Skip to Content Subscribe Our Offers My Account Manage My Subscriptions FAQ Newsletters Canada Canadian True Crime Canadian Politics Health World Israel & Middle East Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Comics NP News Quiz New York Times Crossword Horoscopes Life Eating & Drinking Style Sponsored Play for Ontario Travel Travel Canada Travel USA Travel International Cruises Travel Essentials Culture Books Celebrity Movies Music Theatre Television Business Essentials Advice Lives Told Tails Told Shopping Buy Canadian Home Living Outdoor Living Kitchen & Dining Tech Style & Beauty Personal Care Entertainment & Hobbies Gift Guide Travel Guide Amazon Prime Day Deals Savings National Post Store More Sports Hockey Baseball Basketball Football Soccer Golf Tennis Driving Vehicle Research Reviews News Gear Guide Obituaries Place an Obituary Place an In Memoriam Classifieds Place an Ad Celebrations Working Business Ads Archives Healthing Epaper Manage Print Subscription Profile Settings My Subscriptions Saved Articles My Offers Newsletters Customer Service FAQ Newsletters Canada World Financial Post NP Comment Longreads Puzzmo Diversions Life Shopping Epaper Manage Print Subscription HomeNP CommentFIRST READING: The worst-case scenarios that Carney's 'social media ban' could enableOttawa could get sweeping powers to decide who's able to use the internet, and even what AI chatbots are allowed to say You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages Marc Miller (front centre) joined by (front L-R) Liberal MP Anna Gainey, and Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister Rachel Bendayan, (second row L-R) Minister of Health Marjorie Michel, Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree, and Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation and Minister responsible for the Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario Evan Solomon, speaks during a press conference after tabling the new bill entitled the Safe Social Media Act in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 10, 2026. Photo by PHOTO BY HYUNGCHEOL PARK/PostmediaFirst Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.Exclusive articles by Conrad Black, Barbara Kay and others. Plus, special edition NP Platformed and First Reading newsletters and virtual events.Unlimited online access to National Post.National Post ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on.Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword.Support local journalism.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one account.Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments.Enjoy additional articles per month.Get email updates from your favourite authors.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Access articles from across Canada with one accountShare your thoughts and join the conversation in the commentsEnjoy additional articles per monthGet email updates from your favourite authorsSign In or Create an AccountorOf late, Canada has a bit of a history of adopting nice-sounding policy, only for said policy to immediately yield an avalanche of unintended consequences.Ottawa legalized assisted suicide in 2016 with the promise that it would only apply to the terminally ill and be subject to strict checks on eligibility. Ten years later, MAID has killed tens of thousands more Canadians than its planners anticipated, and yielded scores of examples in which patients were prescribed death in lieu of treatment. In 2019, the B.C. Legislative Assembly unanimously passed DRIPA, a 2019 bill enshrining the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People into law. Despite explicit assurances that the bill wouldn’t be used to override existing laws or impose an Indigenous veto on government action, that’s exactly what started to happen in late 2025.This newsletter from NP Comment tackles the topics you care about. (Subscriber-exclusive edition on Fridays)By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againWhen the Carney government tabled the Safe Social Media Act this week, the pitch was that it was needed to protect children. The bill’s singular goal was to ban social media for children under 16, which was necessary because “kids are dying,” according to Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture Marc Miller. But like any number of other laws that sound nice but conceal profound repercussions, C-34 includes a surprisingly large toolbox of new government controls on the internet.Below, a guide to the worst-case scenario of what Carney’s “social media ban” could engender.Like buying liquor, showing ID could become a mandatory requirement of using the internetThe immediate hitch with enforcing a social media ban on children is that it will require age verification for everyone else.Canada already imposes age controls on buying liquor, for instance, and the impact is predominantly felt by thousands of non-children forced to show identification in order to purchase beer or enter bars.As to how a website can shut out users under 16, the most benign option is to do what Australia did, and leave it to social media companies to install “age verification” programs that screen out users based on voice or facial recognition. As an internal Australian report has already found, most youth are easily defeating the checks, sometimes by measures as simple as putting ping pong balls in their cheeks during facial recognition.But the tenets of Bill C-34 could just as easily enshrine a regime in which social media companies are forced to adopt harder measures, such as the mandatory verification of government-issued ID.It appoints an all-powerful social media czar with censorship powersAccording to perennial tech policy critic Michael Geist, the single most impactful consequence of Bill C-34 is the one that’s barely getting mentioned in press coverage.The terms of Bill C-34 would be enforced not by law enforcement or the courts, but by a newly minted Digital Safety Commission of Canada with wide-ranging, unilateral powers over social media platforms.“The breadth of its influence can’t be overstated: it will set the standards that millions of Canadians must satisfy to verify their age in order to use social media services. It will establish what platforms must do about harmful content, including the removal of certain material,” wrote Geist in an analysis.In doing all of this, Bill C-34 specifies that the Commission is “not bound by any legal or technical rules of evidence.”The commission is also mandated to make all these decisions quickly. “It must deal with all matters that come before it as informally and expeditiously as the circumstances and considerations of fairness and natural justice permit,” it reads.Ottawa will be empowered to tell AI chatbots what they can and cannot sayAccording to Bill C-34’s official backgrounder, it will subject AI chatbots to a series of new controls designed to ensure they don’t “engage in harmful behaviour.” Amid reports of AI programs such as ChatGPT counselling suicide or legitimizing psychotic delusions, the implication is that Ottawa will now be able to tell them to stop.But here again, the government would receive broad powers to control what AI chatbots are allowed to say.While Bill C-34 specifically bars chatbots from encouraging “suicidal ideation” or “self-harm,” it all subjects them to a generalized ban on communicating any kind of “harmful content.”This includes a ban on anything that “foments hatred,” which Bill C-34 defines as “detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”It would be up to the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to figure out the distinction, but Canada has no shortage of quasi-judicial government bodies finding creative and politicized interpretations of what constitutes hate speech.As one example, it was only in March that the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal ordered a former school trustee, Barry Neufeld, to pay $750,000 for his publicly expressed view that “separating gender identity from assigned biological sex is a fiction and an ‘ideology’ to be opposed.”The cited violation in that case bore language similar to the “foments hatred” clause included in Bill C-34. Neufeld was found to have uttered statements “likely to expose a person or a group or class of persons to hatred or contempt.”It would force Canadians to pepper the internet with sensitive personal informationAt the time of publication, the Government of Canada is running the Be Scam Smart campaign, a program warning Canadians to be vigilant about the personal information they upload to the internet.“Any personal information shared online is at risk of being compromised or stolen,” reads a 2024 backgrounder published by the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. It adds, “think twice before sharing personal information.”Bill C-34 effectively mandates Canadians to do the opposite. Right now, everything from Facebook to YouTube to TikTok can be accessed with minimal disclosure of personal information. Under C-34, all those platforms could potentially be required to collect IDs, photos and other personal information.This potentially means that if a major internet company gets hacked in the post-C-34 area, users wouldn’t just have their emails and usernames compromised. Rather, hackers could be breaching a treasure trove of home addresses, government IDs and personal photos. Canadian public support for capital punishment is usually pretty high, but a new Research Co. poll finds that the idea of executing criminals now ranks as one of the most popular issues in the entire country. Sixty per cent of respondents wanted the death penalty reinstated as punishment for murder, and 70 per cent saw it as appropriate in some circumstances. What’s more, sentiment was virtually uniform across demographic cohorts, with Canadians of every single age, sex, race, region and political persuasion expressing majority support for executions.First Reading is a Canadian politics newsletter curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here. Join the Conversation This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.