Ottawa threatens big tech with kids’ social media ban

Summary

Podcast Summary: CBC Front Burner – “Ottawa threatens big tech with kids’ social media ban”

Date: June 11, 2026
Host: Aaron Wary (in for Jayme Poisson)
Guest: Taylor Owen (Beaverbrook Chair in Media Ethics and Communications, McGill University)
Main Theme: Canada’s proposed Safe Social Media Act and its implications for Big Tech, social media platforms, AI chatbots, and digital safety for minors.

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Overview

This episode examines the newly introduced Canadian Safe Social Media Act, which places significant new responsibilities on tech platforms to protect children from online harms. The most headline-grabbing proposal: platforms must make their services safe for children under 16, or else face a ban for young users. The legislation also addresses generative AI chatbots. Taylor Owen, a key advisor on the legislation, provides insight into the bill’s scope, regulatory ambitions, and its broader context within Canadian digital policy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Seven Categories of Targeted Harmful Content

[01:24–02:33]

• The bill targets seven main harms:
  1. Content that sexually victimizes a child
  2. Intimate images shared without consent
  3. Content inducing self-harm (e.g., eating disorder promotion)
  4. Bullying of children
  5. Child abuse material
  6. Hate-driven content
  7. Content inciting violence/terrorism
• Platforms are not required to eliminate all such content, but must conduct risk assessments and demonstrate measures to minimize amplification or incentivization of harmful material.

“Those [types of] content… companies need to do risk assessments to demonstrate that they’re not being amplified or incentivized and they’re taking reasonable measures to reduce their spread.” — Taylor Owen [01:32]

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2. Three Core Duties for Tech Companies

[02:36–05:02]

• Duty to Act Responsibly:
  • Platforms must prove products are broadly safe before entering the Canadian market via risk assessments and transparent mitigation strategies.
  • Must share relevant data with researchers and regulators ("show their work").
• Duty for Child-Targeted Products:
  • Must adhere to an "age appropriate design code," as seen in the UK, requiring specific product design criteria (e.g., disabling DMs from strangers, removing infinite scroll).
  • Access for under-16s is restricted until platforms demonstrate compliance with these codes.
• Duty to Remove Certain Content:
  • For flagged child sexual abuse material and non-consensually shared intimate images (including deepfakes), takedown is required within 24 hours.

“The act will establish a minimum age of 16 to have a social media account… [and] require social media platforms and AI chatbot services to do more to protect children.” — Mark Miller, Heritage Minister [04:44]

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3. Social Media Ban for Under-16s: Ban, Exemption Pathways & Public Support

[05:49–08:33]

• The government stopped short of a permanent ban; rather, the restriction is a moratorium: platforms must block under-16 users until they pass design code requirements.
• Survey cited: 76% of Canadians support a full ban for under-16s; 84% prefer age-appropriate design codes.
• The measure is aggressive, but responds to strong public concern.

“We are still taking something away from a generation of online users. It’s a fairly aggressive measure, but a lot of people want it.” — Taylor Owen [06:06]

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4. What Will Constitute ‘Sufficient Safeguards’?

[08:33–09:36]

• Details are left intentionally flexible, as criteria must evolve with technology. Design codes will likely mirror those in the UK.

“These products change and… the idea that you would specify the specific design criteria in legislation… just doesn’t respond to the nature of the technology.” — Taylor Owen [08:33]

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5. Will Platforms Accept the Loss of Young Users?

[09:36–11:30]

• Some companies may forgo under-16 users, but because young users are valuable for user “onboarding,” most are likely to comply with safety requirements eventually.
• Age restrictions already exist but are poorly enforced.

“Once you hook in a 13, 12, 11, 10 year old, … we know they are recruiting and actively trying to get users below their terms of service cut off.” — Taylor Owen [09:50]

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6. Age Verification Methods & Privacy Concerns

[11:30–15:10]

• The bill leaves methods of age assurance to platforms but requires minimizing data collection and prompt deletion.
• Technology could include probabilistic AI tools or anonymized third-party verification.
• Privacy advocates worry this could become a “massive data grab” for Big Tech, but alternatives exist that minimize new data collection.

