A series for concerned Canadians
Starting today and over the next 10 days, we are releasing a three-part series covering twelve federal bills that have started to quietly reshape freedom in Canada—grouped by theme, so each one tackles one piece of the picture.
You may not have heard about most of these bills, and some are already in effect, but they are important to understand. The final installment of the series will also include a comprehensive summary explaining all twelve bills together as of this date, what they add up to when placed side by side, and a final word on what it means and what you can do about it.
Please share this series with your networks of friends and family so Canadians across the country can understand what is at stake.
The legislation related to speech and freedom of thought and belief—hate speech law, streaming and news platforms, election speech, and new rules for social media and adult content sites.
Speech, Platforms & What You See
Six bills reshaping what Canadians can say, and what gets shown to you online
Bill C-9: Life in Prison for Advocating Genocide—and a Removed Religious Defence
Status: Law. Received Royal Assent June 18, 2026.
What it does: C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, creates a new hate-motivated offence carrying the same maximum penalty as the underlying crime—up to life imprisonment. It raises the maximum sentence for advocating genocide from five years to life, criminalizes publicly displaying certain terrorism and government-designated “hate symbols”, and creates new offences for intimidating or blocking access to places of worship, schools, and community spaces.
The government’s case: The bill’s most contested change wasn’t in the original text. In December 2025, Liberal MPs on the justice committee adopted a Bloc Québécois amendment repealing the “good faith” religious-text defence that has protected sincere religious discussion since 1970.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser has suggested the change will not criminalize faith, and the government added a clause stating that good-faith religious, educational, or academic discussion on matters of public interest remains protected, unless it wilfully promotes hatred.
Separately, after concerns about vexatious prosecutions, the committee restored the Attorney General consent requirement the bill had originally proposed to remove, and extended it to the new hate-symbol offence too.
Why it matters: Faith organizations aren’t reassured about the part that wasn’t restored. The Catholic Civil Rights League has warned the religious-defence repeal could expose clergy to charges it called “spurious or targeted,” and a Senate committee vote to restore that defence failed 4–3 in June 2026. The restored Attorney General consent requirement is a genuine safeguard against vexatious charges, but it’s discretionary, not a fixed rule—it depends on who holds the office, not on a guarantee protecting good-faith religious speech.
How this could affect you: If you’re a pastor, teacher, or ordinary Canadian who discusses what your faith teaches on a controversial subject, the specific legal defence that once protected sincere religious speech is gone, replaced by a narrower clause restating the existing ‘wilful promotion of hatred’ threshold. Whether that leaves you with meaningfully less protection is a matter of legal interpretation—the government says no; some religious organizations disagree.
If the specific legal defence for your faith’s teaching is gone, what protection remains?
Bill C-25: Rules Against False Claims About a Candidate Now Apply Year-Round
Status: Law. Received Royal Assent June 18, 2026.
What it does: C-25, the Strong and Free Elections Act, expands the existing ban on publishing false or misleading information about candidates, nomination contests, and leadership contests so it applies at all times, not only during an official election period, and extends the prohibition to “potential candidates”—a term the bill never defines. It also bans political donations made in cryptocurrency, money orders, or prepaid cards, and increases the Commissioner of Canada Elections’ enforcement penalties.
Criticisms of the legislation:
- Weak Voter Privacy Rules: The law tells political parties to write down a privacy policy, but it does not actually force them to follow strict, legal privacy rules.
- No Way to Stop Data Abuse: Parties can still collect lots of personal info on voters without asking for your permission first, and you do not have a legal right to see or delete what they know about you.
- No Independent Privacy Watchdog: The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has no power to investigate, audit, or punish political parties if they mishandle your data.
The government’s case: The bill responds to recommendations from the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions, along with the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections. Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon framed it as protecting voters from unlawful attempts to influence their vote at any time, and banning deepfakes of electoral actors intended to deceive.
Why it matters: Even supporters have doubts about enforceability. Legal experts interviewed about the deepfake provisions say proving harmful intent will be genuinely difficult—one wasn’t sure it “can be done.”
Separately, legal analysts have flagged that nobody yet knows who counts as a “potential candidate”—that part of the timing window is genuinely undefined. The underlying offence itself stays narrow, though: it only covers specific false claims (that someone committed or is under investigation for a crime, or false statements about their citizenship, education, or qualifications) made with intent to affect an election result—ordinary criticism or opinion isn’t what’s at issue, but the uncertainty over who counts as a “potential candidate” means people may not know when that narrower window of liability starts applying to them.
