Bill C-34 at a glance: Canada’s new Digital Safety Act

Éloïse Gratton June 15, 2026

The Government of Canada has introduced a comprehensive legal framework intended to govern online safety, reduce harms resulting from online content, and establish transparency and accountability requirements for operators of regulated services such as social media sites, chatbots and other online services. Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, creates two new statutes: the Digital Safety Act (the DSA or the Act), which imposes duties on the operators of regulated services, and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act, which establishes the regulator that administers and enforces those duties.

We have prepared a summary of this bill which is available on Osler’s website. The key takeaways are the following:

  • Bill C-34 would enact a new Digital Safety Act (DSA) that covers three “regulated services”: social media, chatbot and online services.
  • Duties across operators include duties to protect children, to act responsibly and to be transparent.
  • Child-protection measures would include safety-by-design features and age-based restrictions.
  • Social media operators would be required to take down child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and non-consensually distributed intimate images (NCDII) within 24-hours.
  • The DSA would be among the first Canadian statutes to impose direct safety duties on operators of AI “chatbot services.”
  • Administrative Monetary Penalties (AMPs) up to the greater of $10 million or 3% of gross global revenue, and offences carry the potential for the greater of up to $20 million or 5%.

You can read our more complete article available in English and available shortly in French.

This content has been updated on June 17, 2026 at 10 h 49 min.