British Columbia is urging the federal government to resurrect a controversial law to regulate social media companies for the harms they cause, saying the country needs a national approach to the issue.

Attorney General Niki Sharma has spoken to her federal counterpart Sean Fraser about salvaging parts of Bill C-63, which died earlier this year when the federal government prorogued Parliament to call an election.

“There's always criticisms on either side of the way to move about this area of legislation, but I think there were really promising things that were in that online harms bill that would set a national standard and some oversight on that standard,” Sharma said in an interview.

“So those are the things that you know I'm looking forward to seeing.”

The federal legislation would have required media platforms to detect and remove harmful content—like hate speech, child bullying, self-harm, the sexualization of children and non-consensual sexual images—or face stiff fines. It also proposed to create a Digital Safety Commission........

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