The Public Health Accountability and Cost Recovery Act is modelled on previous B.C. legislation that allows the province to seek recovery of health-related tobacco and opioid damage costs, Premier David Eby said.
"In the real world we would never allow a company to set up a space for kids where grown adults could be invited in to contact them, encourage them to share photographs and then threaten to distribute those photographs to their family and friends," he said. Todd’s suicide in 2012 at 15 years old created worldwide headlines and raised concerns about online abuse.
"And yet for some reason these companies, when they do the exact same thing through cellphones, the billionaires who run them resist accountability, resist any suggestion that they have responsibility for the harms that they are causing," he said. Sharma said the legislation also permits the government to hold companies, their directors and officers liable.