Years in the making, the federal government is poised to introduce a new piece of legislation on Monday aimed at addressing a series of online harms.
The bill will have a significant focus on protecting children with specific obligations for platforms, according to a senior government source who was not authorized to speak publicly about details yet to be made public.
It will also seek to address non-consensual AI porn deepfakes, though the legislation is not expected to provide law enforcement with new powers, the source said.
Put on the notice paper for Monday’s return to the House of Commons, the bill proposes to enact the “Online Harms Act” and advance amendments to the Criminal Code, the Canadian Human Rights Act, as well as laws regarding the mandatory reporting of internet child pornography.
This is not the first time the Liberals have tried to advance legislation to this effect, but after experts panned the first proposal as flawed, the government went back to the drawing board to reshape its plans amid an evolving online environment.
Government officials from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Department of Justice will hold a technical briefing for reporters on Monday afternoon, followed by a press conference led by Justice Minister Arif Virani at 5:15 p.m. ET, according to a media advisory.
Ahead of the bill’s tabling, here’s what you need to know.
What online harms will be included?
While the full scope of the legislation won’t be revealed until it is made public upon tabling in the House of Commons, it is expected to be an evolved version of the Liberals’ initial proposal, to include an emphasis on harms to youth.
Originally, the government set out wanting to impose rules and regulations that would require online platforms to be more accountable for, and transparent about five kinds of harmful content: hate speech, terrorist content, incitement to violence, the sharing of non-consensual images, and child exploitation.
In addition to these areas of focus, according to the senior source CTV News spoke with, concerns were also raised during consultations about kids experiencing cyberbullying and inciting self-harm. Those two areas are expected to be addressed through this legislation.
Part of the legislation’s measures to tackle the non-consensual sharing of intimate images will include cracking down on the rising trend of sexually explicit deepfakes, and allowing for specific takedown requirements of what’s become known as “revenge porn,” as has been reported.
The source said despite the recent calls for action to address this area, sparked by international headlines related to fake images circulating of mega star Taylor Swift, the government has been working on legislative amendments to this effect, for some time.
Which minister is taking the lead?
While this file has been in the hands of successive ministers of heritage, and the Canadian Heritage department, Virani will be taking the lead on the incoming bill, rather than Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge.
Earlier this week, Virani was quietly sworn-in as “Minister of State (Online Harms)” specifically “to assist the Minister of Canadian Heritage in the carrying out that minister’s responsibilities.”
This, from a machinery of government perspective, is likely to allow the justice minister to continue to tap into Canadian Heritage departmental resources as the bill winds its way through Parliament.
Before being shuffled into the portfolio, St-Onge spoke to CTV News last year about how she’s personally seen the need for legislation to better protect people online.
It remains to be seen how the two ministers will collaborate on shepherding the legislation through the House and Senate, which will include fielding parliamentarians’ questions, and potentially testifying at committee.
What’s the backstory on this bill?
This bill originated with a 2019 mandate letter request from the prime minister to then-heritage minister Steven Guilbeault to: “Create new regulations for social media platforms, starting with a requirement that all platforms remove illegal content.”
Under his time heading the file, this resulted in two main actions. First, the introduction of what was known as Bill C-36, which was tabled at the eleventh hour of the last Parliament and focused on hate speech. It died on the order paper and has never been revisited.
The second move came two weeks before Trudeau called the 2021 election, when the government presented a “technical discussion paper” on a proposed legislative framework to tackle five forms of harmful online content.
Among the ideas floated in the government’s initial proposal were implementing a 24-hour takedown requirement for content deemed harmful; compelling platforms to provide data on their algorithms and provide a rationale for when action is taken on flagged posts; and installing a new system for Canadians to appeal platforms’ decisions around content moderation.
After facing significant pushback to this discussion paper, during the 2021 campaign, the Liberals promised to move on a “balanced and targeted” online harms bill within 100 days of the last election. After the vote, Pablo Rodriguez took over the portfolio and went back to the drawing board.
This reworking included tapping a panel of experts and specialists in platform governance, content regulation, civil liberties, tech regulation, and national security to help guide the government on what the bill should and shouldn’t include.
In the summer of 2022, Rodriguez and top officials from his department travelled across the country to hold panel discussions with stakeholders and representatives from minority groups. As of then, sources were expressing optimism that the bill would be ready for early 2023.
Months later and still no legislation in sight, experts that helped craft the bill penned an open letter indicating that after soliciting successive forms of consultation, it was time for legislation to be brought forward, noting the lacking protections for Canadian kids compared to other countries with similar laws already in place.
Will this be a political hot potato?
If the exchange of jabs between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre this week are any indication, this legislation has the potential of becoming a lightning rod.
Heading into the tabling of this bill after two previous rounds of highly contentious debates around their online news and online streaming bills, the government is mindful of the potential for an even bigger fight when it comes to online harms.
Already attempting to dispel the Conservative line of attack that this bill is centrally about censorship, Trudeau told reporters this week that the legislation will be “very specifically focused on protecting kids and not on censoring the internet.”
“We know, and everyone can agree that kids are vulnerable online… We need to do a better job as a society of protecting our kids online, the way we protect them in school yards,” Trudeau said. “Now how to go about that is a very careful balance.”
This came in response to Poilievre prepositioning his party as opposed to what he called the “latest attack on freedom of expression,” from the prime minister, who he accused of viewing hate speech as “speech he hates.”
Noting Poilievre has yet to see the legislation, the prime minister said his approach was not responsible.
“Leadership is about dealing in facts, actually reading a piece of legislation before he starts telling people what he thinks it does, and then having a rigorous debate in Parliament,” Trudeau said.
The prime minister also recently pushed back at NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who linked the October 2023 death of a 12-year-old boy in British Columbia who died by suicide after being a victim of online sextortion, with the Liberals’ delayed action on the online harms legislation.
Both Singh and Poilievre have put their support behind a separate but potentially conflicting piece of legislation from the Senate that would require age verification online to access explicit sites like Pornhub.
The Liberals are opposed to what is known as Bill S-210, with the source CTV News spoke indicating that Virani’s legislation will take a more overarching approach to protections for minors across online sites.
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
