Conservative leader Pierre Poirievre has promised to repeal the Liberal Party’s Online Harms Bill if it becomes law.
He announced the pledge on Thursday, shortly after a federal budget watchdog estimated that setting up the regulator proposed in the bill could cost $200 million over five years.
The federal government estimated that the digital safety commission, ombudsman and office would employ 330 full-time equivalent employees when fully operational, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis.
The estimate is based on other federal regulators in Canada and similar international agencies such as OfCom in the UK and the eSafety Commission in Australia, according to the analysis.
The analysis also noted that the staffing levels needed to carry out the new regulator’s responsibilities “may differ from preliminary estimates.”
The Liberals say a digital safety commission is needed to force companies to better protect Canadians from online harm.
The Liberal government has introduced Bill C-63, which aims to protect people, particularly children, from harmful content online, including sexual exploitation and hate speech, through the creation of a new regulatory agency called the Digital Safety Commission and amendments to the Criminal Code.
The government says the bill will require companies to submit safety plans to the Digital Safety Commission outlining how they will mitigate the risks users face from seven types of dangerous content.
These include child sexual abuse imagery, intimate images shared without consent, and material that can be used to bully children or encourage them to self-harm.
The commission can act on complaints and impose heavy fines on platforms that don’t comply.
The Conservatives have criticized the plan for a new regulator as just new bureaucracy and say the Liberals should instead move faster by modernizing existing laws.
A spokesman for Mr Poirievre said that if the bill passes, a future Conservative government would repeal it.
Experts consulted by the government have said the bill is necessary to protect minors online and have warned that Canadian children are less protected than those in other countries.
