Child advocates to rally for online harms bill

Children’s advocates will hold a rally and press conference on Parliament Hill Monday to call for online harms legislation that covers AI chatbots and video games.

“Just in recent months, we’ve seen the real escalation of harm that’s happening using AI chatbots,” said Sara Austin, founder and CEO of Children First Canada.

OpenAI banned the mass shooter in Tumbler Ridge, B.C., from using its ChatGPT chatbot due to what it called worrisome interactions, but did not alert law enforcement. The shooter got around the ban by having a second account.

Austin said the tragedy “could have potentially have been prevented had OpenAI acted sooner to disclose the risks to the police.”

One of the people who will attend the rally Monday is James Sokolowski, whose 15-year-old daughter Penelope died in 2025 in connection with the terrorist group 764. Austin said Penelope’s grooming began on the online gaming platform Roblox.

The federal government added 764 to its list of terror entities in December 2025. It described the group as a “decentralized transnational network of online nihilistic violent extremists.”

It said members of the group use social media and gaming platforms “to lure, groom, and extort youth to commit violent and sexual acts, including self-harm.”

Matt Richardson of the Canadian Open Source Intelligence Centre has said that in the course of his research into online spaces involving members of 764, he’s seen images of self-harm, initials and names of abusers carved into victims’ skin, animal abuse and even invitations to watch livestreamed suicide attempts.

“Many of our kids are spending extensive amounts of their daily lives on gaming platforms and they have proven to be unsafe,” Austin said.

She said there are multiple “gaming platforms that are risky for kids because they allow for chat features with kids to be able to communicate with strangers” who can pretend to be children.

Children First Canada said in a press release it’s leading Monday’s rally on Parliament Hill, with support from a coalition that includes medical organizations, youth and parents. Austin said the group is bringing 15 children and 15 parents to Ottawa.

In addition to AI chatbots and gaming, the group wants the bill to cover social media. It says legislation must include a duty of care for platforms requiring them to prevent foreseeable harm, safety by design for online platforms, and a “strong, independent regulator with enforcement power.”

The Liberal government previously introduced the online harms bill C-63 but it did not become law before last year’s federal election was called.

After initially signalling it would not bring the bill back in the same form, but would instead tackle aspects of it in other legislation, the government changed course and Culture Minister Marc Miller is now taking the lead on a new bill.

Miller has reconvened an expert group the government previously consulted. The group is expected to consider multiple questions, including whether the legislation should cover AI chatbots and if it should restrict social media access for kids and teenagers.

AI chatbot safety and social media bans for children have emerged as global political issues since the earlier version of the bill was introduced.

Austin said the government has had plenty of time to prepare and needs to take action now.

“We continue to hear from key leaders in government that they are taking their time to get this right. And I appreciate the sentiment behind that, because they’ve had a couple of false starts with online safety legislation before,” she said.

But the government doesn’t have to “recreate the wheel here,” she said, noting Canada can follow the lead of others, including the United Kingdom, the European Union and Australia.

“The fact that they’re still debating this, the fact that they’re still consulting, is concerning to me as a parent, let alone as somebody who’s advocating for all of our children.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 27, 2026.

— With files from Erika Morris 

By Anja Karadeglija | Copyright 2026, The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.