Q&A: Ottawa’s social media bill gets passing grade from Internet Society

When Parliament returns next month from a summer hiatus, Bill C-34 is likely to take centre stage in discussions surrounding digital policy. The Safe Social Media Act, introduced by the Liberals in June, seeks to restrict social media access for Canadians under 16 and create a new regulatory body tasked with establishing a new online harms regime. In recent months, John Perrino, a senior policy advisor for The Internet Society (ISOC), has repeatedly met with officials from the Department of Canadian Heritage to get some clarity on how the legislation will be implemented. In an exclusive interview with The Wire Report, Perrino spoke about why ISOC is pleased with the bill’s design, as well as whether ongoing trade negotiations could have any impact on its future. You’re based in Washington D.C., so I’m wondering why The Internet Society travelled north of the border to talk about digital policy in Canada. Our headquarters is in the U.S., but we’re a global organization. We’re very engaged with the Canadian government and the reason I’m involved is my background is in online safety. I’ve been able to engage with the Department of Canadian Heritage and we’ve engaged on previous versions of the online safety bill as well. With Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, it’s not the first time age assurance has come up, but this is something we’re monitoring globally. We’re looking both at how you keep people safe because that should be a top priority, especially with young people, but also how we do that in a technically sound way. What has been your takeaway from recent engagements with Heritage? We were on a call with the Canadian Heritage team around a month ago to ask some questions about C-34, and we expressed that we’re pretty pleased with the bill. On that call, a few different things were discussed, including how the definition of social media doesn’t include private messaging. I think that’s going to be a debate, but we think that’s a good thing. Obviously, online harms can happen in private messaging spaces, but safety and security go hand-in-hand. It’s really important to address those safety risks before they move into private spaces because, if you do anything that harms encryption, that is a security and privacy risk for everyone. We also talked a lot about the age assurance component. There’s a lot in C-34 that still needs to be determined by the commission, but we reviewed the privacy commissioner’s age assurance guidance and it aligns really well with a report we put out last year that touched on things like the importance of protecting security with data protection principles and not collecting any data that you don’t need to. In the lobbying report, it says The Internet Society is “seeking to prevent… Internet fragmentation that would harm and restrict Canada’s access to an open, globally connected, secure and trustworthy Internet.” What does that mean? We think encryption is really a black-and-white issue. If you do anything that interferes with encryption and give ‘lawful access,’ that means the banks also get access to any of your information online. If you do that, anyone can get access, so it’s not as simple as lawful access. Right now, your banking information, health information, pretty much everything that you do with data that processes online, almost all of it is encrypted. I go into that because, when you look at C-34 from an internet security perspective, the safety component goes hand-in-hand with that. We want to make sure there’s not a fragmentation for anything that would harm encryption. Also, we’re not opposed to some restrictions on social media use, especially with regards to account creation, but we think the positives in this bill stem from the fact that it’s not just about restricting access. It puts the focus on safety. Now, how you do that is incredibly challenging for regulators, but we’re pleased to see the focus on safety rather than entire restrictions or bans. It’s about safety design and features, not limiting access to private messaging features. It’s not about hurting encryption for families that want to share their photos with each other through iCloud or Google Cloud or something. We’ve seen U.S. trade officials say any finalized deal with Canada will involve “digital trade alignment.” What do you make of that? Could that have repercussions on Canada’s approach to social media or online harms? I laugh because who knows? Canada has to make their own decision, and we don’t want to see this done in a matter of coercion. You’d rather just see sound policy developed. Some policies, like the Online Streaming Act, we’re less engaged on, but they’ve become more politically charged. We’re not doing as much on trade because it’s just so political. It’s less policy and more politics, so it’s a tough one to make sense of. I am aware that digital taxes and the online streaming component seem to be focus areas, but I have not heard anything about the online safety issue. This interview has been edited for length and clarity dlegree@thewirereport.ca

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Q&A: Ottawa’s social media bill gets passing grade from Internet Society

Regulatory | By Davis Legree |August 21, 2026

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Regulatory |
By Davis Legree
|August 21, 2026