The updated Bill S-209 creates an offence for any organization that, for commercial purposes, makes pornographic material available on the Internet to persons under 18.

Supporters argue that this will protect minors from harmful online content. However, critics are warning that this will still apply to general purpose platforms, not only pornography-focused services. While Bill S-209 uses narrower language and responds to some of the criticisms of Bill S-210, the bill’s sponsor told the committee that the government is free to apply the age-verification requirements—and presumably site-blocking orders—to any site, not just pornography sites. On top of that, the bill allows court-ordered blocking of websites deemed non-compliant, which may create serious risks for lawful expression and access to information. While the bill mentions privacy, it leaves big gaps around how personal or biometric data would be collected, stored, or protected. To understand how these laws could backfire, we should look abroad.

Canada is not the first country to take on this issue. The United Kingdom's recent experience provides a valuable lesson. When its Online Safety Act introduced strict age-verification rules, automated filters ended up blocking LGBTQ+ forums, and sexual-health education. Canada now faces a choice: repeat these mistakes or learn from them. By learning from their story and others, we can find a better path for Canada.

The UK’s experience shows that technical fixes cannot solve complex social problems by themselves. When privacy safeguards are weak and rules are written too broadly, efforts to protect children can end up erasing the education, artistic and community spaces that help people stay informed and safe. As Canada debates Bill S-209, it faces the same dilemma: how to safeguard young people online without turning the internet into a system of surveillance and censorship.

This "over-blocking" problem is concerning, as the power to order website blocks could be misused. Bill S-209 creates an offence committed by any organization that makes pornographic material available to individuals under 18 for commercial purposes. While the bill attempts to limit its scope by excluding search engines and other services that only incidentally provide access to such content, the government would still be free to apply age-verification requirements, and potentially site-blocking orders, to a broader range of services, not only pornography sites. This leaves open the possibility that the bill’s reach could expand well beyond what the text currently suggests.

It shuts people out and reinforces digital inequality. For many people, especially those in rural or marginalized communities, the internet is a great place for them to learn about sexual health, identity, and mental health issues. When age-verification systems over-block content, these groups risk losing access to legitimate sexual-health information and resources. Additionally, people who don’t have a government ID or their own device to pass the strict ID-verification system and complete the age checks, are at risk of being excluded or cut off unfairly from essential services, communities, and the information they rely on.

Meanwhile, creators, especially smaller ones, also face their own risk of being shut out. With fines of $250,000 for the first offence, the stake could crush them, while large tech companies can easily absorb the cost. In the UK, similar high costs motivated some small and volunteer-driven services to pre-emptively shut themselves rather than face legal risk they could not possibly absorb.

Privacy safeguards are unclear. To verify age, Canadians may need to upload identification or personal data to a verification provider chosen by the site they’re dealing with, not them. Bill S-209 lacks strong rules on what happens to our data once it enters those vendors' hands. Who keeps our ID scans, and for how long? What happens if they leak or sell our data? Without clear regulations, the risk of major data leaks is significant.