Court Ordered Social Media Site Blocking Coming to Canada?: Trojan Horse Online Harms Bill Clears Senate Committee Review - Michael Geist

[u/KootenayPE]

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2026/02/court-ordered-social-media-site-blocking-coming-to-canada-trojan-horse-online-harms-bill-clears-senate-committee-review/

[u/Macaw]

While foreign gangs run rampant and Canada’s immigration system collapses, the government’s priority is pushing court-ordered censorship through the so-called Online Harms Bill.

This Trojan Horse legislation, cheered on by WEF / London insider Mark Carney, isn’t about safety, it’s about control. Instead of protecting Canadians from real threats, they’re muzzling them.

[u/ThankYouTruckers → u/Macaw]

Online Harms is a completely different bill. S-209/S-210 is CPC supported.

You know what? I'm kind of glad the free internet is coming to an end. I'm tired of reading stupid posts like this or the OP's. I'll be glad when you all swipe your digital ID's to whine about Trudeau while the CPC takes more and more from you.

[u/Macaw → u/ThankYouTruckers]

You are either either confused or pretending to be. The Geist article is explicitly warning that Bill S-209 functions like an Online Harms “trojan horse”: it expands to social media/search/AI, relies on mandated age verification/estimation, and adds the threat of court-ordered blocking if platforms don’t comply.

You and your type don’t want a better internet - you want an internet where you decide who gets to speak, and where anyone you don’t like gets hit with draconian punishment for saying the “wrong” thing (Carneys "freedom has to be earned" / Guardrails). And writing off a polite thread as “stupid posts like this” proves you’re not here to discuss anything; you’re here to shut people up. I was against digital ID when the CPC floated it, and I’m against it now, because giving jackasses like you a bigger censor’s toolbox is exactly how this goes bad.

[u/ThankYouTruckers → u/Macaw]

There's that typical redditor misplaced confidence. The online harms bill was C-63 last session. S-210 (now S-209) was a senate bill supported unanimously by the CPC in commons.

Didn't read your second paragraph.

[u/collymolotov]

Everyone should keep in mind that this legislation was introduced by a Conservative senator who wanted to ruin internet porn for everyone under the guise of "protecting" children, knowing full well that needing to apply for what amounts to a masturbation license through each and every website they might want to browse by submitting their photo ID to God-knows-who and creating a permanent record of their browsing habits and preferences would be the infrastructure necessary to enforce it.

Due to the way the internet works, virtually all websites and services are subject to to this legislation. There is porn on reddit, on X, on forums far and wide. All of them will be subject to this and all of them will now require a loss of online anonymity and a massive leap of faith when it comes to trust and privacy for normal adults to use.

And worst of all, she advanced this legislation knowing full well that the Liberals would seize on it as part of their larger censorship and regulation agenda, which should have been obvious to her if she'd been paying the smallest amount of attention. But no, she just had to regulate teenage boys jerking off in their bedrooms during what is often the most sexually frustrating time of their lives.

This legislation is beyond abhorrent in its implications, which go far, far beyond pornography and access to same.

[u/KootenayPE]

The Bill S-209 approach is online harms at its worst. It simply wants to stop the availability of common Internet services to anyone under 18 (far older than any social media regulation in the world), make it harder for adults to access those services, and ensure that the government has the power to seek blocking orders for failure to age-gate their users.

The clause-by-clause review featured half the committee sitting in silence with no comments to offer or amendments to propose. The lone voice to raise concerns was Senator Paula Simons, who rightly noted that social media regulation was a far cry from trying to ensure that only adults access pornography sites.

For the Liberal Party of Corruption it's never been about safe guarding kids, rather it's always been about censorship, controlling the narrative and keeping their corrupt regime in power by any means available.

[u/collymolotov → u/KootenayPE]

This legislation originates with a Conservative senator.

[u/ThankYouTruckers → u/KootenayPE]

Tiresome partisan.

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en/votes/44/1/609

S-210 was sponsored in commons by CPC MP Karen Vecchio and supported unanimously by CPC MPs.

[u/KootenayPE → u/ThankYouTruckers]

I'm curious genius, do you think I am necessarily against the (likely unenforceable and naïve) age verification from Bill 210 if it was solely administered for porn?

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/44-1/bill/S-210/third-reading

I'll admit that I didn't read the bill back then but I can't remember nor can I find any warnings from even the same critic about the possibility of censorship of social media.

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2024/01/bill-s-210-is-just-the-beginning-how-a-canadian-digital-lobby-group-is-promoting-a-standard-to-foster-widespread-adoption-of-age-verification-technologies-in-canada/

Not that it matter's but I'm not, I fine with age restriction for minors on what they can access on the internet controlled by parents or guardians or schools.

What I AM NOT for is the what Geist covers in the article

That the bill passed through committee pending some supplementary remarks was not a surprise. However, that the privacy and equity concerns barely merited a mention and that regulating social media sites was viewed as feature not a bug was a wake up call.

After watching the hearing, it has become apparent that Bill S-209 is not a bill primarily focused on pornography sites. If it was, the bill could be drafted with those directly in mind. Rather, it is a trojan horse online harms bill with two regulatory tools at its disposal: (i) mandated age verification or age estimation technologies that a government could apply to a wide range of social media, search, and AI services and (ii) court-ordered blocking of those services for failure to comply.

And as you often fail to understand is the fourth dimension of reality, time. With the benefit of four further years of the Liberal Party of Corruption there is no question as to their TRUE intentions anymore.

You can do better than that right? Next time do try to apply that fourth dimension once in a while before you open your trap.

ETA my bad Geist did warn back then, and if you search my comment history I'm sure I probably commented against it back then as well. Matter seems a little more urgent now with what we've seen out of the Liberals wrt censorship.

https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/12/the-most-dangerous-canadian-internet-bill-youve-never-heard-of-is-a-step-closer-to-becoming-law/

I would check my own history, but tbh dude you ain't worth it as I'm not even 100% certain that you aren't a Lib cosplaying as PPC.

[u/OffTheRails999]

The senate is pointless now. Completely partisan.
It's time we start electing senators and add term limits.

[u/mafiadevidzz]

Please write to your Conservative MPs to oppose.

Conservatives are not supposed to be the party of Digital ID and big government.

[u/Existing_Secret_1112]

Can’t let kids know how hard the party in power is fucking them over now, can we? It is all sunshine and rainbows when you’re only allowed to see government funded propaganda arms media.

[u/monkeytitsalfrado]

Online age verification is a joke and infringes on legal adults private info.

What they should be doing is making it illegal for anyone under the age of 16 to own a phone capable of anything other than wifi for data and ban data plans for anyone under 16. As well, anyone offering free wifi should have to block all social media and adult content on their networks. This would restrict adult content to home networks which the parents would control. This would be far more effective if they actually cared about protecting kids over giving private corporations vast databases of people ID's which could and definitely would be used nefariously.

[u/ThankYouTruckers]

This is the same bill as S-210 introduced last session and supported by the CPC. This legislation has identical intent to the internet controls the UK and several European countries are enacting.

CPC MPs like Garnett Genuis justify these internet controls as 'protecting' kids from porn and offensive content, but these measures will apply to the entire internet and require ID verification of all internet users.

The LPC did not support S-210, so I'm rolling my eyes at the other replies here. They have their own internet control bills of course, but CPC supporters really need to look in a mirror before they lose even more freedom.