Canada’s Tech Crackdown: Ottawa’s Plan for a Sweeping Digital Regulator Stirs Debate

The federal government is moving to reshape how Canada governs the internet, introducing sweeping legislation that would create a powerful new regulatory body with authority over digital safety, children’s online protection, artificial intelligence, and data privacy all under one roof.

Two landmark bills introduced this past June by the Liberal government Bill C-34 and Bill C-36 form the backbone of this regulatory overhaul. Together, they signal Ottawa’s most ambitious attempt yet to hold Big Tech accountable on Canadian soil.

Bill C-34 targets online safety. Under its provisions, social media companies would be required to block users under the age of 16, at least temporarily, and AI chatbot developers would face new obligations to operate responsibly. Bill C-36, meanwhile, takes aim at how organizations handle personal data raising the bar for children’s data protection, granting Canadians the right to request deletion of their information, and forcing companies to be upfront about how automated systems make significant decisions affecting individuals.

Both bills would fall under the authority of a newly created body: the Digital Safety and Data Protection Commission of Canada. Composed of five cabinet-appointed members, the commission is expected to take roughly 18 months to stand up.

The proposed commission would not be a toothless watchdog. It could issue binding orders, conduct formal investigations, and impose financial penalties of up to $10 million or three per cent of a company’s global gross revenue. In the most serious cases such as when a company obstructs the commission’s work that ceiling rises to $25 million or five per cent of global revenue.

The regulator would also carry significant policy discretion, including the power to determine whether age-verification tools used by platforms are sufficiently robust and privacy-respecting, and whether certain platforms qualify for exemptions to the under-16 social media ban.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist has been among the most vocal critics of the proposal, coining it a “digital super-regulator.” He argues that placing both online speech moderation and national privacy enforcement in the hands of five appointed commissioners concentrates extraordinary power in a single, government-directed body a combination he says may be “unmatched anywhere in the democratic world.”

Heidi Tworek, a professor of history and public policy at the University of British Columbia, echoed that concern about Canada’s unusual approach. Other democracies, she noted, typically keep online safety and privacy oversight separate. Australia, for instance, had a dedicated safety commission already in place when it introduced its own under-16 social media ban the first country to do so. Canada would be simultaneously building the regulator and enacting the rules it will enforce.

But not everyone sees a powerful regulator as a problem. Taylor Owen, founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology and Democracy at McGill University, pushed back on the “super-regulator” framing. “I think it’s a powerful regulator, and that might be what we need,” he said. “The idea that we’re not going to have a powerful regulator to regulate the largest and most powerful companies in the world seems misguided to me.”

Teresa Scassa, a law professor and Canada research chair in information law and policy at the University of Ottawa, suggested the government likely sees practical logic in consolidation that digital safety and data privacy are increasingly intertwined issues that benefit from a unified approach.

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of the proposal is what happens to the existing Office of the Privacy Commissioner. Under Bill C-36, the commissioner’s jurisdiction over the private sector including oversight of tech companies would be transferred to the new commission. The privacy commissioner would be left responsible only for the Privacy Act, which governs federal institutions.

Observers have raised red flags. Florian Martin-Bariteau, research chair in technology and society at the University of Ottawa, said he supports the idea of strong regulation in principle, but views the transfer of powers as a serious misstep. The two bills operate under fundamentally different legal logic, he argued, and the privacy commissioner’s office has built an enviable track record both at home and internationally.

Scassa echoed that concern. The commissioner’s office, she said, has accumulated deep institutional expertise and a respected global reputation “a tremendous amount of capital” that risks being squandered if its mandate is stripped away. More immediately, she warned that the transition period itself could leave Canadians’ privacy rights in a vulnerable state.

There may also be a political calculation at work. The privacy commissioner, as an independent officer of Parliament, operates at arm’s length from the government. The new commission, by contrast, would be subject to considerably more direction from cabinet giving Ottawa greater influence over how these sweeping new rules are interpreted and enforced.

For Canadians, the stakes are high either way. The digital world increasingly shapes how people work, socialize, and move through daily life and Ottawa’s next move could define the rules of that world for a generation.