Ottawa is once again asking Canadians to hand over liberty in exchange for a promise of safety.The federal government has introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, with a headline ban on social media use for children under 16. Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Marc Miller says the goal is to make social media platforms and AI chatbots safer for children.No serious person denies that children face real harms online. Predators exist. Bullying exists. Addictive platforms exist. Parents know this better than any Ottawa regulator.The problem is not the stated goal. The problem is the tool.A ban on under-16 users cannot be enforced by guessing. It cannot be enforced by trusting teenagers to tick a box saying they are old enough. That trick has failed for years.To keep a 15-year-old off Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, or X, the platform must first know whether every user is 15, 16, 45, or 75.That means age verification for everyone.University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist has warned that this is the core issue. A rule aimed at minors becomes an age-verification mandate for the whole population. .Tens of millions of Canadians who are not accused of doing anything wrong would have to prove their age before using common online services. That could mean uploading government ID, using a third-party verification company, submitting to facial scanning, or allowing platforms to infer age from online behaviour.That is not child protection. That is a digital licence.The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has already acknowledged the danger. Its 2026 policy note says age assurance can raise privacy harms, including requirements for people to reveal sensitive personal information just to access information or online services. Its consultation report also notes that age assurance is not a magic answer and must be judged by risk and proportionality.Canadians should pay attention to that word: access.Once the government creates the system, the question is no longer whether a person is old enough for social media. The question becomes whether a person is permitted to enter the “digital public square” at all.Supporters will say there are privacy-friendly options. They will talk about “zero-knowledge” certificates, third-party tokens, and anonymous age checks. Those words sound comforting. They do not change the basic structure. A gate is still being built. A credential is still required. A record can still be created. A system built to confirm age today can be expanded tomorrow to confirm identity, location, citizenship, vaccination status, criminal record checks, licence status, tax compliance, or voting eligibility..That is how government overreach works. It rarely arrives wearing jackboots. It arrives as a pilot project, a safeguard, a temporary measure, a narrow rule for a “good cause.”Australia has already shown where this road leads. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act created a minimum age of 16 for social media accounts and requires platforms to take “reasonable steps” to stop underage users. Companies face fines of up to $49.5 million AUD for failing to comply.When fines are that large, companies will not rely on honour systems. They will demand proof. Adults will be swept into the net because adults must prove they are adults.Ottawa knows this. Critics have raised concerns about the data needed to verify ages, including government-issued identification, facial recognition, and even monitoring online behaviour.That last part should chill every Canadian.Monitoring online behaviour means watching what people do, what they read, where they comment, who they follow, and how they act. It means building systems that can sort citizens by risk. It means turning private digital life into something that can be inspected..Most Canadians are doing nothing wrong. They are checking local news, posting family photos, watching sports highlights, selling old stuff on Facebook Marketplace, arguing about politics, or following their church, school, union, farm group, or sports team. They should not have to show papers to do it.Parents need better tools. Children need protection from predators. Platforms should be held liable when they knowingly design products that harm young people. Schools and families should teach digital literacy. Police should have the resources to target criminals who exploit children.None of that requires Ottawa to create a national age gate for the internet.The under-16 ban is being sold as a fence around children. In practice, it becomes a checkpoint for everyone. Once Canadians accept the idea that government can require identity proof before social media access, the fight over digital ID is over. The infrastructure will exist. The habit will form. The next demand will be easier and probably done quietly in an updated "terms and conditions."A free country does not make innocent citizens prove themselves before they speak.Ottawa should scrap the ban and go after actual online predators, not the privacy of millions of law-abiding Canadians.
