Ottawa’s new Digital Safety Act expected to include under-16 social media ban

OTTAWA – The federal government is expected to bar kids under the age of 16 from social media in new legislation set to be introduced Wednesday.

The government gave notice Tuesday that it will introduce a bill “to enact the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act.” It has scheduled a technical briefing and press conference on the new bill for late Wednesday afternoon.

Culture Minister Marc Miller, who is taking the lead on the legislation, said the government will take all reasonable measures to ensure kids are safe.

“It’s obvious why it’s a priority. Kids are dying,” he told reporters on Parliament Hill.

Federal ministers declined to give details about the bill Tuesday, saying they could not do so before the bill is introduced due to parliamentary rules.

The bill is expected to include a ban on social media for kids under 16, although platforms that meet safety standards could obtain exemptions, according to reports in the Globe and Mail and National Post.

Ottawa said in its AI strategy, released last week, that it will also introduce legislation to address the safety of AI chatbots.

The legislation comes as a number of other countries plan to introduce social media bans for kids, and as questions are asked about interactions the mass shooter in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., had with ChatGPT.

Justice Minister Sean Fraser said the government’s motivation is to “ensure that we are being responsible when it comes to protecting kids in particular.”

An online harms bill introduced by the Liberals in 2024 would have created a digital safety commission to administer and enforce the legislation. That bill did not become law before the 2025 election was called.

Government House leader Steven MacKinnon said the new online safety legislation is a priority for the government.

He said the new bill is more likely to succeed than the government’s earlier attempt because “there’s a great realization in society that there are negative effects from social media use, maybe particularly among our youth, and this bill, when it’s tabled, will seek to address that.”

Conservative MP Jasraj Singh Hallan said his party will scrutinize the bill carefully to see if there are elements that overreach on privacy or security.

“We’re going to take a really good look at this, we’re going talk to stakeholders, we’re going to have a really deep discussion,” he said.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has said his government will move to ban children from using social media accounts and artificial intelligence chatbots.

Kinew said Tuesday he’ll be watching what the federal government does closely but he hasn’t yet seen details of the proposal.

“We’re very interested, including potentially working together with the federal government, but it will depend on the details and how they plan to approach it,” he said, adding that “what I saw leaked is very compatible with what we’ve been thinking about in Manitoba.”

New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt released a letter Tuesday calling on the federal government to ban youth under 16 from using social media.

In the letter, dated June 5, Holt said that if Ottawa doesn’t act fast enough, her government will strengthen online protections for children with measures “available within provincial jurisdiction.”

MacKinnon said Tuesday there won’t be time for the bill to make it through the parliamentary process before the House of Commons rises for the summer.

Support for social media bans has been mounting since Australia became the first country to introduce a ban last December.

On June 1, Malaysia began enforcing rules barring millions of children younger than 16 from having social media accounts. In March, Brazil introduced a law requiring minors under 16 to link their social media accounts to a legal guardian to ensure supervision.

That same month, Indonesia said it would ban social media for children under 16, while Britain, France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are studying or developing similar approaches.

A Leger online poll released in May indicated more than two-thirds of Canadians support banning access to social media and AI chatbots for children under 16. More than 80 per cent of respondents said they are concerned about the potential negative impacts social media and AI chatbots could have on children and teenagers.

Most of the respondents, 55 per cent, said regulating access to social media should be the federal government’s responsibility, while only 24 per cent said it should be a provincial decision.

The Canadian Research Insights Council, an industry organization that promotes polling standards, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 9, 2026.

— With files from the Associated Press and Eli Ridder in Fredericton