“Big tech does have a ton of data about us already… whether age verification… necessarily equates to tech companies collecting more data… is highly debatable.” — Taylor Owen [15:10]

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7. Regulatory Enforcement & Powers

[16:16–18:06]

• Enforcement is a challenge: in Australia, companies have dragged their feet on compliance.
• The Canadian regulator will have punitive powers (fines up to 3% of global revenue), independence from existing bodies like the CRTC, and significant investigative scope.
• Some concerns exist about the regulator’s technical capacity and bureaucratic structure.

“You need a strong independent regulator with real investigative, audit and punitive powers. And this bill seems to broadly establish that potential.” — Taylor Owen [18:06]

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8. AI Chatbots: Separate but Stringent Requirements

[20:09–23:16]

• Chatbots are not banned for under-16s, but must meet duties to act responsibly:
  • Risk assessment for harmful outputs.
  • Intervention protocols: Interrupt if users express intent to self-harm or crime.
  • Transparency: Clear, public flagging and moderation guidelines (though not chat content itself).
• Aims to avoid opaque policies like in the Tumblr Ridge case.
• Owen’s recent research shows erratic approaches to harm prevention by leading chatbot makers.

“Chatbots are a very personal conversation… the harm is different… this demands… that companies are clear on their flagging protocol.” — Taylor Owen [20:24–24:08]

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9. Why Not Ban Chatbots For Kids?

[26:45–28:38]

• There’s not (yet) robust evidence for a full ban as there is for social platforms. AI will be integral to daily life; education and responsible design are prioritized over exclusion.

“I'm just not sure that's where we are yet with AI… restricting a generation of kids from a technology that… is going to be a big part of our future is [not] the right move.” — Taylor Owen [27:14]

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10. Context in Canada’s Digital Policy Environment

[28:38–30:49]

• The new Act and last week’s AI strategy mark a shift toward safety as a prerequisite for technology adoption.
• The next essential step is an overhaul of Canada’s outdated Privacy Act, which has lagged behind technological change.

“If we have a strong Digital Safety Act and… a far better Privacy Act with a strong regulator… I think we’re in a much better place than we have been for a long time in this space.” — Taylor Owen [30:49]

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On the scope of the bill:
  “You can incentivize companies to design their products to be safer.” — Taylor Owen [06:06]

• On age assurance technology:
  “I suspect a lot of it’s going to be done with various AI estimation tools or third party verification systems… but there’s no question that is the big ambiguity in this and it is going to be debated.” — Taylor Owen [11:41]

• On enforcement levers:
  “The idea of age restrictions being used as an incentive to comply is new. That doesn’t exist in Australia… this is not an absolute ban, which means it’s a potential lever to force compliance.” — Taylor Owen [16:36]

• On regulators:
  “I would have liked to see a regulator spelled out that was designed very differently… that might sit a bit outside of the civil service… but it is a good sign that they made it independent.” — Taylor Owen [18:06]

• On transparency in AI harm prevention:
  “We have a right to know. And this kind of measure forces them to tell us.” — Taylor Owen [24:08]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [01:24–02:33]: Seven categories of harm
• [02:36–05:02]: The three main legal duties for regulated platforms
• [05:49–08:33]: Social media ban for under-16s; public support and rationale
• [09:36–11:30]: Will companies abandon young users or adapt?
• [11:41–13:34]: Methods and challenges for age verification
• [15:10–16:16]: Privacy concerns with age checks
• [18:06–20:09]: The regulator’s role, powers, and possible shortcomings
• [20:09–23:16]: Regulating AI chatbots and learning from the Tumblr Ridge case
• [27:14–28:38]: Why chatbots aren’t included in the access ban for under-16s
• [28:38–30:49]: The bigger picture: digital safety, AI strategy, and the need for privacy law reform

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Conclusion

This episode gave a deep, nuanced look at how Canada is responding to rising concerns around children’s digital safety. Through in-depth analysis, Taylor Owen clarified the mechanics, philosophy, and possible impacts of the Safe Social Media Act. The conversation underscored the urgency of action as technology evolves, balancing innovation with responsible design and regulation, all while navigating sensitive privacy and enforcement challenges. The legislation’s success will depend on regulatory competence, industry cooperation, and timely privacy reforms.

