44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 7, 2024 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, as the member for Shefford and the Bloc Québécois critic for the status of women, I want to say that we support Bill C-270 in principle. We would like to examine this bill in committee. The Bloc Québécois fully supports the bill's stated objective, which is to combat child pornography and the distribution and commercialization of non-consensual pornography.
Since the first warning about the tragedy of women and girls whose sexual exploitation is the source of profits for major online porn companies, the Bloc Québécois has been involved at every stage and at all times in the public process to expose the extent of this public problem, which goes to our core values, including the right to dignity, safety and equality.
On this subject of online sexual exploitation, as on all facets and forms of the sexual exploitation of women, we want to stand as allies not only of the victims, but also of all the women who are taking action to combat violence and exploitation. I will begin by giving a little background on the topic, then I will explain the bill and, in closing, I will expand on some of the other problems that exist in Canada.
First, let us not forget that the public was alerted to the presence of non-consensual child pornography by an article that was published in the New York Times on December 4, 2020. The article reported the poignant story of 14-year old Serena K. Fleites. Explicit videos of her were posted on the website Pornhub without her consent.
This Parliament has already heard the devastating, distressing and appalling testimony of young Serena, which helped us understand the sensitive nature and gravity of the issue, but also the perverse mechanisms that porn streaming platforms use to get rich by exploiting the flaws of a technological system that, far from successfully controlling the content that is broadcast, is built and designed to promote and yet conceal the criminal practices of sexual exploitation.
Reports regarding the presence of child sexual abuse material and other non-consensual content on the adult platform Pornhub led the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics to undertake a study on the protection of privacy and reputation on online platforms such as Pornhub. My colleague from Laurentides—Labelle has followed this issue closely.
The committee noted that these platforms' content moderation practices had failed to protect privacy and reputation and had failed to prevent child sexual abuse material from being uploaded, despite statements by representatives of MindGeek and Pornhub who testified before the committee.
That same committee looked at regulating adult sites and online pornography, without challenging the legality. The committee heard testimony from survivors, critics of MindGeek's practices, child protection organizations, members of law enforcement, the federal government, academics, experts and support organizations, and it received many briefs.
The Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics made 14 recommendations regarding the problems it had studied. The committee's 2021 report was clear and it recommended that the government introduce a bill to create a new regulator to ensure that online platforms remove harmful content, including depictions of child sexual exploitation and non-consensual images.
We know that sexually explicit content is being uploaded to Pornhub without the consent of the individuals involved, including minors, and that these individuals have tried and failed to get Pornhub to remove that content. We know that these survivors have been traumatized and harassed and that most of them have thought about suicide. That is the type of testimony that we heard at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women with regard to cases of sexual exploitation.
We know that even if content is finally removed, users just re-upload it shortly afterward. We know that the corporate structure of MindGeek, which was renamed Aylo last August, is the quintessential model for avoiding accountability, transparency and liability. We know that investigations are under way and that there has been a surge in online child sexual exploitation reports.
We must now legislate to respond to these crimes and deal with these problems. We also need to keep in mind the magnitude of the criminal allegations and the misconduct of which these companies are accused. Just recently, a new class action lawsuit was filed in the United States against MindGeek and many of the sites it owns, including Pornhub, over allegations of sex trafficking involving tens of thousands of children.
Let us not forget that these companies are headquartered right in Montreal. The fact that our country is home to mafia-style companies that profit from sexual exploitation is nothing to be proud of. The international community is well aware of this, and it reflects poorly on us. For these reasons, we have an additional obligation to take action, to find solutions that will put an end to sexual exploitation, and to implement those solutions through legislation.
With that in mind, we must use the following questions to guide our thinking. Are legislative proposals on this subject putting forward the right solutions? Will they be effective at controlling online sexual exploitation and, specifically, preventing the distribution of non-consensual content and pornographic content involving minors?
Second, let us talk a little more about Bill C‑270. This bill forces producers of pornographic material to obtain the consent of individuals and to ensure that they are of age. In addition, distributors will have to obtain written confirmation from producers that the individuals' consent has been obtained and that they are of age before the material is distributed. These new Criminal Code provisions will require large platforms and producers to have a process for verifying individuals' age and consent, without which they will be subject to fines or imprisonment.
