Witnessing the Impacts of AI in Canada: Addressing the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology
On May 6 2026, the John Humphrey Centre’s Angelica Quesada (Director of Research and Adult Education) and Tiffany Efird (Project Development Coordinator) addressed Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
Their message was strong and clear: AI has significantly lowered the barriers to online harm, amplifying extremist content, deepfakes, and scams. AI-amplified misinformation, biased moderation bots, and harmful chatbots disproportionately target women, gender-diverse, and racialized youth, while current support and policing systems frequently fail to intervene before tech-facilitated harm reaches a crisis point. While technology advances exponentially, Canada’s regulatory frameworks continue to lag behind international policy development, leaving young people vulnerable.
Co-created with young people, the JHC’s Youth Digital Rights Blueprint was presented as a potential policy framework and path forward for the Government of Canada to implement. The Blueprint emphasizes a statutory duty of care for platforms to proactively mitigate foreseeable harms, mandated human rights-based assessments to evaluate algorithmic impacts on mental health and discrimination, heightened safeguards against exploitative generated media and extremism, and enforceable national safety standards for interactive digital spaces, including online gaming.
Below are the notes from their address to the committee:
Thank you, Mr./Madam Chair and members of the committee. My name is Angelica Quesada, and I am the Director of Research and Adult Education with the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights. JHC is a non-profit charitable education organization working to advance justice, dignity, freedom and peace through collaborative relationships and transformative education.
I thank the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology for inviting us to witness on the impact of artificial intelligence in Canada. JHC has worked directly with youth, women, and gender-diverse people to understand how social media, gaming, and generative AI affect historically marginalized communities. Our focus is on the intersections of online and offline discrimination, with the objective of contributing to relevant, applicable frameworks, and solutions to challenges that primarily affect young people, whose identities and experiences are shaped by these intersections. This includes:
Moderation bots that incorporate algorithmic bias in reporting systems that reproduce harm and compromise spaces of remediation;
AI-generated text, images, and video that erode trust in what we see online and impact civic education and democracy. It is common knowledge now how generative AI is used to create false narratives and "deepfakes" to discredit and control, primarily impacting women, gender diverse, and racialized youth, amplifying their experiences of exclusion and hate. In 2025, the Edmonton Police Service received 168 sextortion-related reports targeting young people between the ages of 13 and 16 years old, with 15 being the most common age.
AI has significantly lowered the barriers to committing harm through increasing the spread of extremist content and scams that use AI impersonation and coercion.
AI-powered chatbots that reinforce negative thought patterns and unhealthy, harmful coping mechanisms.
AI-amplified misinformation and disinformation that rewards outrage and exploits emotions for engagement.
Despite this long list of negative impacts and the widespread use of Generative AI, from a tool of war to a tool of business efficiency, only a handful of nations have had the capacity or political will to apply some regulatory frameworks that prioritize the protection of people over business models. While technology advances exponentially, our regulatory frameworks in Canada are lagging, leaving us reacting to international policy development rather than modelling the protections and supports that young people need to navigate safe online spaces with dignity.
The Youth Digital Rights Blueprint, a policy framework published by JHC in collaboration with young people, proposes a comprehensive, human rights-driven digital safety framework built on four interdependent pillars: Participation, Protection, Remedy, and Support, reflecting youth priorities, international standards, and Canada’s obligations under the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. The Digital Rights Blueprint provide clear recommendations to the Government of Canada, including:
A statutory duty of care that requires platforms to proactively assess, prevent, and mitigate foreseeable harms;
A mandated human rights-based assessment of algorithmic impact for all major online platforms. This assessment should evaluate the effects on mental health and discrimination, especially on historically marginalized communities;
A regulatory framework for generated media with heightened safeguards for exploitative content, extremism, and hate; and,
Enforceable national safety standards for interactive digital environments, including online gaming, grooming, peer-to-peer harm, and gambling and gambling-like features that are amplified by algorithmic engagement models.
When addressing the intersection between GBV and AI, the report Ignite Change on Canada’s National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence, a two-year research study, clearly reveals how systems of support, policing, and reporting mechanisms often ignore "lower-level" threats, intervening only once tech-facilitated harm reaches a crisis point. The harm produced by the lack of response is amplified when perpetrators are located in different jurisdictions, limiting the capacity to protect. We must build an escalated-response system in which no level of threat is tolerated.
Legislative responses are not only necessary but urgent, and those must centre the voices of young people who have been excluded from policy conversations. So far, they have been tokenized, consulted too late or not at all, even though the decision will have a profound impact on their lives. We call to move away from this systemic exclusion and towards a framework that provides clear, actionable pathways to a safer digital future by centering and honouring the experiences and vast knowledge of young people living in Canada.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions, and we are open to sharing our model of engagement with young people to support our call to action.