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Transcript

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[Taylor Owen]

this is a CBC podcast.

[Aaron Wary]

Hi, I'm Aaron Wary in for Jamie. Canada has put big tech social platforms on notice. Change your platforms to make them more safe for kids or children under the age of 16 will be banned from using them. But the federal government stopped short of doing the same for AI chatbots. Taylor Owen is back on the show to walk us through the new Safe Social Media Act. He's the Beaverbrook Chair in Media Ethics and communications at McGill University. He was part of an expert panel advising the government on online harms and a member of the AI Strategy Task Force. Hey Taylor.

[Taylor Owen]

Hey. Good to hear from you.

[Aaron Wary]

So a list of online harms could conceivably be pretty long. What kind of harms specifically is the government targeting with this new bill?

[Taylor Owen]

So the bill names seven categories of harmful content. Content that sexually victimizes a child, intimate images shared without consent, content that induces a child to self harm. Sort of like prob. Eating disorder content. You could think of that as content used to bully a child. So child abuse material, content that foments hatred, content that incites violence and terrorism, terrorist content. So those are the seven categories. What's important though is that those don't need to be eliminated. It's not saying that companies need to take that content down. It says that on those types of content, companies need to do risk assessments to demonstrate that they're not being amplified or incentivized and they're taking reasonable measures to reduce their spread.

[Aaron Wary]

Right. And there's three main duties that they have to uphold.

[Taylor Owen]

There are so the companies that are regulated and we can talk a bit about what's included and what's not in that, have to do three things. One is they have a duty to act responsibly, a burden that's placed on them to prove that their products are broadly safe before they enter into the Canadian market and are used by Canadian citizens and consumers. And they do this through a number of measures. One is they have to do risk assessments on their products, as I mentioned. So they have to assess the risk of that kind of content being incentivized by their platforms. If they find high risks, they have to do risk mitigation plans. So they have to show how they're going to minimize that risk. And they have to be transparent about all this. They need to share data with researchers, they need to basically show their work. So that's kind of the core duty, the duty to act responsibly. Then there's a separate duty for products that are likely to be used by children. And for those they have to do something called an age appropriate design code is the core of it. That is something that's been tried in other countries, primarily in the uk. And what it says is that for a product that is likely to be used by a kid, there are a certain set of design requirements that you have to follow. These could change over time, critically, but they could include things like no adult can direct message a kid they're not already friends with or no infinite scroll to get at some of the addiction issues. So some features that we know and the companies know as well importantly and have just not acted on it too often. No. Are harmful for kids particularly. And then for kids they also have to. This is the kind of. The big controversial one is restrict access to kids under 16 until such time as they show they've met those age appropriate design criteria, at which time they will get an exemption.

[Mark Miller]

The act will establish a minimum age of 16 to have a social media account. The act will require social media platforms and AI chatbot services to do more to protect children and make their platforms safe.

[Taylor Owen]

The final duty, just to finish this long rundown of the duties, is a duty to make certain types of content inaccessible. And what this says is for two types of content, child sexual abuse material and intimate images shared without consent or intimate content shared without consent, whether it be real or deep fake. Importantly, AI generated. Those two types of content have to be taken down once flagged within 24 hours. So what they're saying is for those two types of content, we're actually not really worried about the borderline cases and the gray area cases that could restrict speech of some users. We just think that content is so bad that even anything adjacent to it. We're okay with a bit of overtakedowns

[Aaron Wary]

on that content and you mentioned it, that the big headline item here, the one that's going to generate the most debate, is that social media ban for Canadians under the age of 16. What exactly is the government proposing here?

