Bill C-22 (Historical)

An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service

This enactment imposes reporting duties on persons who provide an Internet service to the public if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence. This enactment makes it an offence to fail to comply with the reporting duties.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know my limitations and that question goes beyond my area of expertise. My impression is that the timeframe is that short for technological reasons. I am hoping that they will explain in committee what happens when someone has seen a website with child pornography and has informed the organization. What happens next? I hope that the child pornography will be taken down immediately.

However, the timeframe seems reasonable to me if it is in order to come to a conclusion about the nature of the site. It could even be longer than 21 days. If this organization is inundated with reports at the beginning, it will require an efficiency that is often lacking in government organizations.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There are still a couple of minutes before 5:30 p.m. Does the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona wish to start his remarks?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-22 for two minutes.

I have to admit that this has been a very long process. I have been reading the Hansard on this bill and previous incarnations of it. This whole process has been about five years now. The computer industry changes very dramatically, so the government and Parliament had better hurry up and get on top of this issue. We may find that by the time we get to where we want to be, a new problem will have presented itself.

In June 2008 the legislative assembly of Manitoba passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca any material that could constitute child pornography. Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008. The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002 and 2005 respectively, imposing this requirement on ISPs.

I will point out some of the benefits of dealing with cybertip.ca. It is currently estimated that over 5 million child sexual abuse images are on the Internet. An analysis of over 12,000 website incidents was done by cybertip.ca. It was looking into the countries that hosted these sites. The United States was number one at 49%. Russia was second at 20%. Canada had a surprising 9% of all the sites. Japan was at 4.4%. South Korea was at 3.6%.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I regret to interrupt the hon. member. He will be able to continue his comments with 18 minutes left when this returns on the order paper.

The House resumed from June 16 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When this bill was last before the House, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona also had the floor. There are 18 minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks on this particular bill. I therefore call on the hon. member for Elmwood--Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to continue debate on what is now Bill C-22. I think this may be my last speech for a while, so all members can relax.

This is also a very important bill. Once again, it has been five years plus that we have been waiting for this bill, now titled Bill C-22. It was called Bill C-58 before the government prorogued the House. It is the child protection act online sexual exploitation.

There are some important points here that the members should know about this bill even though it has been knocking around now for five years and many speeches have been made about it. It is one of these bills where there really is not a lot of disagreement on the subject.

I personally am not really sure how it is going to play out. The reality is once we send it to committee, which should be fairly soon, and once the committee hearings are proceeded with, I really do not foresee many amendments to this bill and I do not foresee a lot of controversy with this bill. If anything, we may find that this bill is, in some respects, already out of date because it has been five years since we started discussing about it.

It is an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. Basically, an ISP is now going to be required to take action on this issue.

Bill C-58 was introduced in the House of Commons on November 24, 2009 by the Minister of Justice. Bill C-58, now Bill C-22, was intended to fight Internet child pornography by requiring ISPs, or Internet service providers, and other persons providing Internet services, for example, Facebook, Google, Hotmail, to report any incident of child pornography.

This requirement included several things, but one was that if a person providing Internet services was advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available, the person must report that address to the organization designated by the regulations.

I know the member for Mississauga South is bound to ask me a question about the whole issue of the regulations. Once again, until the bill passes, the government sets up the regulations, and we actually will not know what the details will be of this particular part.

Also, if a person has reasonable grounds to believe that the Internet services operated by that person are being used to transmit child pornography, the person must notify the police, that is a logical thing, and also preserve the computer data.

In terms of provincial and international measures, in June 2008, my home province, the Manitoba Legislature passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca, which seems to be a very successful longstanding website, any material that could constitute child pornography.

Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008.

Thank goodness Ontario and Manitoba moved ahead because if they waited for the federal government, they would have been waiting an awful long time to get the job done.

The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002, eight years ago, and in 2005, Australia imposed this requirement on the ISPs.

In terms of the current legislation that affects this area, we have section 163.1 of the Criminal Code, which was passed under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien back in 1993. This was actually a very good initiative in its day, prohibiting the production, the distribution, the sale, and the possession of child pornography.

