Gen(Z)AI: Youth Voices, AI Futures - Policy Recommendations for AI and Online Harms Governance in Canada

Résumé analytique

This report presents the findings of Gen(Z)AI: Canada's Youth Assembly on Artificial Intelligence, a novel youth citizens' assembly convened over seven months across four cities (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and Halifax), engaging one hundred in-person participants aged 17-23 alongside thousands of young Canadians through a national digital engagement process. The assembly combined a virtual learning day, in-person deliberation, and hybrid consensus-building to translate participants' lived experience of AI and online harms into concrete governance proposals.

The report situates this work against Canada's fragmented digital governance landscape, noting that Bill C-63 (the Online Harms Act) and Bill C-27 (which paired federal privacy reform with the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act) both died on the order paper following the January 2025 prorogation of Parliament, leaving the country without a binding legal framework for AI or online platforms. Participants developed 17 policy recommendations, each reaching a minimum consensus threshold of 90%, spanning four domains: five recommendations on AI chatbots (addressing addictive design, flagging mechanisms, opt-out rights, AI literacy funding, and a new independent enforcement body), five on AI and information integrity (covering content labelling, copyright and non-consensual content, mis/disinformation transparency, recommendation-system standards, and content authentication), three on AI and data privacy (informed consent, privacy-by-default, and enforceable data-handling standards), and four on AI and age assurance (standardized age verification, regulation of sensitive age-assurance data, safety-by-design protocols, and measures to reduce harmful exposure and sycophantic AI design). The report concludes by arguing for a shift from governance for youth to governance with youth, offering these participant-drafted recommendations, presented largely in their own words, alongside contextual analysis of how they could be operationalized within Canada's current legislative landscape.