How this could affect you: The legislation leaves your personal data unprotected. It allows political parties to keep tracking your personal details, habits, and political views without giving you the right to see or delete that file. Also, if you make a specific false claim that someone committed a crime, or falsely state their citizenship or qualifications, intending to affect an election—that’s now covered year-round, not just during a campaign, and could apply even to a “potential candidate” who hasn’t officially entered a race. Ordinary criticism or opinion about a candidate isn’t what this covers.
Do you know when someone becomes a “potential candidate” under this law — and would you know if you’d crossed that line?
Bill C-34: The Safe Social Media Act: Fines Big Enough to Force Silence
Status: Introduced June 10, 2026. At First Reading only.
What it does: The Safe Social Media Act (Online Harms 2.0) creates a duty for social media and AI chatbot companies to act responsibly in mitigating exposure to harmful content across seven defined categories— primarily child sexual exploitation material, content inciting violence, and terrorism content.
The law also bans social media accounts for children under 16, and creates the Digital Safety Commission of Canada, with administrative penalties up to $10 million or 3% of global revenue, and criminal fines up to $20 million or 5% of global revenue for the most serious violations.
The government’s case: Minister Marc Miller has said the under-16 ban and mandatory age verification would apply immediately once the bill receives Royal Assent, not after further regulatory review, and platforms can avoid age-verification duties by satisfying the new Commission they’ve built adequate safeguards for children another way. Michael Geist has called this immediacy claim misleading in practice: the bill doesn’t yet specify which platforms are actually covered—that gets decided later by cabinet regulation—so the ban may be legally “immediate” while having no practical effect for a year or more.
Why it matters: There are 50 separate decisions—19 reserved for Cabinet, 31 for the Commission itself—that the bill leaves entirely to future regulation, including what counts as adequate age verification and which services are even covered. At introduction, the Commission that will decide all of this had no members, chair, staff, or funding model.
The Commission can’t directly order most ordinary posts removed—the one exception is child sexual abuse material and non-consensually shared intimate images (including deepfakes), which platforms must make inaccessible within 24 hours of being flagged, a default timeline Cabinet can later change by regulation.
Outside that narrow category, the Commission doesn’t need direct takedown power: a $10-million fine for guessing wrong will push platforms to delete anything borderline on their own. The Commission’s own investigative powers also run looser than a courtroom—it can act on evidence “without regard to whether it would be admissible in a court of law.”
Separately, the bill introduces a new labelling requirement for AI-generated deepfake content. More than 60 civil liberties, human rights, and faith-based organizations, joined by the CCLA, have warned the bill risks both privacy and free expression.
Age-verification bans also have a real-world track record worth knowing: reporting on Australia’s under-16 ban, in effect since December 2025, found roughly 85% of banned teenagers were still accessing the platforms three months later, using fake birthdates, borrowed accounts, or VPNs—Australia’s communications minister blamed platform non-compliance rather than the policy itself.
How this could affect you: A sermon clip, a comment on a school board decision, or any post a platform considers borderline can be quietly removed—not because it’s illegal, but because deleting it is safer for the platform than risking a multi-million-dollar fine.
Could a post of yours be deleted someday—not for breaking a law, but because a platform didn’t want to risk the fine?
Bill S-209: Blocking Websites Without a Public Vote
Status: Passed the Senate at third reading April 15, 2026 — the third time this bill has cleared the Senate in successive Parliaments. Now before the House of Commons at second reading.
What it does: S-209, a Senate public bill sponsored by Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, creates an offence—penalties of $250,000 for a first violation and up to $500,000 for subsequent ones—for any organization that makes pornographic material available to a minor for commercial purposes without approved age-verification or age-estimation technology. It also lets a designated authority seek Federal Court orders requiring internet providers to block non-compliant sites.
The government’s case: This is the third version of a bill Senator Miville-Dechêne has introduced across multiple Parliaments. This version adds a clause meant to exclude services that only “incidentally” provide access to pornographic material, addressing criticism that its predecessor swept in search engines and social platforms.
Why it matters: Under committee questioning, the bill’s own sponsor confirmed that the government, not the legislation, would decide the final scope through regulation, and acknowledged that could include applying the rules to platforms like X.
Michael Geist calls it a “Trojan horse”: not really a pornography bill, but a vehicle for two much broader powers—mandated age verification for essentially any online service, and court-ordered blocking of sites that don’t comply. He notes the mechanism could reach far beyond adult sites to Google, X, Reddit, and even AI image-generation tools.
The Canadian Bar Association has separately warned of “function creep”—verification data collected for one purpose being repurposed for another—and flagged that routing verification through private third-party companies, rather than government, increases the risk that sensitive personal data gets commercially exploited rather than just protected.