[Taylor Owen]

So there are a few options. One was a full ban, like a permanent ban. And they haven't chosen that path, which I think is, is the wise decision. A ban assumes that these products can never be made safe. Right. That there's something inherently dangerous about social media, that it will never be safe for someone under 16 to use it. The challenge with that is that goes against the core principle of the bill that we just outlined. The principle of the bill is that actually you can incentivize companies to design their products to be safer. So what they've done instead is they've said, look like we know the products aren't safe right now and it's going to take some time for companies to comply and to show that things like the age appropriate design code work and are making their products safer. So until such a time as they have shown they are complying with that duty to protect children, namely the age appropriate design code, we are going to make them restrict access to kids under 16. And it's a bit of a compromise position. It can probably be seen sort of as a moratorium rather than a ban. And I think it still is fraught. Right. We are still taking something away from a generation of online users. It's a fairly aggressive measure, but a lot of people want it. We have a survey that just got the result of today that show that 76% of Canadians support a full ban, a full permanent ban, not even just a temporary one. So there is strong support for this. They even support that when given other choices of other options, they like an age appropriate design code even better. 84% people support that. But there is strong support for a ban and I think the government's responding to that.

[Aaron Wary]

As you say, it's not quite a permanent ban, but to, to sort of receive an exemption, I guess from the policy. The government says platforms are going to have to implement, quote, sufficient safeguards for children. Yeah, but we don't yet know what those requirements are going to look like. So what should we be looking for?

[Taylor Owen]

I think what they mean by that is the age appropriate design code. And it's actually really important that they don't specify that in the legislation. These products change and our digital technologies, we have access to change so rapidly that the idea that you would specify the specific design criteria that are important based on research of harms to make products safe for kids in legislation and have to re legislate it every time you wanted to change that list and those criteria just doesn't respond to the nature of the technology and the pace with which it's evolving. So I think unfortunately there needs to be some ambiguity there, but we can look at other jurisdictions to get a hint of what that's going to look like. And for social media there'll be different set of age appropriate design criteria for chatbots, which we can talk about. But for social media it will be some of the things I mentioned because they were already being used in similar codes as the design criteria in the uk. For example.

[Aaron Wary]

Do you think it's likely the companies, the platforms will make these changes, implement these safeguards, or is it possible that they'll just accept that 16 year olds and under aren't going to be allowed on their platforms?

[Taylor Owen]

Yeah, it's a great question. It is possible they do that and some may, some may decide it's worth just sacrificing that three years of market access. Now they will still have to comply with the rest of the regulations for all of their users. Right. The duty to act responsibly and the duty to make those types of content inaccessible will still apply for all users. But yeah, they could opt out, I suppose, of the kids provisions and just restrict users. To do that though, they'd also have to already put in age verification and find out who's a kid and who's an adult. Right. So they just have to restrict access to those kids entirely without any hope of getting back on. So whether or not they choose to do that, I don't know. I mean, the other variable here is we know that these companies value young users to an enormous extent. They incentivize them onto their platform, they're involved in cutthroat battles with each other to appeal to those young users. Because once you hook in a 13, 12, 11, 10 year old, we know they are recruiting and actively trying to get users below their terms of service cut off, which remember, is 16. There already are age restrictions in theory on these platforms. They're just not enforced in any meaningful way. So we know they are fighting for these young users. So the fact that they would give up that bulk of onboarding potential of users, customers in exchange for just not implementing some fairly simple design features, I find that hard to believe, but it's possible some might.

[Aaron Wary]

People are going to want to know how Snapchat or TikTok or any of these other platforms are going to verify someone's age. Do we have any sense yet of how this could work in Canada?

