It was a much different resolution that passed than was made, but in the end,
delegates at the BC Chamber of Commerce’s Annual General Meeting in Fort St. John did pass a joint resolution by the Tumbler Ridge and Prince George Chambers.
The original resolution called for age limits on social media and generative AT Chatbots, but that section was pulled from the resolution.
Both Prince George and Tumbler Ridge have dealt with fallouts from these platforms.
In Tumbler Ridge, the shooter’s ChatGPT account had be flagged by OpenAI for violent content violating the platform’s policies.
Meanwhile, in Prince George, a 12-year-old boy committed suicide after online sexual extortion back in 2023.
That was just one of more than 60 cases of sextortion reported to the Prince George RCMP that year, up from 56 the year before.
Tumbler Ridge Chamber Executive Director Jerrilyn Kirk says she had been working on the resolution before the shooting in Tumbler Ridge. “ I initially began writing it when I got back from Australia last December,” say Kirk. “Australia had put forward a social media ban on kids under sixteen. When I was there I thought there would be a huge outcry from people because of the ban, but there wasn’t a lot of push back.
“I began writing a social media ban resolution and then when everything happened in town, I realized that the resolution had to expand to hold social media and generative AI chatbot platforms accountable for what happens on their sites.
“One of the recommendations is that the BC government looks at education for kids in school about social media and generative chatbots to educate them on how to use them properly so that they’re not in positions where they’re making bad decisions.”
Kirk says she’s disappointed that the resolution’s key recommendations was cut. “I would be less than Honest, if I didn’t say I wasn’t disappointed that several of the stronger recommendations were removed from the resolution. I’ve heard it from several people who said, ‘well, my child has been using social media since they were ten years old, and they’ve never had any problems. They don’t get bullied and they’re safe and I don’t feel that the government should be able to step in and tell us what to do.’ But the reason we wrote this was to put laws in place that would protect children, especially vulnerable children. I know that there are a lot of parents that take the time to really monitor their children’s online presence. They have the resources financially, and the free time so they can make sure that their kids are staying safe online.
“But there are a lot of single parent families, families where both parents are working, low-income families where it’s maybe not quite as easy for them to monitor what their children are doing online.”
Kirk says that the resolution will be taken to the provincial government. That tells the province that businesses business and industry across BC supported this resolution, and so the government needs to look at them. The city of Prince George. will be bringing it to the Union of BC Municipalities as well. When a resolution comes forward from local government as well as from business and industry, it gives it a lot of credibility. And then it’s up to the provincial government to decide what to do with it.”
While there has been some discussion about bringing the resolution to the Canadian Chamber, Kirk says there’s a built-in conflict at the National level, as many of the larger social media giants and AI companies are also chamber members. “It makes for a bit of difficulty and I’m not sure what will happen with it, but it’s been sent to the Canadian Chamber for evaluation and we’ll see what happens.
Kirk says she’s not anti-social media or against generative AI. “I think those are tools which are very useful in today’s society and I’m not in any way trying to take that away. What I’m trying to do is to put something in place to create reasonable safeguards for children, improving education and supporting families by ensuring technology companies share the responsibility for the environments that they create.
“Twenty five years ago we started an experiment with children. We said, ‘here is a world that you don’t really understand. Go explore.’ It’s kind of like taking them to New York City and letting them just wander about on their own. There’s all sorts of good things, great things available in New York City, but there’s also a lot of traps and danger. What we’re trying to do is protect the kids from the dangers and the pitfalls that are there, so they’re not ending up having to deal with things that are beyond their capacity as children.”
Days after the Chamber AGM, the Federal government released their AI strategy, AI for All.
As the paper was going to press, there were also rumours swirling that the Liberals would introduce a minimum age requirement for social media.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