The House will be considering two bills simultaneously. The first is Bill C-270, from the member for Peace River—Westlock, with whom I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. The second is Bill C-63, introduced by the Minister of Justice, which also enacts new online harms legislation and aims to combat the sexual victimization of children and to make intimate content communicated without consent inaccessible.
We will need to achieve our goals, which are to combat all forms of online sexual exploitation and violence, stop the distribution and marketing of all pornographic material involving minors, prevent and prohibit the distribution of explicit non-consensual content, force adult content companies and platforms to control the distribution of such content, and make them accountable and criminally responsible for the presence of such content on their online platforms.
There is a debate about the law's ability to make platforms accountable for hosted content. It also raises questions about the relevance of self-regulation in the pornography industry.
Third, let us talk about what we can do here. Due to the high volume of complaints it receives, the RCMP often reacts to matters relating to child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, rather than acting proactively to prevent them. Canada's criminal legislation prohibits child pornography, but also other behaviours aimed at facilitating the commission of a sexual offence against a minor. It prohibits voyeurism and the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. Other offences of general application such as criminal harassment and human trafficking may also apply depending on the circumstances.
In closing, I will provide a few figures to illustrate the scope of this problem. Between 2014 and 2022, there were 15,630 incidents of police-reported online sexual offences against children and 45,816 incidents of online child pornography. The overall rate of police-reported online child sexual exploitation incidents has also risen since 2014. The rate of online child pornography increased 290% between 2014 and 2022. Girls were overrepresented as victims for all offence types over that nine-year period. The majority of victims of police-reported online sexual offences against children were girls, particularly girls between the ages of 12 and 17, who accounted for 71% of victims.
Incidents of non-consensual distribution of intimate images most often involved a youth victim and a youth accused. Nearly all child and youth victims, 97% to be exact, between 2015 to 2022 were aged 12 to 17 years, with a median age of 15 years for girls and 14 years for boys. Overall, nine in 10 accused persons, or 90%, were youth aged 12 to 17. For one-third of youth victims, or 33%, a casual acquaintance had shared the victim's intimate images with others.
Here is a quote from the Montreal Council of Women: “On behalf of the members of the Montreal Council of Women, I wish to confirm our profound concern for those whose lives have been turned upside down by the involuntary and/or non-consensual sharing of their images on websites and other platforms such as the Montreal-based Pornhub. The ‘stopping Internet sexual exploitation act’ will make much-needed amendments to the Criminal Code to protect children and those who have not given consent for their images and other content to be shared and commercialized.”
We must act. It is a question of safety for our women and girls. Young women and girls are depending on it.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people from Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo. It is especially a pleasure to rise when we are speaking to a bill that is on a subject I am very passionate about.
I have spoken before in this House about things I said when I was on the doorstep, in my time, dealing with Internet exploitation of children. That was something I devoted a number of years to in my professional career. It is something I am very proud of, and it is something that taught me a lot about life, about healing, about trauma and, sadly, about how prolific this type of exploitation is.
I believe it was my colleague from the Bloc who spoke about increases in numbers. If memory serves, when we talk about sexual exploitation of children, the spike in numbers happens, and this is not something that gets mentioned when opposing parties speak about the Harper government and its tough-on-crime agenda. One thing that does not get mentioned is that a number of providers, be it media providers or ISP providers, were getting a free ride. They knew or ought to have known that their platforms were being used to facilitate either the potential or actual sexual exploitation of children, which typically begins with the offence of Internet luring.
What happened, I believe in 2012, is that the Harper government passed legislation that placed a positive obligation on service providers to report suspected abuse of children. No longer could a platform simply look the other way. No longer could a platform simply say that it did not know what was going on. A lot of platforms probably knew it was going on or chose not to know that it was going on, because it was easier and cheaper to do business as usual. From 2012, if we look at the graphs, we can actually see this spiking. That spike really has not receded to this day.
I was speaking at the B.C. ICE conference with a number of brave officers, pediatricians and workers who put their lives into addressing sexual offences against children. There were probably about 100 people in a room, generally from British Columbia. It was one of the most profound honours I have had as a member of Parliament. I attended this conference as an attendee, just somebody who was trying to learn more. This year I was invited to be one of the keynote speakers. What a profound honour to go from attendee to keynote speaker.