Canada’s federal Privacy Commissioner has noted that methods of estimating or verifying age can be imprecise and readily bypassed, particularly at the boundary between 17 and 18; the bill’s own text also acknowledges a blocking order could take down lawful, non-pornographic content on the same site.
How this could affect you: If you use search engines, social media, or any online service that occasionally surfaces adult content, your access could be affected by a blocking order. Depending on which method a site chooses, proving your age might mean submitting government ID to a third-party verification company—or it might mean a less invasive age-estimation scan; the bill allows either, and government regulations will decide which.
Would you be comfortable sending your ID to a third-party company just to prove your age online?
Bill C-11: The Government Now Regulates Streaming Platforms, Not Just Broadcasters
Status: Law since 2023. The CRTC issued a major new “discoverability” framework on May 21, 2026. Separately, in July 2026, the government told a court it intends to eliminate the financial contribution requirement for streamers entirely. The Culture Minister’s office has declined to confirm this so far, and it’s unclear if the change would be permanent.
What it does: C-11, the Online Streaming Act, brought online streaming platforms—Netflix, Spotify, YouTube, and others—under the CRTC’s broadcasting authority, requiring financial contributions to Canadian content funds and new reporting requirements.
The government’s case: The government’s stated purpose is to ensure Canadian creators, including Indigenous and French-language producers, get fair support and visibility as viewing shifts online—the kind of homegrown storytelling officials argue would otherwise struggle for funding in a system built around traditional broadcasters.
Why it matters: The CRTC’s implementation has repeatedly gone further than officials first suggested. It later emerged that government officials had internally acknowledged the broadly drafted law applied Canadian broadcast law to any audio or video service in the world, including podcasts and adult sites. In 2023 the CRTC moved to require registration from a wide range of services, including podcasts and news sites, before Ottawa narrowed the requirement after public backlash.
In May 2026, the CRTC went further still, issuing a formal “discoverability” framework requiring platforms to take concrete steps ensuring Canadian and Indigenous content is easy to find — meaning Ottawa is now shaping what streaming platforms actively surface to Canadians, not just what they fund. Three years after passage, law professor Michael Geist notes the CRTC continues to treat registration as the “thin edge of the wedge” toward broader regulation being written outside Parliament.
The financial side of the law has moved in the opposite direction, though. After the CRTC tripled the required contribution for foreign streamers in May 2026, the U.S. flagged it as a trade irritant, and Ottawa reversed course—telling a court in July it plans to scrap the base contribution requirement and replace it with $600 million a year in public funding instead. Broadcasters say this doesn’t match what they’ve heard directly from government, and the plan remains unconfirmed. The discoverability requirement, what content platforms are ordered to surface to you, is separate from the funding fight and doesn’t appear to be affected by this reversal.
How this could affect you: The CRTC has ordered platforms to start making Canadian content easier to find in recommendations — but this is only stage one of a four-stage process, with the specific platform-by-platform rules not yet set and likely years from being finalized, so what actually changes in your feed remains genuinely uncertain. Separately, whether streamers or taxpayers end up footing the bill for Canadian content funding is now genuinely up in the air.
A law is never finished the day it passes. It remains to be seen what regulators and the government do with it after.
Bill C-18: Why Meta Chose to Block News Instead of Paying
Status: Law since 2023.
What it does: C-18, the Online News Act, requires large digital platforms to negotiate payment with Canadian news outlets when their journalism appears on those platforms, using a bargaining framework enforced by the CRTC.
The government’s case: The government’s goal was to support a Canadian news industry facing declining advertising revenue, ensuring platforms that benefit from news content help sustain it. Google reached a deal instead of blocking news links: a five-year exemption from the Act in exchange for paying Canadian news outlets $100 million annually, indexed to inflation. It’s an ongoing payment, not a one-time settlement.
Why it matters: Meta chose differently: it permanently removed news links from Facebook and Instagram for all Canadian users rather than pay, a decision still in effect three years later — a choice the law itself didn’t require, but that Meta says was the only way it could comply.
Some small and Indigenous publishers say the funding model favours larger legacy outlets and hasn’t reached them, while others, like Village Media, do receive payments through the fund. Separately, in late 2023, the government increased an existing tax credit—raising it from 25% to 35% of journalist labour costs, a move directly linked to offsetting the damage from Meta’s news block, though the credit itself predates C-18.
How this could affect you: If you get any of your news through Facebook or Instagram, you’ve already felt this law’s effect firsthand—Canadian news links have been unavailable there for three years.
Have you noticed you can no longer share a Canadian news story on Facebook?
Tell us what you think! Is Canada on the right path?
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