Bill S-209, the legislative effort to establish age verification requirements for sites and services that are said to facilitate access to pornography, is back. The bill has some modest improvements from the earlier S-210, but the core concerns – overbroad scope that lumps in social media companies, Internet providers, and AI services with pornography sites, the privacy and equity implications of mandated age verification, and the use of nationwide website blocking – remain. Last week, I appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs where I identified many of the concerns with the bill and engaged in a detailed discussion with multiple senators. This week’s Law Bytes podcast goes inside the hearing room for my opening statement and the Q&A with Senators that followed.

Stablecoins have increasingly begun to enter the mainstream with previously reticent policy makers, regulators, and financial institutions now shifting toward regulatory frameworks that seem more supportive of their development. The U.S. has been the most aggressive with the recent passage of the GENIUS Act, but Canadian officials have taken notice and begun to speak openly about the issue. Mohamed Zohiri is a Legal Counsel and Fintech Advisor at the Alberta Securities Commission who has focused on stablecoins and their regulation for many years both during his graduate legal work and at the ASC. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide an introduction to stablecoins, examines the new U.S. legislation that may spark increased investment, and outlines where Canada currently stands on the issue.

Bill C-2, the government’s proposed lawful access legislation, has been the subject of several prior episodes covering warrantless disclosure of information as part of the new information demand power in Part 14 of the bill as well as some of the surveillance technology capabilities found in Part 15. Those remain major issues, but there is another element of the bill that deserves greater attention, particularly at this moment when the Canada – US relationship is increasingly fraught.  That issue involves mandated data sharing with implications for Canada’s international treaty obligations under the “Second Additional Protocol” to the Budapest Convention as well as the US Cloud Act. Kate Robertson, a lawyer and senior research associate at the Citizen Lab in the Munk School at the University of Toronto, wrote an extensive brief on these issues soon after the bill was introduced. She joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about a critical Bill C-2 issue that has thus far attracted limited attention.

The “right to be forgotten” – perhaps better characterized as a right to de-index -  has been a hotly debated privacy issue for well over a decade now, pitting those that argue that the harms that may come from the amplification of outdated but accurate content outweighs the benefits of maintaining such content in search indexes. The issue gets its start in Europe, but the Canadian experience has featured privacy commissioner findings and investigations alongside court rulings and provincial reforms.  Kris Klein is one of Canada’s leading legal experts on privacy, access to information and information security issues. He is the founder and managing partner of nNovation LLP, a leading boutique firm specializing in data protection, the Managing Director of IAPP Canada, and teaches the Privacy Law course at my faculty at the University of Ottawa. He joins me on the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the background behind the right to be forgotten, the recent OPC finding, and what may lie ahead on the issue.

The return of the Law Bytes podcast series this week coincides with the return of Parliament from its summer break. Digital policy may not be at the very top of the legislative agenda, but there are no shortage of issues that could attract attention. This includes lawful access legislation introduced last June, the prospect of online harms safeguards, and ongoing concerns regarding privacy and artificial intelligence regulation. This week’s episode looks ahead to the coming Parliamentary session, assessing the government’s likely digital policy plans.

The pressure to adopt new legal technologies, notably including AI, continues to increase as lawyers, law firms and their clients look for new efficiencies and tools to improve the practice of law. But these tools aren’t always easy to adopt – pilot programs, costs, fear of new technology, and security concerns are part of the package. Sukesh Kamra leads Tory’s Knowledge and Innovation team having spent two decades at the intersection between knowledge management, AI, and legal technology. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about the opportunities and challenges of adopting new technologies for legal services. This episode is part of a series of Law Bytes episodes that have been accredited by the Law Society of Ontario for continuing legal education Professionalism Hours. The program contains 45 minutes of Professionalism Content.