We still see this spike. Technology and the law are really not working hand in hand, especially when we think about technology and how far we have to go: not only how far we have to go when it comes to technology, but how far we have to go when it comes to sentencing.
I will pause here to note that in 2011, in a case called Woodward, a former Supreme Court of Canada justice, Justice Moldaver, when he was on the Ontario Court of Appeal, actually said that when it came to Internet luring, we should be looking at sentences of three to five years. This is a judge who later went on to the Supreme Court of Canada. I still remember the language he used. He talked about “this insidious crime”, the one that targets children in such a hidden way. Here we are dealing with it.
When I was on the doorsteps of Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, when I was running for office, one of the things I committed to was changing the name of “child pornography” to “child sexual abuse and exploitation material”. I am very proud that my colleague from North Okanagan—Shuswap and I will be giving evidence as witnesses at third reading in the Senate on Thursday on Bill C-291. I researched the bill. I authored the bill, and I put forward the bill. My colleague sponsored the bill. It was unanimously passed at second reading and third reading, and now it is at third reading in the Senate and is about to be considered at committee. Again, it is a profound honour to be able to do this.
It is my hope that when we talk about things that are in Bill C-270, for instance, that we would eliminate the term “child pornography”. Pornography implies consent. Pornography implies adults who are voluntarily doing things. Children can never consent, so it is time we eliminate the term from our legal lexicon. Bill C-270 tells us why we need to be aware of this, so it is my hope that we will receive royal assent very quickly on Bill C-291.
I am just going to go through a few of the aspects of Bill C-270 and provide some input as to why I do support it, particularly as it relates to child sexual abuse and exploitation material that is being put on the Internet. Obviously I support the punishment at subsection 2 and the designation of the offence.
The reality is that I cannot adequately say how many times the police will come to ask questions when someone deals with this type of matter in a prosecutorial context. It is an area of law that someone needs to sink their teeth into in order to understand it. Unless someone spends a lot of time with it, I find, it has a really steep learning curve. It took me a long time. I still felt like a bit of an amateur even when I was elected here, with respect to the nature of the law on these types of things.
One of the struggles that the police would communicate to me when it was an attempt to prove Internet luring or possession of child sexual abuse and exploitation material was the age of the person being dealt with. That puts forward, again, a positive obligation. For those, like my mother, who are at home watching this on CPAC and who may wonder what I mean by a positive obligation, it is a requirement for somebody to take action.
One thing I really like about the bill is that it is not stating that somebody would need to refrain from doing something, which would be a negative obligation. There would be a positive obligation to ascertain the age. A failure to do that, to take that step, is the nature of the offence that I am speaking of right now, the failure to ascertain that a person is actually 18 years of age.
In my view, child sexual abuse and exploitation material is a blight on our society. If anybody thinks that it is just something that happens over there or happens elsewhere, in my experience it is something happening far more than we want to admit, yet what have we seen when it comes to sentences? I referenced Justice Moldaver earlier on Internet luring.
We have seen the Supreme Court of Canada come out with a case called R. v. Friesen that said mid-single-digit penitentiary terms should not be odd; they should be the norm. I cannot recall whether the maximum sentence for possession of child sexual abuse and exploitation material is 10 or 14 years, but for Internet luring it is 14 years, and for production, I believe, it is 14 years.
The court said that a maximum sentence should not be all that uncommon. I still look, to this day, at B.C. Court of Appeal decisions every day, just because I find them interesting. I cannot remember one time seeing anything close to the maximum sentence. In fact, what I am seeing more of is what used to be considered outlier cases, where community-based sentences are now being provided.
In 2011, a respected jurist said that we should be looking at three to five years for Internet luring. Then there was the Supreme Court of Canada case R. v. Friesen that said sentences should range from the upper-single digits to double digits on sexual offences against children, and the maximum should not be there. What are we seeing? We are just not seeing it come to fruition.
I know I have not touched on this as much as I could. I could obviously speak a lot more. I wholeheartedly endorse the bill. It is time that we address sexual offences in this country and that we do it with full vigour. I, my colleagues and, I believe, my colleagues across the aisle, should be focused on this. It is something that cannot wait another day.
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