OpenMedia amplifies Canadians’ voices on AI, Privacy, and Consumer Rights for Canada-EU Digital Trade Consultations

OpenMedia shared Canadians’ priorities on AI, privacy, and consumer rights for the Canada-EU Digital Trade Agreement, urging trade rules that protect rights and ensure everyone can participate fairly online.

On August 25, 2025, OpenMedia submitted our written input to Global Affairs Canada’s consultation on a possible Digital Trade Agreement (DTA) with the European Union (EU). This consultation brings together a wide range of voices and covers key issues like artificial intelligence, privacy, digital inclusion, intellectual property and more, as the government looks to expand opportunities for Canadians in global markets.

We took this opportunity to share insights from our ongoing work on privacy, access and free expression, as well as findings from our recent community survey on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our goal was to ensure Canadian leaders hear the consumer rights perspective loud and clear as they work to strengthen Canada’s trade relationship with Europe and update the rules that shape our digital future.

Building on the digital policy agenda we put forward to all parties during the 2025 election, we highlighted the issues that matter most to our community and concluded our submission with concrete calls to action and policy recommendations across five major areas: AI, consumer protection, privacy, digital inclusion, and electronic authentication and digital ID.

Artificial Intelligence

Our recent AI community survey (3,020 responses) shows that Canadians are deeply concerned about the environmental footprint of AI infrastructure, its impact on creators, and the sovereignty of our data. Our community believes that AI cannot continue to go unregulated, and should not be regulated exclusively to encourage innovation and adoption.

Our community members are insisting that Canada’s first AI regulation bill pay attention to critical areas like rights, privacy, sustainability and public accountability.

On Sustainability: Our community believes that addressing the environmental impacts of AI is not optional and should be in every discussion about AI adoption. Our community urges Canada to (1) work closely with the EU to ensure AI development and deployment align with responsible energy, water, and resource use, (2) create a joint Canada-EU framework for transparent reporting on the environmental footprint of AI, and (3) develop shared methods for assessing the environmental impacts of AI models and publishing its results.
On Intellectual Property Rights: Our community is deeply concerned about the lack of rules governing how large language models (LLMs) train on all publicly accessible content, including copyrighted material and personal information. Our community is calling for (1) clear regulations defining how LLMs may use data, (2) strong mechanisms to protect creators’ rights and the integrity of their work, including penalties for non-consensual data use and a “do not train” tag system (similar to the robots.txt standard used in search engine indexing), (3) international discussions to develop fair compensation systems for web content used by AI agents, and (4) public consultations to ensure a sustainable future for Canadian journalism in the age of AI.
On Democracy and Public Trust: The rapid spread of AI systems online threatens the foundations of public conversation, policymaking, and democracy itself. Our community is alarmed by the risks of credible AI-generated misinformation, unregulated voter targeting with manipulative messaging, and the collapse of financial models that sustain fact-based journalism.

Our community demands urgent action to protect accountability and healthy public debate by: (1) Collaborating with the EU on research and broad consultation to address threats from AI to democracy and public discourse, (2) Mandating algorithmic transparency, researcher access, and human oversight in AI systems used for content moderation and recommendations, (3) Strengthening voter privacy laws to ban AI-driven electoral micro-targeting or manipulation, (4) Ensuring regulatory frameworks protect the public’s right to information, and (5) Aligning with the EU’s rights- and responsibilities-based approach to AI, and reintroducing Canadian AI regulation similar to AIDA with the improvements from OpenMedia’s 2024 minimum amendments package.

Consumer protection

Canadian consumers continue to face a weaker level of consumer welfare and service compared to the stronger privacy rights, clearer product durability and repair information, and faster, more affordable telecom services enjoyed by our European peers. We often pay more for less, while lacking the legislative safeguards that ensure transparency, affordability, and choice. At times, Canadians benefit indirectly from EU decisions like the GDPR compliance or the universal USB standards; often we are wholly left out.

We urge the Canadian government to work closely with the EU to learn from and adopt proven consumer protection measures. Canada should harmonize its legislation with EU standards where appropriate, to deliver stronger outcomes for Canadians. Specifically, we recommend:

Adopting MVNO service models to expand competition and lower telecom prices.
Passing strong consumer product environmental and durability labelling laws.
Passing a robust private-sector privacy reform law that reflects lessons from both the successes and shortcomings of the GDPR.

Privacy

In the wake of the adoption of the CLOUD Act, which requires US-based companies provide access to their foreign-based data when demanded by the US government, digital sovereignty is a top, pressing concern of Canada and many other countries. We stated that the privacy protections must be at the core of Canada’s position in the DTA and a key joint priority for Canada and the EU to build and strengthen.

Our community is clear: Canadians do not want their most sensitive information subject to foreign surveillance; and see the DTA as a critical opportunity to set rules that safeguard data sovereignty and strengthen Canada’s digital independence while aligning with Europe’s rights-respecting approach to privacy. Our community calls for:

Strong localized data requirements, particularly on our sovereignty on services that host most sensitive government and user data.
Actions on strengthening domestic capacity and diversifying to more trusted foreign partners that help Canada develop our own digital infrastructure that ensures critical business, government, and personal data remain under national jurisdiction and giving control back to people.

Digital Inclusion

Affordable, high-speed Internet access is not a luxury, it is a baseline necessity for education, work, healthcare, and civic engagement. Yet too many Canadians, particularly in rural and remote areas, continue to face high costs and limited access. Failure to afford Canadians equivalent service to the EU is a significant drag on economic growth and social equity in our country compared to our peers in the EU and the US.

Our community believes Canada must take bold action to close the digital divide. We call for:

Guaranteed access to 100/20 Mbps Internet service at $50 or less per month for everyone, everywhere in Canada.
A significant expansion of the Connecting Families program to assist households with income barriers.
Clear, enforceable standards for service and affordability, paired with flexible support for those who need it.

Electronic Authentication and Digital ID

Our community is concerned about the rapid growth of age verification technology and the global push to protect young people online. While it is important to keep age-inappropriate content away from minors, poorly designed systems can have serious, problematic consequences. When verification methods dig too deeply into the Internet’s architecture or share personal information unnecessarily, they threaten Canadians’ access to information, freedom of expression, and online privacy.

We know it is possible to create secure, verifiable tokens without compromising privacy, as seen with vaccination status tokens during the COVID pandemic. Canada must avoid repeating mistakes that put fundamental rights at risk, and ensure that any state-sanctioned digital ID prioritizes user privacy and is limited to its necessary purpose, not generalized into a multi-purpose ID. Our community calls on the government to adopt strong privacy protections in any digital identity or age verification systems. Specifically, we recommend the government:

Does not move forward with Bill S-209 (the replacement for Bill S-210), and ensure any future age verification uses “double-blind” technology similar to EU standards.
Designs any future government-approved or mandated digital IDs with privacy at the core, restricting use to necessary purposes and preventing linking or generalizing to unrelated functions.

These five areas reflect the core concerns and priorities of our community, highlighting where Canada can take meaningful action to protect rights, promote inclusion, and strengthen consumer protections in the digital economy.

We invite you to download a copy of our written input in PDF format to explore the key survey results and the detailed policy recommendations we put forward on what the government should consider when negotiating the DTA and working toward stronger policy alignment between Canada and the EU.