TikTok’s decision to pull support for multiple Canadian cultural organizations and events in light of the federal government’s decision to ban the company from operating in the country has sparked increasing concern. Putting the spotlight on TikTok makes sense, but it risks missing the bigger picture which involves a steady stream of funding cancellations in response to Canadian digital cultural policy. Netflix, Meta, Spotify and others have all had their own announcements with millions lost due largely to Canadian policy. Has Canada killed the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg on cultural support? Scott Benzie is the executive director of Digital First Canada and CEO of the Buffer Festival. He’s seen the impact first hand and he returns to the Law Bytes podcast to discuss what has been happening, identify why, and sort through the impact.

Canada’s outdated and discouragingly ineffective access to information system has languished for years to the frustration of many transparency advocates. One potential fix – or at least improvement – would be for government departments and agencies to make the full text of the records from access requests available to the public by default online. Yet the biggest barrier to that approach has been Canada’s language laws and a recent decision from Commissioner for Official Languages may have killed the possibility altogether for the moment. Dean Beeby, an investigative journalist and freedom of information specialist recently wrote about the case on his Substack. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss both the case and how technology may provide a solution, if the government is open to some legislative reforms.

Two days after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to suspend all trade negotiations with Canada unless it rescinded the digital services tax, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced that the government was rescinding the tax. The rise and fall of the Canadian DST was marked by repeated warnings of potential U.S. retaliation, the Canadian government’s dismissal of the risks, and no shortage of confusion about the tax itself. There have been multiple Law Bytes podcast episodes on the DST over the years, but this episode takes stock of its rise and fall. The episode examines what the DST is, what just happened, and what it means for the future of digital policy in Canada.

The Bill C-2 lawful access focus has thus far primarily centred on the creation of a new warrantless information demand power and the expansion of production orders to access information. Those provisions are found in Part 14 of the bill, but there is also a Part 15 that requires closer scrutiny. It grants law enforcement access to electronic service provider networks, including inspection, oversight, and demands regarding the equipment on their networks. At issue is everything from the use of end-to-end encryption to notifications of network vulnerabilities. David Fraser is one of Canada’s leading privacy lawyers and he’s been sounding the alarm on the implications of those provisions. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about the implications of Part 15 – aka the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act – and what it means for network providers and the safety, security, and privacy of Canadians.

The government’s unexpected privacy reform agenda includes both lawful access in Bill C-2 and the evisceration of political party privacy in Bill C-4. While Bill C-4 is framed as implementing affordability measures, it also exempts political parties from the application of privacy protections on a retroactive basis dating back to 2000. To examine the importance of political party privacy and the implications of Bill C-4, I’ve teamed up this week with the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association for a joint podcast. Together with Executive Director Jason Woywada we recorded a conversation that touches on data and political parties, the BC litigation that seems to have sparked federal action, and the Bill C-4 provisions. The conversation can be found on both of our podcasts: this Law Bytes episode and BC FIPA Access and Privacy Online podcast.

Lawful access is back. Bill C-2, the government’s border bill, includes a fairly comprehensive set of lawful access rules, including a new information demand power that would result in warrantless disclosure of information about a subscriber, a new international production order, and requirements for providers to assist law enforcement in working with their networks. There will no doubt be multiple podcast episodes devoted to this bill in the coming months. To get started, Robert Diab, a law professor at Thompson Rivers University and the co-author of a recent text on Search and Seizure joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the historical context of lawful access and the key provisions in this bill.

The privacy concerns with Clearview AI sparked investigations and court cases around the world. The issues date back many years, but recently an Alberta court weighed in on the application of provincial privacy law in a decision that has big implications not only for that company but for the intersection between privacy and generative AI. To help unpack the ruling, I’m joined this week on the Law Bytes podcast by my colleague, Professor Teresa Scassa. The Canada Research Chair in Information Law at the University of Ottawa, Professor Scassa is one of Canada’s leading authorities on Canadian privacy and she joins the podcast to discuss the case and what it means for generative AI and privacy reform more broadly.

