Probably not, for reasons that point to the limits of what Canada can do here
Recently, governments in Manitoba and Ontario have signalled their support for a ban on social media for children under 16 years of age, and last month, the federal Liberals passed a resolution to this effect at a party convention. Manitoba’s premier Wab Kinew and the national Liberal Party are also keen to ban youth access to “all AI chatbots and other potentially harmful forms of AI interaction.”
Passing a complete ban would entail Canada following Australia’s lead, which, in late 2025, banned social media for everyone under 16. Governments in Europe have taken a less stringent approach by imposing age-verification and parental consent rules around social media access.
It remains to be seen whether Ottawa will choose the European or Australian path. But for reasons I sketch out here briefly, the European path seems more likely — and we may see the Carney government take this path when it soon re-tables the Online Harms Act.
Many commentators have been critical of the idea of Canada imposing a ban on social media or AI for young people due, among other reasons, to the fact that we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that guarantees everyone a right to free expression.
If a ban on social media or AI would infringe this right, could it still be legal? Yes it could, because no right in the Charter is absolute. All of our rights under the Charter are subject to reasonable limits — as decided by the courts — under section 1. (And of course, in the case of limits to free expression, we the people have the final say under section 33.)
So if a ban on access to social media or AI from those under 16 would violate section 2(b) of the Charter, would it be a reasonable limit on that right? No, it probably wouldn’t.
The thrust of this post is to briefly show what a challenge would look like and why access with parental consent or other guardrails is likely the furthest Canada can go in restricting youth from their favourite platform or chatbot.
May 7, 2026
The government is playing down key concerns, but they haven’t gone away
On Tuesday, Bill C-22 came before the House of Commons’ Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. The Ministers of Justice and Public Safety were there to defend the bill in response to strong concerns raised about it by MPs who had clearly done their homework.
Ministers Fraser and Anandasangaree defended the bill largely in line with the government’s Charter Statement on C-22 tabled in the House on April 24th. This is a document intended to set out why the government thinks potentially contentious elements of the bill are Charter compliant.
The Ministers’ appearance before the Committee followed comments by officials from the Department of Justice and the RCMP that were also largely consistent with the framing of the bill in the Charter Statement.
Because the Statement sets out the playbook of the bill’s main advocates, this post looks briefly at what it gets right and what it gets wrong or leaves out.
May 4, 2026
A group of privacy law scholars and lawyers call for amendments to powers in the new lawful access bill that are overbroad and unlikely to survive Charter scrutiny
This morning, I joined a group of privacy law scholars and lawyers in sending an open letter to Members of Parliament (and the Leader of the NDP) calling for amendments to Bill C-22. The letter, signed by all of us listed below, follows. (PDF version here .)
The Right Honourable Mark Carney, P.C., O.C., M.P., Prime Minister of Canada
The Honourable Gary Anandasangaree, P.C., M.P., Minister of Public Safety
The Honourable Sean Fraser, P.C., M.P., Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada
The Honourable Pierre Poilievre, P.C., M.P., Leader of the Official Opposition
Mr. Yves-François Blanchet, M.P., Leader, Bloc Québécois
Mr. Avi Lewis, Leader, New Democratic Party
Ms. Elizabeth May, O.C., M.P., Leader, Green Party of Canada
Open Letter Calling for Amendments to Bill C-22
Dear Prime Minister, Ministers, and Honourable Leaders of the Opposition,
We write as lawyers and law professors who teach and practice in the areas of privacy law and constitutional rights in Canada. We welcome the effort that has gone into revising the lawful access framework since Bill C-2. Bill C-22 marks an improvement over its predecessor in several respects. But certain provisions of the bill as currently drafted raise serious constitutional concerns and fail to strike a reasonable balance between the legitimate needs of law enforcement and the privacy rights of Canadians. We urge Parliament to carefully consider the following issues before the bill proceeds further.
First, the new production order for subscriber information, to be added to the Criminal Code as section 487.0142, retains a legal threshold that is too low and a scope of disclosure that is too broad. As affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in R v Spencer, Canadians have had a strong privacy interest in anonymity online. The existing general production order — available since 2004 and readily obtained by telewarrant — already gives police an effective tool to link an IP address or phone number to a named subscriber, and requires them to establish reasonable grounds to believe that an offence has been committed. Bill C-22 creates a new, dedicated subscriber information order that reduces that standard to reasonable grounds to suspect. The courts have held that this distinction is not semantic: in R v West, the Ontario Court of Appeal excluded evidence obtained through a production order precisely because the officer had established only grounds to suspect rather than grounds to believe.
Apr 30, 2026
Bill C-25’s criminal ban on deepfakes won’t restore credible news to the platforms where many Canadians look for it.
A bill before Parliament, C-25 , will amend the Canada Elections Act to target political deepfakes and misinformation in an effort to better protect the integrity of our elections.
Was fake content much of an issue in the last election? Is it still a concern in online debate over things like Alberta or Quebec separation, or support for party leaders?
In the last federal election, deepfakes did play a role. Researchers have traced numerous cross-platform misinformation campaigns to groups that include the extreme right Canada Proud and to actors linked to China and Russia. Some 24 percent of Canadians saw a social media post in which Pierre Poilievre or Mark Carney appeared in fictitious interviews with CBC or CTV News. Many others saw images portraying party leaders as wounded or under arrest, or, in Carney’s case, as tied to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Political deepfakes are now part of our election landscape. Bill C-25 responds by making it an offence to create or distribute an audio or visual deepfake of a candidate or party leader, or material purporting to be from them, with intent to mislead the public. It would also make it an offence to make knowingly false statements about the process or outcome of an election.
There’s certainly a case for making these changes. But Bill C-25 targets only the most visible symptom of a larger problem — not only for our elections but for our democracy as a whole: the dearth of credible news on the platforms most Canadians look for it.
Mar 19, 2026
It’s hard to see how it is
One of the main concerns with the lawful access bill re-tabled in recent weeks (C-22 ) involves a new power to order our cellphone companies to preserve the metadata attaching to all of our calls, emails, and texts for up to a year.
Metadata as defined in the bill captures precisely where and when we used our phones, and the coordinates of who we were in touch with at those times and places — though not the content of our communications.
Even though police would still need a warrant or other authority, such as exigent circumstances, to access this data from Shaw or Telus, the power to order its preservation has raised concerns. Our government is saying here: we’re now going to keep a record of every time you use your phone and where you used it — just in case. But don’t worry. You’re not being watched.
I’ve already had two journalists ask me if this is constitutional. David Fraser has flagged it in his excellent overview of C-22. And Professor Michael Geist has written a very informative and insightful post about this, noting that efforts to pass similar law in Europe have been struck down by the Court of Justice of the EU and by various constitutional courts.
The point of this short post is to explain, in plain terms, how and why this new power might be held to violate our right to privacy under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (The power appears in section 5(2)(d) of the proposed Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, found in Part 2 of the bill here .)