🍁 civid v1

Status and scope

• Bill C-34 was introduced at first reading on June 10, 2026. It would enact two new laws: the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act.
• It primarily affects operators of regulated social media, chatbot and other online services, as well as their users in Canada, particularly children.
• The supplied bill text is truncated. Details of some powers, penalties, amendments and commencement provisions are not available in the excerpt.

Part 1 — Digital Safety Act

Services covered

• Regulations would set user-number thresholds for social media and chatbot services. Smaller services could also be designated if they present specified significant risks.
• Other types of online service could be brought under the children’s protection and transparency duties by regulation, following a Commission analysis of risks to children.
• Social media services include qualifying adult-content and livestreaming services. The chatbot definition covers certain conversational AI systems capable of simulating sustained human-like relationships.
• Basic internet connectivity and private messaging features of regulated social media and online services are excluded from the relevant duties.

Children and harmful content

• Regulated services would have to incorporate child-protection design features specified in regulations. Where an operator has reasonable grounds to suspect that its service provides access to pornographic content, it would need adequate age-verification or age-estimation measures to reduce children’s exposure.
• Regulations could apply a minimum account age of 16 to specified regulated social media services. The Commission could exempt an operator if it is satisfied that the service has adequate safeguards for children.
• Age-checking measures must meet privacy requirements, including destruction of collected personal information once verification or estimation is complete.
• The bill defines several categories of harmful content, including non-consensual intimate content, child sexual victimization material, content inducing a child to self-harm, bullying of a child, hate, incitement to violence, and terrorism or violent-extremism content.

Social media duties

• Operators would have to take adequate measures to reduce users’ exposure to harmful content, provide blocking and flagging tools, and make a resource person available to users.
• They would have to label qualifying synthetic content, to the extent reasonable, and certain harmful content amplified through automated communications.
• Certain child sexual victimization content and non-consensual intimate content would have to be made inaccessible in Canada, generally within 24 hours after identification or a user flag, subject to a different period being set by regulation and specified dismissal rules. Users would have opportunities to make representations and request reconsideration.
• Operators would have to preserve certain removed violent or extremist content and related data for one year, subject to the stated exceptions.
• The bill does not generally require operators to proactively search for harmful content, although regulations could require technology to prevent uploads of child sexual victimization or survivor-revictimization content.

Chatbot duties

• Operators would have to reduce the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content or engaging in specified harmful behaviours, including deceptive impersonation and manipulative emotional attachment.
• If a user expresses suicidal thoughts, an intention to self-harm or an intention to cause death or serious bodily harm, the service would have to immediately interrupt the interaction and direct the user to appropriate, currently available crisis services involving a human.
• Users would have flagging tools and access to a resource person.

Transparency and oversight

• Operators would have to keep compliance records. Social media and chatbot operators would submit digital safety plans to the Commission and make them publicly available, subject to specified exclusions.
• People in Canada could make submissions to the Commission about operators’ compliance. According to the bill’s summary, they could also complain about the two specified categories of intimate or child-victimization content after using their best efforts to seek recourse from the operator; the Commission could order the content made inaccessible in Canada.
• The table of provisions identifies inspection, compliance-order, administrative monetary penalty, offence and cost-recovery provisions. The supplied excerpt does not include their operative details or penalty amounts.

Part 2 — Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act

• The bill would establish the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to administer and enforce the Digital Safety Act and perform the functions described above.
• The table of provisions also lists rules on the Commission’s composition, members, employees, remuneration and annual reports. Their detailed text is not included in the supplied excerpt.

Existing law