impose penalties when companies fail to meet their obligations. The text tabled in Parliament would enact both the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act as part of the same legislative package.

The government points to official figures to support the need for new rules. Canadian Heritage said one in four youth aged 12 to 17 reported in 2019 that they had been cyberbullied in the previous year. It also said Canadian police recorded 16,905 incidents related to online child sexual exploitation in 2024, a 347% increase since 2014.

The bill has also drawn criticism from civil liberties and privacy advocates. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association has warned that age-verification requirements could lead to the collection of sensitive information from users, and that broad powers and penalties could push platforms to remove lawful content to avoid legal risk.

The Winnipeg discussion places the government in a difficult policy debate: how to protect children from real online harms without opening the door to excessive monitoring, broad content removal or wider collection of user data. For now, Bill C-34 remains before Parliament and would need to pass the required legislative stages before becoming binding law for digital platforms in Canada