Child and youth safety is not a setting; it is a constraint that shapes the rest of the platform. The Child and Youth Safety Policy defines what Map.ca will not host (sexual or exploitative content involving minors, identifying photos without authorization, civic reports that re-identify minors), how Map.ca handles sensitive locations connected to children (schools, childcare, youth programs, support services for young people), age-appropriate defaults on public-facing features, and the path mandatory reports take to law enforcement and child-protection agencies.
It applies to Map.ca staff, schools and youth programs that partner with Map.ca, parents and guardians, every civic reporter, and any vendor whose tooling touches youth data. AI-only decisions are not allowed in this domain (Constitution §2 principle 4).
Requirements
- Protect photos that identify minors with explicit-authorization gating.
- Protect the locations of children’s programs as sensitive-location data.
- Route child-safety incidents to the documented escalation path.
- Honour mandatory reporting obligations to the relevant authorities.
Prohibitions
- Do not publicly identify minors without explicit, documented authorization.
- Do not publish Civic Pins near schools that could identify children.
- Do not use minor data for advertising or for training external AI models.
- Do not let AI alone be the final authority on a child-safety decision.