Ottawa set to revive online harms legislation in 2026: government source

Justice Minister Sean Fraser had previously suggested the government wouldn’t ‘copy and paste’ Bill C-63, formerly known as the Online Harms Act, but child protection advocates remained hopeful the Liberals would bring forward a new online safety law. The Liberals are preparing to bring forward new standalone legislation to address harmful content found online, reviving a Trudeau-era bill that failed to become law before this past year’s federal election, says a government source. The source, who asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely, told The Hill Times the government was developing a new version of the Online Harms Act, also known as Bill C-63, that will be introduced in the House of Commons in the new year. Justice Minister Sean Fraser (Central Nova, N.S.) had previously hinted that Ottawa would not resurrect a verbatim version of C-63, but the source said the forthcoming legislation will include some elements of the original bill. Since the election, child protection advocates had been calling on Prime Minister Mark Carney (Nepean, Ont.) to bring back the legislation under a new framing devoted to online safety, rather than specific harms. However, the source said the bill was still under development and a final decision has not yet been made regarding its scope. “It makes me happy … that the government is working towards a bill that will have some semblance of an online safety act,” said Carol Todd, who founded the Amanda Todd Legacy Society after cyberbullying led to her daughter’s death by suicide and created a national conversation around online safety in 2012, in an interview. “ it’s not mission accomplished until we see it … and it gets stamped because what is needed is public oversight.” The advocacy group Children First Canada launched a “Countdown for Kids” initiative earlier this year, urging the Liberal government to announce new online safety measures by the end of the calendar year, but it remains to be seen whether Carney will meet the group’s deadline. Bill C-63 was introduced by then-justice minister Arif Virani in 2024, following through on then-prime minister Justin Trudeau’s 2021 campaign promise to crack down on hate speech, terrorist content, material that incited violence, and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Among other things, it proposed a new regulatory system rooted in a yet-to-be-created Digital Safety Commission, which would be responsible for administering and enforcing the law, complete with new authorities to receive complaints and open investigations into tech companies. In particular, social media platforms would have been required to disclose strategies for protecting users and strengthen mandatory reporting measures for harmful content found on their websites. However, Bill C-63 faced significant political headwinds, particularly from the Conservatives who felt the legislation insufficiently framed the “myriad of harms that occur in the digital space as homogenous and as capable of being solved with one approach or piece of legislation,” as Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner (Calgary Nose Hill, Alta.) said in the House last year. “This is a backward way of looking at things,” Rempel Garner told her fellow MPs. Ultimately, the Liberals agreed to split Bill C-63 into two separate pieces of legislation dedicated to child protection measures and hate crimes, respectively, though neither received royal assent before Trudeau prorogued Parliament earlier this year, effectively killing all bills on the Order Paper. In recent months, the government has brought forward a pair of bills overlapping with provisions previously featured in the Online Harms Act, including Bill C-9, the government’s attempt to tackle hate crimes, as well as Bill C-16, which criminalizes non-consensual “deepfakes” and places added responsibility on internet service providers to report child pornography. When Parliament hit pause for the winter break, Bill C-9 was being studied by the House Justice Committee, while Bill C-16 still sits at second reading. In a statement to The Hill Times, Katelyn Moores, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said these measures helped to replace the Online Harms Act in the aggregate. “The proposed amendments respond to stakeholder calls to improve the investigation of child sexual abuse and exploitation material offences committed,” reads the statement. “, in addition to this existing legislative activity… Evan Solomon is working on how to address the very real social challenges that are created by the rapid development and proliferation of artificial intelligence.” Given both C-9 and C-16 already include various Criminal Code amendments, it’s possible the renewed online harms legislation could be introduced by Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller (Vill-Marie–Le Sud-Ouest–Île-des-Soeurs, Que.), according to a different government source, who also asked not to be named. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) did not immediately respond to The Hill Times’ request for comment. For Heidi Tworek, a public policy professor at the University of British Columbia, it would have been “very disappointing” if the government decided to abandon multiple years of consultations, all of which have pointed out the need for increased regulation. “The whole point of the Online Harms Act is there are things companies need to be thinking about and anticipating, and not just things like deepfakes and non-consensual intimate images, which we all agree shouldn’t be up there,” said Tworek in an interview before learning about the forthcoming bill. “It’s a much broader question of how online spaces should function. Tworek was also among the 12 experts who formed the government’s online harms advisory panel in 2022. Meanwhile, John Mootz, senior policy manager at Children and Screens, an American advocacy organization, encouraged Ottawa to move forward with establishing a new office tasked with administering the bill, pointing to similar approaches adopted in the United Kingdom and European Union. “Both of these places focus on really critical components of online safety that hold platforms responsible with much more upstream solutions,” said Mootz in an interview with The Hill Times. “ give consumers a bunch of information that is critical for them to make informed decisions.” “ these laws come along with dedicated offices, like a Digital Safety Office, or they expand the authority of existing offices to cover these specific kinds of online harms.” dlegree@hilltimes.com This story has been cross-published with The Hill Times, a sister publication to The Wire Report.

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Ottawa set to revive online harms legislation in 2026: government source

Regulatory | By Davis Legree |December 22, 2025

Justice Minister Sean Fraser had previously suggested the government wouldn’t ‘copy and paste’ Bill C-63, formerly known as the Online Harms Act, but child protection advocates remained hopeful the Liberals would bring forward a new online safety law.

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By Davis Legree
|December 22, 2025