[Taylor Owen]

We don't have a clear sense from the bill. The bill puts the onus on the platforms to take reasonable measures to ensure that under 16s aren't accessing their products. And I think this is best seen as a estimation or a probabilistic criteria rather than an absolute one, which is actually pretty important because there are a lot of ways of verifying, assuring or estimating. Those are all fairly different things. The age of users and different forms of IT have different data requirements and implications for user privacy. And these technologies are evolving. There are systems in place in other jurisdictions and by other companies that some work pretty well, some far less. But the onus is going to be placed on the platforms to determine the methods. What the bill does say is that it needs to be, I can't believe the exact words you might have it in front of you, but it has to collect minimal data and it has to delete any data that's collected in the service of doing the verification. I suspect a lot of it's going to be done with various AI estimation tools or third party verification systems where people get their age verified once and they it's de anonymized and they are sort of verified as an adult with no attachment to their name or data. But there's no question that is the big ambiguity in this and it is going to be debated.

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[Aaron Wary]

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[Taylor Owen]

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[Aaron Wary]

You mentioned that one piece or one section of the legislation and that does seem to be aimed at the privacy concerns that have been raised. NDP leader Avi Lewis said in a statement that Canada cannot allow an age verification process to become yet another massive data grab for big tech Is that a big concern here?

[Taylor Owen]

Well, I mean, big tech does have a ton of data about us already, and because we have a very outdated privacy law, there's very little restrictions on what they can collect on us, which is becoming a bigger and bigger problem as we sort of head into a world of AI as well. So, yes, I mean, I think it is a problem. The data they have on us, whether age verification or age estimation as they're using necessarily equates to tech companies. Collecting more data about it is highly debatable. And I think there's all sorts of other ways one can estimate age that do not require more data, in fact, far less collected from individuals. But we're going to have to see that kind of market emerge, basically, and it is in part because of these similar policies being applied in other jurisdictions. Europe has a system of age checking. Australia is leaving it to the market to emerge as different models. And there's also different ways being used there. And I think the space is evolving quite quickly.

[Aaron Wary]

In Australia, one of those other jurisdictions, I believe the regulator is investigating five major tech companies for not doing enough already. Do you see enough in this legislation to say whether the proposed Canadian regulator is going to be able to provide meaningful enforcement?

[Taylor Owen]

So there's multiple dimensions to that. I mean, one, I think it is important to note that the companies are not complying very responsibly in Australia, which is part of the reason people cite low effectiveness rates of their restrictions. It's in part because the companies are dragging their feet, frankly. So that's one piece of it. A second is there's a difference between complying with the age restrictions and complying with the broader regulations we have that they're in this bill. And I think there's every reason to believe they will comply with the broader set of regulations, in part because they are already doing so in other jurisdictions. A lot of the things in the other duties are present in the UK across Europe, and the companies, to varying degrees, are complying. The final piece of this, though, that I think is important is we have actually added a different stick here. The idea of age restrictions being used as an incentive to comply is new. That doesn't exist in Australia. In Australia, there's no mechanism to comply with broader regulations and get your restrictions lifted. It's an absolute ban, and this is not an absolute ban, which means it's a potential lever to force compliance.

[Aaron Wary]

We haven't talked much about this new regulator that's going to be established. How important is. Is that body, that new body to this and what kind of role, I guess, do you see it playing going forward?

[Taylor Owen]

Yeah, I think it's enormously important. I mean, one of the things we know is because of the scale and the size of these companies and their power, you need a strong independent regulator with real investigative, audit and punitive powers. And this bill seems to broadly establish that potential. It doesn't have as much of the details as I would have liked to see, I have to say. I mean, I think the idea that a large bureaucracy in Ottawa is going to be nimble enough and creative enough and have the technical capacity to take on this task to me is uncertain. And I would have liked to seen a regulator spelled out that was designed very differently, that might have hubs across the country that might sit a bit outside of the civil service and be able to creatively hire people with technical expertise from industry. So I think there's some details to be worked out on just how effective this thing will be. But it is a good sign that they made it independent. I mean, they didn't give this regulatory mandate to the CRTC for example, which was an option, they made it independent, they've given it real punitive powers. The fines are very significant attached to non compliance, 3% of global revenue. And they've given it the tools in the form of obligations and transparency requirements and the risk assessments to have real teeth. So I think the structure is there. A lot of the potential of its effectiveness is going to be rooted in how they build it from here.

