Canada considers age assurance legislation to match UK, EU

A new bill that would require porn sites to implement age assurance technology has been introduced into Canadian Parliament. The bill would permit third-party age assurance providers to provide age estimation or verification methods that protect privacy and personal information.

Leading the effort is Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, who introduced a similar bill before the election. That legislation, Bill S-210 (Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act) passed the Senate in April 2023 with support from every party except the ruling Liberals under Justin Trudeau, but died before an election in April 2025 reset the government with a new Prime Minister in Mark Carney.

In the Globe and Mail, Miville-Dechêne says the new bill aims to address some of the criticisms aimed at the last bill over privacy risks. It includes explicit reference to age verification and age estimation – and hand gesture age scans, in particular – and points to UK laws and regulations around child safety as a model. However, the punitive measures are not nearly as extreme: under the private member’s bill, noncompliance could come with a fine up to 250,000 Canadian dollars (about US$186,000) or the first offence, and $500,000 (US$367,000) for a subsequent offence.

UK regulator Ofcom has the power to impose fines of up to 18 million pounds (about $25 million) or 10 percent of qualifying worldwide revenue, whichever is greater.

“It’s more than time for Canada to act to protect children from the serious harms of exposure to pornography online,” the senator says. “The British and French laws imposing age estimation or age verification are coming into force this summer. Technology has evolved and privacy rights can be fully protected.”

While Canada has been reevaluating its ties to both the U.S. and the EU in recent months, it is unlikely to stray from a path that governments on both sides of the pond have chosen. Ofcom will begin enforcement of its age verification policies on July 25, 2025, and the EU has already opened investigations into several large porn sites. And, in a decision with major implications for the U.S., the Supreme Court last week upheld Texas’ age assurance law, delivering the opinion that requiring age checks “only incidentally burdens the protected speech of adults.”

With age assurance getting the go-ahead on all sides and Canada’s government in a relatively stable state, it is hard to see the country not following suit at some point in the future.

Recently, Justice Minister Sean Fraser spoke of plans to take a fresh look at its online harms legislation this summer. Two previous attempts to pass the Online Harms Act failed. But, as quoted by the Canadian Press, Fraser says increases in deepfakes and child exploitation demand another push.

“The world changes and governments would be remiss if they didn’t recognize that policy needs to shift.” That could mean modifications to existing versions from the previous Parliament, or “to accept the form in which we had the legislation.”

Prior efforts failed in part because of concerns about Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act amendments targeting hate, which raised concerns about potential curbs on free speech. There was also pushback to language in the 2024 bill that required platforms to take down offending content within 24 hours. Should remnants of those policies arise in a new bill, there are likely to be similar objections.

Criminalizing the distribution of non-consensual sexual deepfakes was part of the Liberal government’s campaign platform. They also pledged to introduce a bill to “protect children from online sexploitation and extortion, and to give law enforcement and prosecutors additional tools to pursue those crimes,” CP says.

In March, Canada’s Office of the Privacy Commissioner (OPC) released key learnings from an exploratory consultation on age assurance. While it is still following others’ lead on that front, Canada is most definitely a leader in online porn, being home to Ethical Capital Partners, the holdings firm that owns Aylo, which is the parent company for the world’s most popular porn site, PornHub.

Aylo continues to lobby for age checks at the device or app store level, taking the burden off individual websites. However, it has also pledged to comply when Ofcom’s rules kick in – despite having shuttered PornHub in France to protest regulatory measures by Arcom. Regarding a potential Canadian restriction, the company says in a statement that it will always follow the law.

Article Topics

age verification  |  biometric age estimation  |  Canada  |  children  |  legislation