Bill C-288 Online Fraud Act
C-288 An Act to Enact the Protection Against Online Fraud Act and to Amend the Criminal Code
Short Title: Protection Against Online Fraud Act
Bill Type: Private Member’s Bill
Bill Sponsor: Melissa Lantsman (Thornhill)
Status: Outside the Order of Precedence — Introduced June 17, 2026. This Bill has not passed yet.
How would YOU vote? Scroll down to vote and comment below.
What is this Bill For?
Bill C-288 would require online platforms — social media services, apps, online gaming services and any internet-connected service operating in Canada — to take reasonable steps to prevent fraudulent content from spreading through their products. If a platform identifies content as fraudulent, it must remove it, notify any user who engaged with it and keep records of what was removed and who was notified.
Platforms that fail to comply face fines of up to $1 million per offense on summary conviction.
The Bill also amends the Criminal Code to make it an aggravating circumstance at sentencing if an identity theft or identity fraud offense was committed against a vulnerable person — someone whose age, health or financial situation made them particularly susceptible to being targeted.
Two moving parts:
- platform accountability for fraud prevention and
- heavier sentencing for fraudsters who target the vulnerable.
⚠️ "Fraudulent content" is never defined — The entire Bill rests on this term. Platforms must prevent it, remove it, notify users who engaged with it and report on it. But the Bill contains no definition of what fraudulent content is, who determines whether content meets that standard or what process applies before removal is required. The Governor in Council can make regulations — but those regulations don't exist yet and the Bill passes without them.
WHO GAINS POWER
- The Governor in Council gains broad regulation-making authority over what records platforms must keep and what their public reports must contain — the operational details of the entire Bill are set by regulation, not by Parliament
- Vulnerable Canadians — seniors, people in financial distress, people with health challenges — gain explicit recognition as a protected class in identity fraud sentencing
WHO LOSES POWER
- Online platform operators lose the ability to ignore fraudulent content on their services without legal consequence
- Fraudsters who target vulnerable victims face heavier sentences under the Criminal Code amendment
WHO GAINS MONEY
- No direct financial transfer is created by this Bill
- Canadians defrauded through online platforms may benefit indirectly if faster removal and notification reduces financial losses
WHO LOSES MONEY
- Platform operators face fines of up to $1 million per offense for failing to comply with removal, notification or reporting obligations
- Platforms bear the cost of building internal fraud identification, notification and record-keeping systems — no cost estimate is provided in the Bill
⚠️ No funding or implementation support provided — The Bill creates significant compliance infrastructure requirements for platforms with no transition period, no implementation guidance and no stated timeline for the regulations that define what compliance actually looks like.
THE CATCH
⚠️ "Fraudulent content" is never defined — The core obligation of the entire Bill — prevent, remove and report fraudulent content — depends on a term the Bill never defines. Platforms must act on content "identified as fraudulent" but the Bill does not say who identifies it, by what standard or through what process. This gap is left entirely to future regulations that do not yet exist.
⚠️ Regulation-dependent — The operational framework of this Bill — what records must be kept, what reports must contain, what form they take — is entirely delegated to the Governor in Council. Parliament is voting on a framework with the most important details still to be written.
⚠️ "Ensure that the user has read the notification" — Section 3(4) requires operators to ensure users have read fraud notifications. Ensuring a user has read a notification is technically and legally impossible on most platforms. This obligation as written cannot be met and creates unlimited liability for platforms that cannot force users to open messages.
⚠️ Due diligence defense is undefined — Section 8 provides a due diligence defense but sets no standard for what due diligence requires.
Platforms have no guidance on what steps are sufficient to avoid liability and no regulatory baseline exists yet to measure against.
⚠️No appeal or due process mechanism— The Bill provides no process for a user or content creator to challenge a platform's determination that their content is fraudulent before it is removed, reported and flagged to other users. The platform decides, acts and reports — with no independent review and no recourse for the person whose content was removed.
Read Full Bill Text Sourced Here: Bill C-288 Online Fraud Act