Law Bytes

AI Minister Evan Solomon’s AI public consultation – framed as a 30 day sprint – wrapped up last week with expectations that the government will unveil a new AI strategy by the end of the year. Much of the emphasis to date has focused on how Canada can ensure that it is an AI leader with Solomon previously warning about how the government may have “over-indexed” on AI regulation. Mark Surman, the President of Mozilla, has been a leading global voice on digital policy for many years. He has been increasingly vocal about the benefits of public AI as a counter to the big tech leadership. He joins the Law Bytes podcast for a wide ranging discussion on digital policy, the role of open source, and benefits of a public AI model.

Bill S-209, the legislative effort to establish age verification requirements for sites and services that are said to facilitate access to pornography, is back. The bill has some modest improvements from the earlier S-210, but the core concerns – overbroad scope that lumps in social media companies, Internet providers, and AI services with pornography sites, the privacy and equity implications of mandated age verification, and the use of nationwide website blocking – remain. Last week, I appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs where I identified many of the concerns with the bill and engaged in a detailed discussion with multiple senators. This week’s Law Bytes podcast goes inside the hearing room for my opening statement and the Q&A with Senators that followed.

Stablecoins have increasingly begun to enter the mainstream with previously reticent policy makers, regulators, and financial institutions now shifting toward regulatory frameworks that seem more supportive of their development. The U.S. has been the most aggressive with the recent passage of the GENIUS Act, but Canadian officials have taken notice and begun to speak openly about the issue.

Mohamed Zohiri is a Legal Counsel and Fintech Advisor at the Alberta Securities Commission who has focused on stablecoins and their regulation for many years both during his graduate legal work and at the ASC. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to provide an introduction to stablecoins, examines the new U.S. legislation that may spark increased investment, and outlines where Canada currently stands on the issue.

Bill C-2, the government’s proposed lawful access legislation, has been the subject of several prior episodes covering warrantless disclosure of information as part of the new information demand power in Part 14 of the bill as well as some of the surveillance technology capabilities found in Part 15. Those remain major issues, but there is another element of the bill that deserves greater attention, particularly at this moment when the Canada – US relationship is increasingly fraught.  That issue involves mandated data sharing with implications for Canada’s international treaty obligations under the “Second Additional Protocol” to the Budapest Convention as well as the US Cloud Act. Kate Robertson, a lawyer and senior research associate at the Citizen Lab in the Munk School at the University of Toronto, wrote an extensive brief on these issues soon after the bill was introduced. She joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about a critical Bill C-2 issue that has thus far attracted limited attention.

The “right to be forgotten” – perhaps better characterized as a right to de-index -  has been a hotly debated privacy issue for well over a decade now, pitting those that argue that the harms that may come from the amplification of outdated but accurate content outweighs the benefits of maintaining such content in search indexes. The issue gets its start in Europe, but the Canadian experience has featured privacy commissioner findings and investigations alongside court rulings and provincial reforms.  Kris Klein is one of Canada’s leading legal experts on privacy, access to information and information security issues. He is the founder and managing partner of nNovation LLP, a leading boutique firm specializing in data protection, the Managing Director of IAPP Canada, and teaches the Privacy Law course at my faculty at the University of Ottawa. He joins me on the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the background behind the right to be forgotten, the recent OPC finding, and what may lie ahead on the issue.

The return of the Law Bytes podcast series this week coincides with the return of Parliament from its summer break. Digital policy may not be at the very top of the legislative agenda, but there are no shortage of issues that could attract attention. This includes lawful access legislation introduced last June, the prospect of online harms safeguards, and ongoing concerns regarding privacy and artificial intelligence regulation. This week’s episode looks ahead to the coming Parliamentary session, assessing the government’s likely digital policy plans.

The pressure to adopt new legal technologies, notably including AI, continues to increase as lawyers, law firms and their clients look for new efficiencies and tools to improve the practice of law. But these tools aren’t always easy to adopt – pilot programs, costs, fear of new technology, and security concerns are part of the package. Sukesh Kamra leads Tory’s Knowledge and Innovation team having spent two decades at the intersection between knowledge management, AI, and legal technology. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to talk about the opportunities and challenges of adopting new technologies for legal services.

This episode is part of a series of Law Bytes episodes that have been accredited by the Law Society of Ontario for continuing legal education Professionalism Hours. The program contains 45 minutes of Professionalism Content.

TikTok’s decision to pull support for multiple Canadian cultural organizations and events in light of the federal government’s decision to ban the company from operating in the country has sparked increasing concern. Putting the spotlight on TikTok makes sense, but it risks missing the bigger picture which involves a steady stream of funding cancellations in response to Canadian digital cultural policy. Netflix, Meta, Spotify and others have all had their own announcements with millions lost due largely to Canadian policy. Has Canada killed the proverbial goose that laid the golden egg on cultural support? Scott Benzie is the executive director of Digital First Canada and CEO of the Buffer Festival. He’s seen the impact first hand and he returns to the Law Bytes podcast to discuss what has been happening, identify why, and sort through the impact.

Canada’s outdated and discouragingly ineffective access to information system has languished for years to the frustration of many transparency advocates. One potential fix – or at least improvement – would be for government departments and agencies to make the full text of the records from access requests available to the public by default online. Yet the biggest barrier to that approach has been Canada’s language laws and a recent decision from Commissioner for Official Languages may have killed the possibility altogether for the moment. Dean Beeby, an investigative journalist and freedom of information specialist recently wrote about the case on his Substack. He joins the Law Bytes podcast to discuss both the case and how technology may provide a solution, if the government is open to some legislative reforms.

Two days after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to suspend all trade negotiations with Canada unless it rescinded the digital services tax, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced that the government was rescinding the tax. The rise and fall of the Canadian DST was marked by repeated warnings of potential U.S. retaliation, the Canadian government’s dismissal of the risks, and no shortage of confusion about the tax itself.

There have been multiple Law Bytes podcast episodes on the DST over the years, but this episode takes stock of its rise and fall. The episode examines what the DST is, what just happened, and what it means for the future of digital policy in Canada.