Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Colleagues, it is my pleasure to welcome to the Senate Dr. Tobias Schmid and Dr. Laura Braam who represent the Media Authority of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.

I rise to highlight how Germany is ahead of Canada in terms of laws and regulations to protect children and youth from online harm. German media authorities have been very generous in sharing information with me on a subject that is very important to me: protecting children from exposure to online pornography.

Germany has already taken action to block an international porn site in Germany, xHamster, because it did not verify the age of its users to ensure that only adults were accessing the site. The German regulator just won a major court battle against MindGeek, Pornhub’s Montreal-based parent company, which challenged the constitutionality of these actions.

Dr. Schmid and Dr. Braam are determined regulators and citizens who take their mission very seriously. There’s a lot of resistance right now. The major free porn sites don’t yet comply with any laws; they don’t check their clients’ age, be they in Germany or France. The hope is that other countries, such as Canada, Great Britain and Australia, will follow suit. If more countries require porn sites to act responsibly, children will be better protected from being bombarded by pornographic images that can be traumatizing, violent and degrading and that are freely available on the internet.

Thank you.