Posted by Geoffrey Clarfield
Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, is the latest building block to be added to the foundation of Canada’s forthcoming surveillance state.
If Bill C-34 is passed into law, it’s only a matter of time before the federal government knows the location, monitors the movement, and tracks the communications of every Canadian. Bill C-34, together with other federal laws, will provide the government with intimate knowledge of how and when we use social media, AI, and the internet generally.
The first building block of Canada’s surveillance state was the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11), which expanded the power of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission beyond radio and television to include the internet as well. The CRTC now has unprecedented regulatory authority to monitor all online audiovisual content. The CRTC forces major streaming and social media platforms to manipulate their algorithms to push what the CRTC determines to be “Canadian.” YouTube, Netflix, and TikTok must now tweak their automated recommendation engines to showcase CRTC-designated “Canadian” content, thereby shifting what Canadians see when they log in. The CRTC’s power includes punishing those who fail to comply with its rules.The Online News Act (Bill C-18) has stopped us from sharing news on Facebook and Instagram. Further, Google is now forced to pay $100 million towards subsidizing the federal government’s favourite media outlets, predictably excluding the independent media that fail to adopt and promote the government’s preferred narratives.The Combatting Hate Act (Bill C-9) has placed further restrictions on the free speech of Canadians. Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests, evangelical pastors, and other religious leaders and adherents can now face criminal charges for publicly teaching what their sacred scriptures say about homosexuality, sex, and transgenderism.
The latest bill to help turn Canada into a surveillance state is C-34, the Safe Social Media Act. Citing the laudable goal of protecting children from social media and from pornography, Bill C-34 moves Canada closer towards centralized government-issued digital ID.In December 2025, Australia passed a similar law to ban under-16 teens from using social media. By March 2026, the government publicly admitted that over two thirds of under-16 teens had continued to access and use social media, in spite of the law.Canadian children (and adults) are already protected from online harms by Canada’s Criminal Code, which prohibits online child pornography and online advocacy for violence and terrorism, to name just two examples of things that are already illegal both online and offline. Canada should focus on stronger and more consistent enforcement of these existing criminal laws, rather than creating a new and largely unaccountable entity in the form of the Digital Safety Commission.
Together, the Online Streaming Act, the Online News Act, the Cybersecurity Act, the Combatting Hate Act, the Lawful Access Act, and the Safe Social Media Act form the web of Canada’s surveillance state. Once this surveillance web is in place, Canadians become flies and the government becomes the spider.
