Government advisors expect online harms law to reintroduce digital regulatory body

The reconvened online safety advisory group will likely work towards a revised version of Bill C-63, the government’s former Online Harms Act, according to members. Initially created in 2022 to advise the government on legislative and regulatory frameworks related to online harms, which ultimately led to the tabling of C-63, the group was reconvened on March 12 by Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller (Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Sœurs, Que.). Emily Laidlaw, Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity and law professor at the University of Calgary, co-chaired the group in 2022. She told The Wire Report she expects the group will build on its work from four years ago. Although Laidlaw does not yet know the full scope of what topics the group will cover, she expects the focus to be on part one of C-63, which proposed establishing a regulatory body that would oversee enforcement of the act, investigate online platforms, and hold them accountable if they fail to comply with the regulations. Laidlaw said this regulatory structure was “sound,” and should not change in the forthcoming bill. “The group is not reconvening to reinvent the wheel,” she said. “If this expert group was brought back together to start from the beginning, then I would be concerned,” she added. “But that is not my understanding of what we’re doing there, and I certainly would be advocating quite loudly that we shouldn’t do that.” More specifically, she said part one does not need major changes, but requires some “really important” tweaks. She expects the group to discuss very specific details, such as which online platforms should be added to the list of regulated entities, if the list of covered harms should be expanded, which social media design features should be targeted, and whether artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, gaming, and private messaging should be scoped in. She also expects the group to consider social media bans and age restrictions, and, in light of the Tumbler Ridge shooting, whether mandatory reporting requirements should be included in the bill. “My understanding,” Laidlaw said, “is that the group has been reconvened a sort of healthy check-in about what has evolved in the last four years, but more narrowly to address a few of the key issues that have emerged since we last met as a group and since the bill was introduced.” Laidlaw does not expect the government will reintroduce the other parts of C-63 because provisions from the rest of the bill have since been introduced in other forms. Amendments to the Mandatory Reporting Act and the Criminal Code were introduced in December in Bill C-16, the Protecting Victims Act. Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, tabled in October, introduced amendments to the Criminal Code to better tackle hate speech, whereas C-63 sought to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act to make online hate speech a discriminatory practice. “I would be very surprised if they do anything but reintroduce one,” Laidlaw said. Chanae Parsons, a professional development consultant at the IWK Health Centre who sat on the original advisory body, also expects the group to build on C-63. “I would hope that we are not starting from scratch, because I think that there was a lot of thoughtful dialogue that was put forward initially,” she told The Wire Report. Parsons, who got the formal invite on March 3, said the reconvening came as a surprise to her, as she had not heard rumblings of it beforehand. Parsons works directly with engaging children, youth, families, and communities, and said all group members specialize in different aspects of online safety, which she said adds to the holistic discussions the group can have. The group had an informal meeting on March 11 to meet Miller, who, according to Parsons, indicated he wanted the group to focus on the different aspects of AI, which she said was not a focus the first time around. “Obviously AI came and took the internet, I’d say, by storm very quickly, and I don’t think that it was a big topic initially. So I know that we’re going to be talking a lot about that,” she added Parsons also said there were preliminary conversations about age restrictions and social media bans. She said Miller wants to look at how other jurisdictions, like Australia, are approaching those bans. The group’s first iteration included nine sessions, and it took the government another year-and-a-half to introduce the Online Harms Act. It has been two years since Bill C-63 was tabled (it died on the order paper when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025), and nearly five years since the feds first promised online harms legislation. Advocates have expressed concerns about the forthcoming bill’s timeline. In an emailed statement to The Wire Report on March 18, child protection advocate and CEO of Children First Canada Sara Austin said she was glad to hear Miller was reconvening the group. In addition, she said, Children First wants the minister to hear directly from youth and consult them in the drafting of the bill. “Including their perspectives and lived experience will be critical to ensuring the new Online Safety Act is designed with their protection at its core,” she said. Nonetheless, she implores the government to move with a sense of urgency. “Every day that this bill is delayed puts kids in harm's way,” she said. “Children and their families are suffering the dangerous consequences of a tech industry allowed to operate with impunity.” Likewise, Laidlaw gets how vulnerable kids are. When Bill C-16 was introduced in December, she told The Wire Report she worried the government would wash its hands of online harms, and try to say C-16 solved all of the issues, even though it will not regulate at a platform level. She worried platform regulation was not a political priority for the Carney government. “I feel so much relief,” she said, adding that reconvening the group proves to her the bill is a priority. “I share the concern that many have that I do not want to see a delay in the bill being reintroduced,” she said. If the government introduces the bill a year from now, she said it would have waited too long, but she also understands it will take some time to thoroughly consider the group’s advice, and said introducing it in the fall is an appropriate timeline. Parsons said she wants to ensure the bill does not find itself destined to the graveyard of the government’s previous online harms efforts. “I would hope that the work is being done intentionally and that we are thinking from all angles, and hopefully tighten up the issues that were presented in the previous framework, which allowed this bill to sort of die,” she noted Parsons and Laidlaw both said there are four sessions planned — all of which are expected to take place in April — with the possibility of scheduling more if needed. mcollins@thewirereport.ca

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Government advisors expect online harms law to reintroduce digital regulatory body

Regulatory | By Maria Collins |March 19, 2026

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Regulatory |
By Maria Collins
|March 19, 2026