Internet & Online Safety - Canada

The Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), introduced 26 Feb 2024, would have created a Digital Safety Commission, an Ombudsperson, mandatory 'digital safety plans' and platform duties to reduce seven categories of harmful content. It died on the Order Paper when Parliament was prorogued on 6 January 2025 and has not been reintroduced as a single comprehensive bill.

The 2011 Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography (in force 8 Dec 2011) requires internet-service providers to report addresses hosting child sexual abuse material to Cybertip.ca and to notify police where their service is used for such offences, with data-preservation duties — a long-standing partial platform obligation.

Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act, would redefine 'Internet service' so the reporting regime expressly covers online platforms, social media and app-based services with a 'connection to Canada', and extend the data-preservation period from 21 days to one year.

The Senate-originated 'Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act' (Bill S-209) would criminalize commercially making sexually explicit material available to under-18s without age verification, and allow court-ordered ISP blocking of non-compliant sites. The Senate passed it; as of April 2026 it was before the House of Commons. Critics warn its age-assurance and site-blocking tools could extend broadly to social media, search and AI services.

The Combatting Hate Act (Bill C-9) carries forward the hate-related elements once bundled in C-63: new Criminal Code offences including publicly displaying hate/terrorism symbols to promote hatred, and removal of the religious-belief defence. It passed third reading in the House of Commons (26 March 2026) and is at second reading in the Senate.

The government has signalled it will not 'copy and paste' C-63 and reconvened its Expert Advisory Group on Online Safety in March 2026 to inform fresh online-harms legislation, with engagement from the Culture and Digital Innovation ministers and a stated aim to target only 'clearly harmful content' in a Charter-compliant way.