Safe Social Media Act

This bill, called the Safe Social Media Act, creates a new regulatory system for online platforms in Canada. It does this by enacting two new laws: the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act. The goal is to make large social media platforms, chatbot services (like AI companions), and certain other high-risk online services safer, especially for children, and to reduce the spread of specific categories of seriously harmful content.

The Digital Safety Act sets out duties for companies that operate these "regulated services." They must take reasonable steps to protect children, including using age-verification or age-estimation tools to restrict access to pornographic content, and potentially setting a minimum age (16) for having a social media account, depending on further regulations. Platforms must also act responsibly by reducing users' exposure to harmful content such as child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate images, content that bullies children, hate content, incitement to violence, and terrorism-related content; they must offer tools to block other users and flag harmful content, and label AI-generated ("synthetic") content. Chatbot operators have special duties too, such as detecting and responding to crisis situations (like expressions of suicidal thoughts) and preventing manipulative or deceptive chatbot behaviour. Companies must also publish regular "digital safety plans" describing their policies and how well they are working, and keep records to show compliance.

The bill creates a new government body, the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, to oversee and enforce these rules. The Commission can issue guidelines, investigate complaints, order companies to make certain illegal content (like child sexual abuse material or non-consensual intimate images) inaccessible in Canada, conduct inspections, and impose significant fines or other penalties on companies that break the rules. Ordinary Canadians can file complaints about specific harmful content or submit general concerns about how a platform is handling its safety duties. The Commission must also report periodically to Parliament, and the government is required to review how the law is working within a few years of it taking effect.

This bill creates the Digital Safety Commission of Canada and gives it rule-making, content-removal ordering, inspection and penalty powers over operators of social media, chatbot, and other designated online services.

• Who holds the power — the Commission has three to five full-time members appointed by the Governor in Council (Cabinet), holding office "during good behaviour" and removable only for cause; Cabinet also designates a lead minister and can suspend members during an investigation into alleged misconduct.
• Content-removal authority — the Commission can order an operator to make content inaccessible to persons in Canada (for content sexually victimizing a child, revictimizing a survivor, or non-consensual intimate content) upon complaint, and can issue broader compliance orders requiring an operator to take or refrain from any measure to ensure compliance with the Act; these orders can be filed with the Federal Court and enforced as court orders.
• Rule-making left to regulation — many operational details are not fixed in the bill itself but left to future regulations made by Cabinet or by the Commission, including: which services count as "regulated," minimum-age verification requirements, design features for child protection, what content-labelling and "digital safety plan" contents must include, and fee/cost-recovery charges imposed on operators.
• Inspection powers — the Commission may designate inspectors who can enter premises (with a warrant, or with occupant consent, or remotely via telecommunication) to examine, copy, and seize documents, data, and other things, and can compel any person to provide information or access within a specified time.
• Penalties — administrative monetary penalties reach the greater of $10 million or 3% of an operator's gross global revenue; criminal offence fines on indictment reach the greater of $20 million or 5% of gross global revenue; individual employees who breach confidentiality provisions face fines up to $10,000. No sunset clause is stated; the Act itself must be reviewed by the Minister no later than three years after commencement and every five years after, with reports tabled in Parliament but not subject to a vote.
• Information access and sharing — the Commission may accredit researchers to access operators' data inventories, may compel operators to disclose information (including confidential business information under conditions), and may share information with the Minister, the CRTC, the Privacy Commissioner, and the RCMP; some hearings may be held in private at the Commission's discretion.