Over the past ten days, Canada has witnessed one of the fastest-moving technology policy debates in recent memory. What began as reporting about a tragic act of violence – the shootings in Tumbler Ridge, BC -  quickly evolved into questions about AI safety, corporate responsibility, police reporting obligations, and now potential AI regulation. This week’s Law Bytes podcast is a bit different from the norm. Building off my Globe and Mail op-ed, I walk through what has happened thus far, examine the potential policy responses, and explain why both the Online Harms Act and current AI legislative models are poorly suited to this problem, and argue that Canada instead needs to start thinking seriously instead about an AI Transparency Act.

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 258: Jaxson Khan With an Insider Perspective on AI Policy Development in Canada

Earlier this month, the government quietly released a “what we heard” report this discussing the response to its 30-day sprint AI consultation from last October. The consultation was promoted as giving Canadians – including a 28 person expert advisory board – the chance to provide their views on AI as the AI Minister Evan Solomon works toward a national AI strategy. The consultation garnered some criticism for its speed and missing perspectives on the expert panel.  More recently on the use of AI to assess the results have sparked further doubts about it.

Jaxson Khan is the CEO and Founder of Aperature AI and a Senior Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. But before that, he served as Senior Policy Advisor the Minister of Innovation Science and Industry, where AI was one of his lead responsibilities. Jaxson joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide an insider perspective on AI policy development along with his thoughts on the AI consultation and its results.

Social media bans for younger users have begun to take hold in various countries, particularly in Europe. In Canada, Bill S-209 may ostensibly be about underage access to pornography sites, but the bill’s proponents seem positively giddy at the prospect of a broader application to social media. This trend started in Australia, which passed a social media ban for those under 16 in late 2024 with the law taking effect just a couple of months ago.

Lisa Given is the Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology or RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. She has been closely tracking and commenting on the Australian legislation and she joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss its origins, how the law functions, the concerns it has raised, and what lessons Canada might draw from the experience to date.

Concerns about the dominance of big tech companies has been steadily mounting for years, leading to an increased emphasis on the role that competition law might play. The government recently expanded the tool set within the Competition Act by expanding the private right of access that enables individuals to launch their own claims. That led quickly to a case against Google, which the Competition Tribunal addressed in a recent ruling.

To help unpack the state of the law, the Tribunal’s decision and what it means for future actions, my colleague Professor Jennifer Quaid joins the Law Bytes podcast. Professor Quaid is an internationally recognized leading legal expert and scholar in the fields of organizational criminal liability, corporate accountability, competition and business regulation as well as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

The Law Bytes podcast is back, starting with an episode on the limits of Canadian law in addressing the concerns associated with Grok AI, the AI chatbot that garnered global attention over the widespread creation and distribution of AI-generated sexualized deep fakes. Weaving together online harms, privacy, AI regulation, and platform regulation into a single issue, there have been service bans in some countries but Canada has thus far struggled to respond.

To help understand what has taken place and Canada’s law and policy options, Professor Heidi Tworek returns to the Law Bytes podcast. Professor Tworek is the Canada Research Chair and Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, where she also directs the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions. Her work explores how new communications technologies affect democracy in the past and present and she served on the government’s online harms advisory board.

Canadian digital law and policy in 2025 was marked by the unpredictable with changes in leadership in Canada and the U.S. driving a shift in policy approach. Over the past year, that included a reversal on the digital services tax, the re-introduction of lawful access legislation, and the end of several government digital policy bills including online harms, privacy, and AI regulation. For this final Law Bytes podcast of 2025, I go solo without a guest to talk about the most significant developments in Canadian digital policy from the past year.

The creation of an Artists' Resale Right has been adopted in many countries to at best mixed reviews. They’re unsurprisingly widely supported by potential beneficiaries, but the data on who actually benefits raises real questions about the wisdom of the policy. Canada may be headed in the same policy direction as the government recently announced in its budget plans to introduce the measure. Professor Guy Rub is the Vincent J. Marella Professor of Law at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law and an expert in the intersection between intellectual property law, commercial law, the arts, and economic theory. Professor Rub has written critically about the Artists' Resale Right including as part of a submission to a House of Commons committee that studied the issue several years ago. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the policy measure and its drawbacks, including his view that it primarily benefits artists who are wealthy, old, or dead.

The CRTC recently released its much anticipated decision on Canadian content rules, the first of two decisions that could reshape broadcasting and film/TV production in Canada. The Commission promoted its Cancon approach as offering new flexibility into the system but the fine print matters as some changes may be more restrictive than they appear at first glance. To help make sense of the decision, Len St-Aubin, the former Director General of Telecommunications Policy at Industry Canada, joins the Law Bytes podcast. Len provided consulting services to Netflix until 2020 and has since been an active participant in the debate on Internet policy as part of the Canadian Internet Society.

Digital sovereignty is hot the digital policy phrase of the moment driving discussion on Canadian digital policy involving AI, digital infrastructure, privacy, and cultural policy among others. Yet despite its widespread use, its meaning remains opaque as it often used to frame – or reframe – longstanding policy positions. The government has begun to flesh out the issue with Treasury Board recently releasing a white paper on digital sovereignty that provides a useful starting point for discussion. Jennifer Pybus, the Canada Research Chair in Data, Democracy and AI at York University joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the white paper and Canada’s digital sovereignty debate.

I’m not quite sure how this happened, but somehow this is the 250th episode of the Law Bytes podcast. To mark this milestone, I’m joined by Jan Gerlach, Wikimedia’s Director of Public Policy, who leads its EU advocacy work, including efforts on UK Online Safety Act. This is particularly relevant in a Canadian context since this work has touched on issues such as user identification, platform regulation, and rules surrounding AI. Our conversation features a wide ranging discussion on these issues, providing insight into some of the risks and challenges associated with digital policy reform.