This is a past event
Canada has never passed comprehensive intermediary liability laws, relying instead on piecemeal laws, primarily in defamation, and indirectly in privacy and competition law. Meanwhile, the UK and EU are onto their second-generation laws to address online harms. The Government of Canada undertook a multi-year consultation to develop legislation and introduced Bill C-63 Online Harms Act in February 2024. The Bill remains stuck at its second reading before the House of Commons, and political uncertainty puts into question whether this Bill will be passed. This presentation will examine Canada’s journey to table the Bill, its substance and points of debate, and explore the unique legal position of Canada as a US neighbour and treaty partner, and the more European roots of our constitutional structure. Ultimately, online harms and platform accountability occupy a perilous space in Canadians imagination, while few laws exist to regulate platform power.
Bio: Dr. Emily Laidlaw is a Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Calgary, and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. In addition to her academic work, Dr. Laidlaw serves as Ethics Advisor to Calgary’s City Council and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Cybersecurity Consortium.
Dr. Laidlaw researches and advises at the intersection of technology regulation, human rights and corporate governance, with a special focus on platform regulation. She actively contributes to law reform and other advisory work, with recent projects on online harms, mis- and disinformation, defamation law, and intimate image abuse. She co-chaired the expert group that advised the Federal Government on development of the Online Harms Bill.
Dr. Laidlaw is author of two books: Regulating Speech in Cyberspace: Gatekeepers, Human Rights and Corporate Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2015), and co-editor with Florian Martin-Bariteau of the forthcoming book Security of Self: A Human-Centric Approach to Cybersecurity (Ottawa University Press, 2025).
Prior to joining the University of Calgary in 2014, Dr. Laidlaw spent almost 10 years in the United Kingdom, where she completed her LLM and PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science and was a lecturer at the University of East Anglia Law School.
- Speaker
- Emily Laidlaw
- Hosted by
- School of Law
- Venue
- Hybrid Event (On Campus Venue - A21)
- Contact
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This event is free and open to all. If you would like to attend the seminar online please contact Georgi Chichkov at georgi.chichkov@abdn.ac.uk