[Aaron Wary]

The second piece of this that is probably going to generate the most immediate conversation is the section of the bill that deals with AI Chatbots.

[Taylor Owen]

Yeah.

[Aaron Wary]

Can you kind of go over what they're proposing to do there?

[Taylor Owen]

Yeah, this is super interesting. And this is the second other big difference from previous iterations of this bill, this model that we've seen. I mean the principle here is, I believe, sound. It's that the idea of doing a digital safety policy and only including social media companies feels to a certain degree like you're fighting the last battle. And it's very clear that many of our online interactions are now being done inside and mediated by AI or chatbot consumer facing chatbots. So I think they're right to include it. What they did is they didn't include it in the age restriction. So there's no under 16 restrictions on access to chatbots, which I also think is the right move. I think AI is a relatively new technology and I think it's a little too early to sort of jump to a fairly radical solution. Of restricting access to users to it. But instead they've said that chatbots and the large AI chatbot companies are subject to many of the same requirements. They have to do risk assessments on their products. They have to be transparent in certain ways about their safety protocols. But chatbots are a bit different than social media. Social media, the harm exists out in public. It is about content circulating at scale on public platforms and in public forums. Chatbots are different. Chatbots are a very personal conversation between a human and a product, the AI. And what they say is that in the bill is that chatbots have a separate set of duties, the duties to act responsibly. They need to ensure that chatbots aren't communicating those types of harmful content that we talked about, those seven categories. They have to ensure that, that they intervene or that there are flags or they stop a conversation when a user expresses the intent to self harm, to expresses suicidal ideas or to commit violence. There's sort of some sort of trigger that sits in there and they have to mitigate the risk of a chatbot itself behaving in a criminal way. So the chatbot convincing someone to commit a crime, for example. So those are three extra things they need to do. And they need to be clear about what their guidelines are and their flagging tools are. They don't have to share the content of those chats, which I think is a good thing with anybody. But they do need to talk about their processes and their flagging processes for what's allowed and what's not allowed, which right now isn't the case.

[Aaron Wary]

Right.

[Taylor Owen]

That was the challenge with Tumblr Ridge is like we have no idea why that conversation was flagged, how, when, how many times, all of that is opaque. This would change that.

[Aaron Wary]

Yeah, you mentioned it. Tumblr Ridge, that's I think, going to be the prism through which this legislation is going to be judged. Mark Miller, the Heritage Minister, was asked, or I guess now the Minister of Canadian Identity was asked about that today.

[Mark Miller]

I'm not going to sit here pretend today that there is one rapid solution that would have prevented what happened at Tumblr Ridge from happening. But I do think this law could have made a difference. And what that difference is is something that is for others to decide going forward.

[Aaron Wary]

Do you see anything here that could prevent a future tragedy like that?

[Taylor Owen]

So there's a couple elements of this that might help reduce the risk of this kind of event. I mean, I think Nothing will be 100% in any of this set of policies across this bill. It's not designed to be 100%, it's designed to reduce risk. So, for example, one of the duties that AI companies will have is to intervene when someone expresses a violent intent and to not allow conversations that incentivize someone to commit a crime. We don't know exactly what happened in this case, but it's likely that both of those things were present in those chats. The second thing this demands is that companies are clear on their flagging protocol. And that also wasn't the case here. We know that this conversation was flagged by the AI and that those flags were then overruled by humans. But why? What criteria did the humans use to allow these conversations to continue? We don't know, and I think we have a right to know. And this kind of measure forces them to tell us.

[Aaron Wary]

So the argument essentially comes down to transparency, that this, what they've set up here, would at the very least provide us with transparency in what happens in a case like that.

