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On Thursday's live stream, Sheila Gunn Reid and Tamara Ugolini discussed the potential harms of the Liberal government's new 'Safe Social Media Act.'

Introduced on Wednesday, Bill C-34 bans all children under the age of 16 from using social media platforms. It also regulates AI chatbots with new safety rules and forces platforms to submit comprehensive "digital safety plans".

Critics of the bill point to potential privacy concerns, as age verification could require ID uploads, facial recognition, or biometrics — seen as mass surveillance of Canadians.

Prime Minister Mark Carney took to social media on Wednesday to introduce the bill, asserting it will be used to "keep our kids safe."

Today, our government introduced new legislation to protect our kids online. Canada's Safe Social Media Act will hold social media and AI platforms accountable, make them safer, and restrict access to social media for children under 16.

More and more kids are suffering from…

— Mark Carney (@MarkJCarney) June 10, 2026

Sheila condemned the bill, noting that it won't be just children that will be required to submit digital identification to the federal government.

"There will be a requirement for everybody to input their age, because how do they sort out the kids from the grownups, well that requires everybody to confirm their identity with social media platforms, which will ultimately, I believe have to share this data with the feds," she said.

"So this is a way to figure out who we are under the pretense of figuring out who the kids are, and we already know what the government does with that sort of data. If you were someone who donated to the Freedom Convoy, you know what the government does with your personal data. They use it to harm you for political reasons," Sheila continued.

Opponents of the bill, including several Conservative MPs, argue it creates a "Ministry of Truth"-style bureaucracy and repeats problems from the earlier failed Online Harms Act (Bill C-63). The bill is still at first reading stage and will face debate, amendments, and committee hearings.