Child creator, performer and privacy law in Canada

Lesson 2 set out the ethics of featuring children in content. This lesson turns to the law. In Canada there is not yet a statute written specifically for child influencers or family vloggers, unlike several US states. Instead, a patchwork of existing laws applies: federal and provincial privacy law, Quebec's civil code and consumer protection law, provincial employment standards and child performer rules, the general law of privacy and negligence, and the Criminal Code. Calls for specific protections have grown since 2024, with commentators and some legislators pointing to the US laws, so check for new provincial legislation before relying on this summary.

No child influencer statute yet

As of October 2026, no Canadian province or the federal government has passed a law like Illinois's 2024 child influencer law, which requires a share of a child's earnings from family content to go into a trust. Children who appear in family content therefore usually have no specific statutory right to a share of the income they help generate, unless they are hired under a contract covered by child performer rules. This gap is a key reason responsible Canadian creators set up voluntary savings or trust arrangements for children who appear regularly, as later sections describe.

Privacy law: PIPEDA and the provinces

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies to organizations that collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities. A monetized channel is a commercial activity, so a creator's handling of personal information, including children's images and details, can fall under it, although the line between a family's personal life and its business is not always clear. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has said that meaningful consent is required and that, for children under 13, consent should generally come from a parent or guardian, while recognizing that this does not override the child's own interests. Alberta and British Columbia have their own private-sector privacy laws with similar principles.

Quebec: civil code, consumer protection and Law 25

Quebec has the strongest protections in Canada. The Civil Code of Québec recognizes a right to privacy and to one's image; using someone's image or name without consent can be an invasion of privacy, and the Supreme Court of Canada's 1998 Aubry decision confirmed that publishing an identifiable photo of a person without consent can be actionable even when taken in public. Quebec's Consumer Protection Act, sections 248 and 249, generally prohibits commercial advertising directed at children under 13, judged by the nature of the product, the way the message is presented and when and where it appears. Law 25, phased in from 2022 to 2024, updated the private-sector privacy law, including the rule that personal information about a minor under 14 generally requires the consent of a parent or guardian, and a right in some circumstances to have information de-indexed.

Taken together, these Quebec rules mean a creator in Quebec who features children needs informed parental consent, a clear purpose for any personal information, care with sponsored content that could be seen as advertising to children, and respect for requests to remove images. Other provinces rely more on general privacy law and the developing common-law privacy torts, such as intrusion upon seclusion recognized in Ontario in Jones v. Tsige (2012).

Child performer and employment rules

Children hired to perform in the traditional entertainment industry are protected by provincial rules. Ontario's Protecting Child Performers Act, 2015 sets limits on hours, requires breaks, chaperones and tutoring for school-age children, and requires part of a child performer's income to be set aside for the child. It applies to engagers in the live and recorded entertainment industry, and whether it reaches family vlogs made by parents is uncertain; it is more likely to apply when a brand or production company engages a child. British Columbia's Employment Standards Regulation has specific rules for children in recorded entertainment, and other provinces set minimum ages and permit requirements for child employment. A brand hiring a child for a sponsored video should check the rules in the province where filming happens.

The Criminal Code and reporting

The Criminal Code sets absolute limits. It prohibits making, distributing, possessing or accessing child sexual abuse material (section 163.1) and luring a child online. Creators who discover that their content is being misused, for example reposted on exploitative sites or collected with sexualized comments, can report it to Cybertip.ca, Canada's national tipline run by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which also runs NeedHelpNow.ca to help young people get sexual images of themselves removed. Several provinces also require anyone who encounters child sexual abuse material to report it. Lesson 5 covers practical steps to reduce these risks.

Where a creator learns that a child shown in their content is at risk of abuse, provincial child protection laws require reporting to a child welfare agency, and in most provinces this duty applies to everyone, not only professionals.

Practical compliance steps

• Get informed parental consent in writing for any child who is not your own, and seek the child's assent.
• Collect only the personal information you need about children, and avoid collecting any from children under 13 without a parent.
• In Quebec, check sponsored content against the rules on advertising to children under 13.
• Set aside part of children's earnings voluntarily, using a lawyer and accountant to choose a structure.
• Commit in writing to remove content when a child asks, and report any misuse of children's images to the national tipline.

How Canadian courts think about children's privacy

Canadian courts have increasingly recognized privacy as a value deserving protection, particularly for children. In a 2012 decision about a cyberbullying victim who wanted to proceed anonymously, the Supreme Court of Canada recognized that children are inherently vulnerable and that their privacy deserves special protection online, allowing the young person to use initials. Lower courts have also considered parents' online posting about children in family disputes, sometimes ordering a parent to remove posts or stop posting about a child where it was not in the child's best interests. These cases do not create a child influencer regime, but they show that courts take children's online privacy seriously and that a parent's control over a child's image is not unlimited.

Recent public attention has also focused on whether Canada should follow the US approach. Commentators have pointed out that a child who appears in hundreds of monetized videos in Canada has no specific statutory claim to the income, and that federal privacy reform, which stalled when Bill C-27 died in January 2025, did not address the issue directly. Watch for provincial bills, particularly in provinces with existing child performer laws, and for guidance from privacy commissioners.

Finally, remember that many Canadian creators have large US audiences and work with US brands. A US brand contract may require compliance with US laws, such as Coogan deposits, even for a Canadian child, and US state laws may be argued to apply to content produced elsewhere if it is monetized there. Clarify in contracts which law governs and what is required.