High level results

Across six core harm categories, we estimate the annual economic and fiscal cost of online harms to Canada’s children and youth at between $2.0 billion and $4.8 billion (2026 Canadian dollars). A portion of this accrues directly to governments through publicly funded health care, education, and justice systems as well as the forgone tax revenue associated with lost productivity from the impact that online harms have on current and future cohorts of workers. The productivity impact to the Canadian economy is an important subset of impact that will only grow over time.

These estimates are developed with an explicit bias toward conservative assumptions where the literature permitted. The QALY threshold applied ($50,000 per QALY) is at the lower end of the range implicit in Canadian drug reimbursement decisions; longitudinal impacts are generally excluded; and productivity loss estimates are limited primarily to cyberbullying rather than extended across all harm categories.

The overlap discount described later in this paper is intended to address the potential for duplication and co-morbidity. Readers should interpret the headline range as indicating the plausible order of magnitude of these costs rather than a precise central estimate. The estimates do not capture general equilibrium effects, intergenerational transmission of harm, or costs of harms not yet well-documented in the Canadian literature — the sensitivity table presented in the integrated estimates section allows each reader to apply their own judgement on the key discount parameter.

To put the figures in context: provinces and territories spent approximately $16.2 billion (2026 dollars)1 in 2024-25 (latest data available) on addictions and mental health, of which a proportional spend on children and youth would be $4.3 billion.2 The current federal transfer for early learning and child care is approximately $8 billion in 2025-26 (excluding federal spending on Indigenous ELCC).3 This means that the net annual economic cost of online harms to Canadian children and youth represents up to more than half of the costs of child care and within the range of what is spent by provinces and territories on child and youth mental health.

Note: Overlap discount anchored to CIHI multi-morbidity data and applied to non-deduplicated categories only. All figures 2026 CAD. Regulatory compliance cost excluded from gross and net harm estimates and shown as memo item only. Proposed annual regulatory compliance cost (excluded from harm estimates): $0.05–0.06B, since it is a potential future intervention and may bring with it associated benefits.

Direct costs — comprising health system expenditures, justice and corrections costs, educational disruption, financial losses, and productivity impacts — total approximately $1.8 billion to $3.7 billion annually and represent resource flows that governments, families, and the broader economy actually spend or forgo. Broader losses associated with impairment of welfare, i.e. monetizing the diminished wellbeing experienced by affected youth using the Canadian Drug Agency's $50,000 per QALY threshold, account for an additional $1.7 billion to $4.7 billion annually on a gross basis. Readers who prefer to assess the findings on direct resource costs alone can refer to the direct cost columns; the net cost headline of approximately $2.0 billion to $4.8 billion incorporates both and removes duplication.

In contrast to Canada's 2025 nominal GDP of approximately $3.25 trillion, the six-category net cost represents 0.06 to 0.15 percent of economic output.4 In other words, we are already paying between one-sixteenth and just under one-sixth of one percent of GDP per year in costs associated with how online harms affect Canadian children and youth. This is equivalent to a recurring annual cost of approximately $177 to $421 per child and youth in Canada today — an externalized burden that platforms help to generate but do not pay.