A 35-page memo to Federal Industry Minister Mélanie Joly contemplates “legal action” against Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media it suspects of spreading “false and misleading information.”
However, the memo, obtained under Access To Information, doesn’t explain what action federal lawyers would take, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
This is the extraordinary moment two Met police officers tracked down a photographer to a pub over his critical tweets about a local Green councillor – despite admitting he had committed no crime.
Alastair Hilton was having a drink with a friend in Chiswick, west London, on Thursday night when uniformed officers grilled him about his social media posts.
Mr Hilton feared being arrested when he was asked to step outside by two policemen as he celebrated a victory for his community over the Labour-run council and saved outdoor seating outside three much-loved pubs on the Thames.
I am having a drink this evening with a friend in a Chiswick pub. Two policemen have just come into the pub and asked me to step outside. I have stepped outside and they have threatened me because I tweeted about a councillor banning seating outside pubs in Chiswick. They admit… pic.twitter.com/r7MDIIdgvc
— Alastair Hilton (@London_W4) July 2, 2026
After years of criminal justice reform that included a lighter touch for some offenders, the federal Liberal government has done an about-face and enacted stricter policies to tamp down on crime rates that have become a political liability in some vote-rich parts of the country.
While much of the public’s attention has been focused on the U.S. trade dispute and persistent affordability concerns, the Liberal government’s legislative agenda in the most recent parliamentary sitting was heavily weighted toward a crime crackdown.
Justice Minister Sean Fraser restored some mandatory minimum sentences, mostly targeting firearms and child sex crimes, and tightened bail laws designed to keep more repeat, violent offenders locked up for longer.
Law and order? As in a surveillance state with two tiered justice.
Imagine a bitterly cold, still winter night during a prolonged Dunkelflaute (the German term for “dark doldrums”) when wind turbines stand idle for days, solar output drops near zero, and temperatures plummet. You expect your heat pump and home battery, installed with promises of resilience, to keep your family comfortable and energy secure. Instead, as the calm and cold drags on, your thermostat will not budge, smart devices are curtailed, and your battery drains, not to keep your family safe, but to “help the grid.” A notification flashes on your phone: “Grid Emergency; External Control Activated!” Your household, like thousands aggregated in a Virtual Power Plant (VPP), is conscripted to “stabilize” a system strained by the very energy transition that created the vulnerability. The autonomy you thought you had secured with clean energy investments is suddenly subject to distant commands, precisely when you need it most. This is the engineered reality of Virtual Power Plants.
According to recently released data from Statistics Canada, a record 120,640 Canadians left Canada and emigrated to other countries in 2025, surpassing the previous high from the year prior. Notice a trend? Wonder why?
Possibly because the Liberal government under Prime Minister Mark Carney is desperately attempting to ram through a dystopian internet censorship bill which would demand that people’s data be kept for possible police review.
We may be forced to flee in the near future but currently I think the reason to do so is primarily economic self interest.
Mark Carney is building a surveillance state online.
What else can you call a government that’s working to outlaw online anonymity? That plans to ID internet users as if going online is the same as entering a bar? That plans to create the equivalent of a human rights tribunal for offensive speech online?
We will soon mirror the UK. One day you may be thanking Trump.
Legal experts say Canada’s proposed social media ban for kids leaves many questions unanswered — including whether it would violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Last week, the federal government tabled Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, which would force social media platforms to restrict accounts for children under 16 unless the platforms can implement adequate safeguards to protect them.
Lawyers and law professors are raising flags about gaps in the legislation that could leave Canada open to legal challenges.
There are few easier political arguments than saying we must protect children online. Every serious parent agrees with that. Every responsible adult knows social media can be addictive, manipulative, corrosive, and, at times, deeply harmful. The platforms have designed products that capture attention, reward outrage, promote insecurity, and keep young people scrolling long after common sense says they should be outside, reading a book, playing hockey, or annoying their parents in a healthier way.
In this episode with Jason James, I break down my criticisms of the raft of public-safety and surveillance laws Mark Carney’s manufactured-majority government is attempting to push through Canada’s Parliament before the summer break — a legislative push now drawing serious concern from privacy experts, media lawyers, civil-liberties advocates, and technology leaders including Shopify founder Tobi Lütke.
Here comes the digital commission. It will make policy, take complaints, investigate abuses, review plans and regulate companies’ collection and use of personal information, how the data of children are scraped up into AI, social-media platforms, and more.
When it was first outlined in a bill to regulate social media last week, the Digital Safety Commission sounded like a body with some flexibility to grapple with some of the thorny, evolving problems of regulating big platforms – even if some worried its mandate to protect children and others came with extensive powers.
Justin Trudeau’s nine-year tenure as Canadian prime minister, which ended when his own Liberal caucus tossed him overboard in late 2024, can be divided thematically into two distinct periods.
During the mid-to-late 2010s, he presented himself as a sunny Canadian patriot. Then, following the COVID pandemic, the George Floyd protests, and the unmarked-graves social panic of 2021 (which Trudeau’s own government did much to spread), he sounded the exact opposite theme: Canada, he began telling Canadians, was in fact a deeply racist genocide state. He ordered his Liberal colleagues to implement a massive “Action Plan on Combatting Hate,” and introduced legislation that would give his government new powers to stamp out hate speech.
h/t FP
In debating a social media ban for minors, it appears we face a choice between two perceived harms. One is the reported damage that social media is doing to the mental health of children and adolescents. The other is the normalization of mass age verification systems—most likely involving biometrics—that would apply to everyone, not just minors. This carries real risks of privacy invasion, data breaches, and future mission creep.
That’s a feature not a bug.
Once again, the Liberal government is attempting to restrict legal Internet content that they believe threatens “social stability” or is deemed “harmful” to Canada.
This week, the government introduced Bill C-34. The elements of the bill that grabbed the headlines were the ones to keep teenagers under the age of 16 off of social media platforms.
Canadian high schoolers have mixed feelings about the Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34), introduced Wednesday by the federal government.
Key elements of the bill include establishing a new Digital Safety Commission and setting safety criteria and guidelines for social media and AI chatbots, but the element causing the most chatter is a ban on social accounts for kids under 16 (with the potential for exemption for services deemed who’ve put “adequate safeguards” in place).
Teens shared with CBC News their thoughts about a social media ban, while parents expressed guarded optimism moving forward. Here’s what they said this week.
Kids may not be able to read or write but that won’t stop them figuring out a way around the ban.
But kid’s safety isn’t the goal, state surveillance of everyone is.
On Wednesday, the Liberals tabled Bill C-34, which would restrict minors from social media. That’s the headline pitch, but the bill goes much further, offering cabinet the power to ban children from online games, shut online entities out of Canada completely and order websites to censor content deemed “harmful” by the government. It’s a Great Canadian Firewall in the making.
