Senator Miville-Dechêne: I realize the government is considering it. Officials may be doing likewise, but governments in some jurisdictions, such as Louisiana, Germany, France and Great Britain, have taken action to protect children by passing legislation. Why is our government silent on such a serious public health issue?

Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Senator Gold, the French Senate just tabled a shocking report revealing that 17% of Pornhub’s viewers are children. This is the first time such an estimate has been made. Moreover, a quarter of the world’s internet bandwidth is used to view pornography.

What does the government intend to do to limit children’s exposure to these crude, sometimes violent and traumatizing images?

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Senator Gold, I appreciate your prudence, but please note that some countries have already taken action to protect children from online pornography or will be doing so in the months to come. Germany has started blocking sites that do not have age verification, France is heading in that direction, and Great Britain will most likely be taking action soon. I introduced a bill about this in the Senate. Unfortunately, Canada has not done anything.

Here’s my question: Is the government prepared to support Bill S-210 or to introduce its own bill to ensure that online harm does not destroy children’s brains?

Senator Miville-Dechêne: First of all, I want to thank you for your speech. Thank you very much for your support and for this idea of consulting children. That’s a very interesting idea, but I want to ask you a question as a pediatrician.

All along, in my research, I have been told to be careful with the research. We don’t have correlation; we only have association between harms and exposure to porn. So it’s not what we call robust research, and on that basis, it’s very difficult to speak about harms scientifically.

I want to hear from you on that because I feel personally that a principle of precaution should be used because we are talking about children. Also, how can we have robust research if we do not put children in front of porn material? This would be obviously ethically unacceptable. So we are blocked in having very strong research on this particular harm. Thank you for trying to answer.