Thank you for inviting me.

With my time, I'm going to focus on social media regulation and on Bills C-63 and S-210.

Social media has historically been lightly regulated. Online safety has only been addressed if companies felt like it or they were pressured by the market. There have been some innovative solutions, and we need them to continue to innovate, but safety has generally taken a back seat to other interests.

Social media companies have also privately set rules for freedom of expression, privacy and children's rights. There are no minimum standards and no ways to hold companies accountable. That is changing globally. Many jurisdictions have passed online harms legislation. The online harms act, which is part of Bill C-63, aligns with global approaches. In my view, with tweaks, Bill C-63 is the number one avenue to address illegal sexually explicit content and sexual exploitation.

Bill S-210 would mandate age verification to access sites with sexually explicit material. It is a flawed bill, yes, but more importantly, it is unnecessary for two reasons.

First, age verification is the crucial next frontier of online safety, but it is about more than sexually explicit material and about child safety broadly. The technology is evolving, and if we are committed to freedom of expression, privacy and cybersecurity, how this technology is used must be scrutinized closely.

Second, age verification is only one tool in the tool box. A holistic approach is needed whereby safety is considered in product design, content moderation systems and the algorithms. Let me give you a few examples of safety by design that does not involve age verification.

Child luring and sextortion rates are rising. What steps could social media take? Flag unusual friend requests from strangers and people in distant locations. Remove network expansion prompts whereby friends are recommended based on location and interest. Provide easy-to-use complaints mechanisms. Provide user empowerment tools, like blocking accounts.

The non-consensual disclosure of intimate images and child sexual abuse material requires immediate action. Does the social media service offer quick takedown mechanisms? Does it follow through with them? Does it flag synthetic media like deepfakes? How usable are the complaints mechanisms?

For example, Discord has been used to livestream child sexual exploitation content. The Australian e-safety commissioner reported that Discord does not enable in-service reporting of livestreamed abuse. This is an easy fix.

The last example is that the Canadian child protection centre offers a tool to industry, called Project Arachnid, to proactively detect child sexual abuse material. Should social media companies be using this to detect and remove content?

In my view, Bill C-63, again with tweaks, is the best avenue to address sexual exploitation generally. I think the focus should be on how to improve that bill. There are many reasons for that. I'll give two here.

First, the bill imposes three different types of responsibility. Vivek discussed this. Notably, the strongest obligation is the power of the commissioner to order the removal of child sexual abuse content and non-consensual disclosure of intimate images. This recognizes the need for the swift removal of the worst kinds of content.

Second, all of this would be overseen by a digital safety commission, ombudsperson and office. Courts are never going to be fast to resolve the kinds of disputes here, and they're costly. The power of the commissioner to order the removal of the worst forms of content is crucial to providing access to justice.

Courts are just ill-suited to oversee safety by design as well, which is necessarily an iterative process between the commission and companies. The tech evolves, and so do the harm and the solutions.

With my remaining time, I want to flag one challenge before I close, which Vivek mentioned as well. That is private messaging. Bill C-63 does not tackle private messaging. This is a logical decision; otherwise, it opens a can of worms.

Many of the harms explored here happen on private messaging. The key here is not to undermine privacy and cybersecurity protections. One way to bring private messaging into the bill and avoid undermining these protections is to impose safety obligations on the things that surround private messaging. I've mentioned many, such as complaints mechanisms, suspicious friend requests and so on.

Thank you for your time. I welcome questions.