The CRTC recently wrapped up a two-week hearing on the Online Streaming Act that featured most of the usual suspects, though notably not the large streaming services. The Commission grappled with foundational issues such as modernizing the definition of Canadian content, instituting IP requirements, and introducing new discoverability rules into Canada’s broadcasting regulatory framework. Mark Musselman is a former entertainment lawyer, longtime Canadian movie producer, current PhD student focused on cultural and legal policy, and the author of the White Paper Black Coffee substack. Having appeared many times before the CRTC, he joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the recent Cancon hearing, breaking down the major issues of debate and identifying what was missing from the discussion.

The discussion on the intersection between AI and the law, especially with respect to legal services continues to grow. From lawyers that mistakenly rely on AI generated cases to AI support for due diligence and comment review, the role of AI within legal practice has emerged as a critical issue. Professor Abdi Aidid is a law professor at the University of Toronto, where he has focused on these issues for many years, well before the public’s attention was captured by generative AI services like Chat GPT. Professor Aidid is currently a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Yale Law School, he was a VP with BlueJ Legal, an early AI legal startup, and is the co-author of the The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss all things AI and the law, including what these technologies may mean for legal practice.

Digital policy did not play a major role in the recent federal election, but the new Mark Carney Liberal government is quickly going to face a wide range of digital-related policy questions. This week’s Law Bytes podcast examines the short, medium and longer term issues including the future of the digital services tax, Canadian digital sovereignty, and the fate of legislation that did not make it past the finish line in the last Parliament.

As the 2025 federal election passes the midway point, it is increasingly apparent that the federal political parties are not only battling for votes, but also for data. Canadians may not see it but political parties are data machines anxious to collect and use as much data about potential supporters as possible. Sara Bannerman is the Canada Research Chair in Communications Policy and Governance at McMaster University. She has been examining the privacy concerns with Canadian political parties for years, highlighting the disconnect between the expectations of Canadians and the reality on the ground. She joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss Canadian political party privacy – or lack thereof – and explains the role that data plays in the modern political party machinery.

The 2025 federal election is now in its second week and the battle for attention and ultimately votes is taking place both online and offline. The enormous influence of online sites such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and a handful of others raises real issues about how information spreads, its reliability, and risks of misinformation and disinformation. Aengus Bridgman is the Director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory and an Assistant Professor (Research) at the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. A contributor to studies on information issues in multiple federal and provincial elections, he is one of Canada’s leading experts on misinformation, digital activism, and the politics of digital media. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about the state of the major platforms in Canada in 2025, how our information ecosystem is vulnerable to misinformation, and what we should be doing about it.

With a federal election just called and the campaign now underway, the focus will turn - at least in very small part - to party policies. It is certainly possible that digital issues such as AI regulation, online harms, and the fate of Internet laws will merit a mention. I’m hoping to cover those issues in the weeks ahead, but this week, I offer one last look back. Last month, I delivered the keynote opening address at Digital Access Day, an annual forum on digital policy run by the Canadian Internet Society. I recorded the talk, which focused on the end of some bills and the potential start of something new. While things have changing rapidly over the past month, I think it still provides a useful review and it is included in its entirety in this week’s Law Bytes podcast.

The craziness of the Trump administration relationship with Canada was on full display this past week as seemingly every day involved some form of policy change on tariffs – first on, then slightly delayed for some goods, then slightly delayed for more goods and by week’s end threats of new tariffs. Given the uncertainty, I recently co-wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail together with Dr. Kumanan Wilson that sought to put the spotlight on another issue that could come to the fore if the economic battle moves beyond tariffs to other issues. In this case – privacy, data localization and health data. Dr. Wilson is a specialist in General Internal Medicine at The Ottawa Hospital,  Chief Executive Officer/Chief Scientific Officer, Bruyère Research Institute, a Professor and Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chair in Digital Health Innovation at the University of Ottawa and member of the University of Ottawa’s Centre for Health Law, Policy and Ethics. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss why we should be paying attention to health privacy, AI and the location of our data.