[Taylor Owen]

Transparency over the protocols for sure, and the guidelines and some degree of safety measures embedded in the design of the product itself. Right, like don't convince people to commit crimes or don't teach them how to commit mass killings, for example. We've just done a big audit of the four main Frontier models at the lab I run at McGill and I tell you, we did an audit across the seven different categories of harm, and it is present across those chatbots in very different degrees across them. They're all clearly running different policies on how to keep their products safe. And this would kind of level the playing field a little bit, I think. And for kids using these products, that's an important piece of this. It would have a separate age appropriate design code. Right. So there'd be very clear features for kids using the product that it would have to beat, which I also think is important. If we're going to let 13 year olds use chatbots, I hope that that product is being designed in a different way than the product that I use. I think that's just a baseline expectation. We should.

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[Aaron Wary]

You touched on this a bit already, but you know, on that the idea of the safety of chatbots, you know, Mark Miller was asked about it directly today and said we will impose the

[Mark Miller]

same responsibilities to protect kids, first and foremost, be safe by design, that they're

[Aaron Wary]

not as well studied as social platforms, that they don't play the same social role. You know, some of the same things you're saying here. Do you think there's a good enough argument for not. For not banning chatbots?

[Taylor Owen]

It's contentious, but, yes, I do think that's the right approach. I think the impetus after Tumblr Ridge was just to take this thing away, that it was just inherently dangerous and it should be restricted. And I'm just not sure that's where we are yet with AI. There's currently risks in it. I think a lot of those can be mitigated with just careful design decisions and more responsible, frankly, design decisions that are age appropriate. But we also have had 20 years of studying social media. We have a pretty good sense of what the harms are. There's some debate around the edges, but broadly we know is a big, poorly and dangerously designed product. And what is a safer one? We don't know that yet with chatbots. And we are also normalizing AI, for better or worse through our society. This is where this stuff ties into the AI strategy that was announced last week. The National AI Strategy has as one of its core principles that AI is going to be a part of our lives and that we need to collectively both ensure that it's safe and learn to use it responsibly. And I'm not sure restricting a generation of kids from a technology that at least the government believes is going to be a big part of our future is the right move.

[Aaron Wary]

So you mentioned it. Last week, the government introduced its AI strategy.

[Taylor Owen]

Yeah.

[Aaron Wary]

Now we have this digital safety legislation, what we used to call online harms legislation. You've been advocating on these issues for a long time. You've been working in this world for years. Where do you think we're at now in Canada? Are we building a secure foundation here? Have we made progress in the past week?

[Taylor Owen]

I think we're getting there. I mean, it's worth sort of looking back at where we were a year ago on these files. I mean, we had. A year ago we had a new government that didn't put a high priority on these digital safety issues. They had no interest, I think, in retabling the previous government's Online Harms Act. And they had an initial AI approach last year that was defined by the idea that the previous government had overindexed for regulation and that they were going to lean in on adoption of AI a year later. We have one of the pillars of their AI strategy being the idea that in order to get Canadians to use AI or to incentivize Canadians to usai, you have to ensure that it's safe. And I was a little bit critical of the strategy last week because I don't think it's provided enough detail about how they were going to do that. It just said that they would. Well, this week we see one more piece of it, right? We see a fair amount of detail about how they are going to ensure chatbots and social media platforms are safe. There's other big pieces, though, that are still uncertain. And the biggest one, and probably the most important one is the privacy element of this. And so we still have a privacy act that is decades out of date that the government has spent years trying to reform and failed to do so. And hopefully soon that will be another piece of this to come together. But if we have a strong digital safety act and a hopefully a far better privacy act with a strong regulator enforcing them, I think we're in a much better place than we have been for a long time in this space.

[Aaron Wary]

All right, thanks very much, Taylor.

[Taylor Owen]

Yeah, my pleasure.

[Aaron Wary]

That's all for today. I'm Aaron Ware. Thank you for listening to Front Burner.

[Taylor Owen]

For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.