Technology gets me to my meeting with esteemed internet law professor Michael Geist on time. But just barely. And not without making me momentarily miss the days when you hailed a cab with your arm.
After my Lyft driver cancels unexpectedly, I switch to Uber and wait another 10 minutes for a new driver to come to me. Happily, this one does, and I’m dropped off at The Happy Goat, on Ottawa’s Elgin Street, mere minutes before Geist himself arrives.
It is modern internet miracles like these that Geist, the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa, has spent nearly three decades in academia studying.
Geist obliges my request to save us seats in the bustling café while I get us coffees — nonfat latte for him, hazelnut latte for me.
Regarding our chosen location, Geist later reminisces, “The first time I was in this coffee shop I met with someone pretty senior in [the current] government. They showed up with a piece of paper to jot some notes on.”
“On the back they’d printed out a blog post I’d written … saying this was the most anti-internet government in Canadian history,” he recalls with a laugh.
Fast forward to today, how would he rate the Liberals on internet regulation?
“I would not score them well at all.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s a failing grade. But it’s not the kind of grade that anyone would be proud to take home to their parents.”
‘Poorly drafted’
There is no shortage of internet bills for us to unpack in our hour-long meeting, and Geist seems capable of speaking at length about any one of them.
Recently, the bill that has generated the most controversy is Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act. The bill’s least controversial section, which would require large social media companies to address harmful content on their platforms, “is close enough to the mark that people could work with it,” Geist says.
But the bill does not stop there. It would also introduce amendments to the Criminal Code and Canadian Human Rights Act, including a new hate offence with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
“At the best case, [this] feels like a poorly drafted provision,” Geist says.
And it would enable restrictive conditions to be imposed on individuals assessed as being likely to commit online hate offenses. On this so-called “peace bond” proposal, Geist is less critical than others.
“Frankly, I think some of [the criticism] is a little overblown,” he says. “Peace bonds exist already. The idea that we would have a tool that … prevents a foreseeable harm taking place is certainly better than an alternative of the harm taking place and then looking to the justice system to mete out a punishment.”
“I mean [the peace bond] needs Attorney General approval. It strikes me as something that would be on the whole pretty hard to get.”
Stopped listening
I ask Geist whether the controversial criminal and human rights provisions were part of the extensive consultations that preceded the release of Bill C-63.
“You’ve hit on a really important point … To my knowledge, generally no.”
This can only be considered surprising, since the government took a beating for its mishandling of consultations over an earlier online harms proposal. Geist himself filed an Access to Information request that revealed only five per cent of respondents supported the government’s proposal and 90 per cent opposed it. Government had claimed their consultations showed broad support.
“These differences suggest Canadian Heritage kept the public in the dark… by posting a summary report that omitted crucial information,” Geist wrote on his blog, which has more than 7,000 entries dating as far back as 2003.
The government’s bungled efforts at consultation are a notable change from its early days in power, says Geist, who moves fluidly from broad anecdotes to the nitty-gritty of legislation.
“[This government] really prided itself in consulting and saying ‘we’re going to listen’. To the point that there were many that were almost exhausted.”
“It was all talk all the time.”
“But when we finally started getting the outputs, they stopped listening altogether. Or they only listened to a few select voices.”
“[Most of their laws] directly correlated to a few stakeholder voices that are clearly top of mind,” Geist says. “That’s a disappointment.”
I note the example of the Online News Act, where government policy was captured by the incumbent legacy news publishers at the expense of digital news startups.
Geist describes the law, which prompted Meta to block Canadian news links from Facebook and Instagram, as “just disastrous.”
Would the government ever reverse course on this law?
“No,” he says, point blank.
“No matter the evidence of harms?” I ask.
“I think they know that they screwed up. I would hope they know they screwed up.”
“They failed to take [into account] the risks that many were identifying, myself included, as very real possibilities … [But] governments are not big on admitting mistakes.”
Defining success
While Geist has been critical of the government’s efforts to regulate social media platforms, it’s clear he sees a role for government to limit harms.
“We’ve waited a long time [for] platforms to do better on issues” like amplification of hate or harm to kids, he says. “And they by and large have not.”
“Creating legal requirements to do better is a pretty reasonable response when there are repeated failures and demonstrable harms.”
Does he anticipate the recent lawsuits launched by four of Canada’s largest school boards against Meta, Snapchat and TikTok to be another avenue for addressing harms?
“It depends on how we define success,” he says after a moment’s reflection.
“If we define success as these companies paying billions of dollars, then no, I don’t think they’re likely to succeed. But if it is defined as the companies undertaking policy measures to make kids safer on their platforms … then I think the chances of some sort of success are much higher.”
Geist, who is the father of three university-age kids, also emphasizes parents’ role in protecting kids.
“Parents play the most important role in seeking to supervise access to the internet and technologies … I think you start there.”
High-risk AI
Geist, who is energetic throughout our conversation, does not seem to be fuelled by coffee. The only time I see him sip his latte is when I ask a question.
I note that the government is now turning its attention to Bill C-27, which, among other things, focuses on AI regulation.
Geist provides the backstory to that bill, noting that when it was first introduced in June 2022, the AI portion “felt like a throw-in.” Now it’s front and centre.
The government’s proposed approach is to ban certain AI systems that are considered too high risk, and to minimally regulate low-risk systems.
The “most interesting and important” area for regulation will be in the high-risk areas that we don’t ban, Geist says.
One concern he has already is that the government has not laid out the specifics of how it would regulate this category of AI.
“[The government] argues it’s a feature and not a bug that they can have different kinds of regulations for different kinds of high-risk systems,” he says.
“It certainly fuels some amount of uncertainty. And you can make the case that that’s been kind of par for the course for all this digital legislation.”
Balsillie world
Geist has been so relaxed and forthcoming throughout our conversation that an hour has passed quickly and I still have many questions I could ask. But I promise to limit myself to a few last ones.
One has to do with productivity, the term that’s been on many people’s lips recently.
An argument advanced for Canada’s productivity struggle is that companies and universities are not patenting and commercializing their discoveries enough.
“I’m a skeptic around some of those claims. There’s a particular school of thought … It’s not hard to figure out where it originates,” he says, although it’s hard enough for me to figure out that I ask him to clarify.
“This is the Balsillie world,” he says.
“I don’t want to diminish the value of intellectual property,” he continues. “[But] especially in Canada much of our research is publicly funded … And so the idea that the public would put all that money into [research and then have] to re-buy the results … I think it raises real questions about whether that’s the best way to leverage public investment in research.”
“I believe [universities’] mandates are more about discovery, engaging in non-partisan, unbiased research and making it more broadly available to the public. And there’s a public interest in supporting that.”
Indeed.
As we wrap up, Geist illustrates the non-partisan nature of his work. I mention that I am unable to attend the panel he’ll be participating in the following day at the Canada Strong and Free Networking Conference, Canada’s largest annual gathering of conservatives.
Geist doesn’t appear to relish the partisan backdrop. But he attended an event by the left-leaning Broadbent Institute several years back, he says, implying he felt it important to participate in a conservative event as well.
Despite his hesitance about partisan conferences, there is undoubtedly value to non-partisans like Geist participating in such discussions.
“The reality is I say what I think, I take positions that some will agree with and some will disagree with.”
“No one has ever come within a mile of trying to limit what I say.”
Agree or disagree with him, the public has reaped the benefits of that.
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