The definition under the legislation is a visual representation of explicit sexual activity with a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of 18, the visual representation for sexual purposes of persons under the age 18, or any written material advocating or counselling sexual activity with a person under the age of 18.

Internet child pornography takes the form of images, sound recordings, videos, drawings of accounts of sexual assaults on persons under the age of 18. In 2002, Bill C-15A amended subsection 163.1 of the code, which prohibited the distribution of child pornography by introducing the term “transmits” and made available to prohibit the distribution of child pornography online. The bill also added subsections 163.1 and 163.1 (4.2) to the code making it an offence to deliberately access child pornography by visiting a website, as an example.

Bill C-15A also provided for a special warrant in relation to Internet child pornography under section 164.1 of the code. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an ISP computer system, the judge may order the ISP to provide the necessary information to identify and locate the person who posted it. In addition, the judge may order the ISP to remove the Internet child pornography in question.

With regard sentencing, child pornography offences are considered hybrid offences. The prosecutor may choose whether the accused should be charged with an indictable offence and be liable to a summary conviction. The offences of producing, distributing and selling of child pornography, if treated as indictable offences, are punishable by a maximum prison term of 10 years and a minimum of one year. On summary conviction, they are punishable by a maximum prison term of 18 months and a minimum term of 90 days.

The offences of possession and viewing of child pornography on the computer are punishable for indictable offences by a maximum prison term of five years and a minimum term of 45 days and on a summary conviction by a maximum term of 18 months and a minimum of 14 days.

In terms of statistics on this issue, according to Statistics Canada, which gathers all types of information on pornography and not just Internet child pornography alone, child pornography offences have increased significantly in Canada from 55 offences in 1998 to 1,600 in 2007. I have some statistics that indicate how serious the issue is in Canada, which I will get to in a couple of minutes.

It is currently estimated that there are over five million child sexual abuse images on the Internet. According to an analysis by cybertip.ca, from 2002 to 2009 54.7% of the images on Internet sites contained pornographic images of children under the age of 8, 24.7% were of children aged 8 to 12, and 83% were girls. Over 35% of the images analyzed showed severe sexual assault. Children under the age of eight most often subjected to sexual assault was at 37.2% and extreme sexual assault was at 68.5%. Older children were usually shown naked or in an obscene pose.

The fact of the matter is that this situation is just getting worse. We are seeing this whole problem snowballing and getting bigger on a day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year basis while we sit here and do not take action.

The cybertip.ca study showed that the Internet sites containing child pornography are hosted in close to 60 countries. We know which countries are hosting these sites. For example, in the United States 49% of the sites are hosted in the United States, in Russia 20%, in Canada 9%. When we consider that we have only 30 million people in the country and 9% of the sites are hosted in Canada, that is a very large percentage. In Japan it is 4.3% and in South Korea it is 3.6%.

These sites are very difficult to track down because all of the child pornography files hosted on a web page are not necessarily hosted in the same location. For instance, image A may be hosted in Canada while image B on the same web page may be hosted in the United States. The web page itself might be hosted in yet another country such as Japan.

Similarly, an illegal site can hide the host location through an anonymous proxy server or through server rerouting. There are a lot of technical terms here that the average individual may not be familiar with. Suffice to say that whatever laws exist, the criminal elements, and we are talking about criminal elements, try to be one step ahead. When there are tough laws in one country, they simply move to another country.

The Liberal Party critic for this area has spoken several times on this bill. He has pointed out countries that have simply blocked the sites rather than put money into fighting this problem. Maybe that is the answer.

I asked the minister at the time, who is no longer even a member of the Conservative caucus, why she was announcing that she was going to spend $42 million chasing these sites. I asked her whether this was new money or old money. That was a year ago. She was still a Conservative and a minister in those days.

In Hansard she tells me that she is going to get back to me on this issue. I have yet to hear from her or anybody else in the government as to whether the $42 million to track down these sites is actually new money or just the same old money being announced over and over again.

What I suggest is that rather than spend $42 million to chase these criminals, because that is who they are, we look at those countries that have simply blocked the sites. That is the problem solved right there, it seems to me. We would not have to keep throwing endless amounts of money at the problem.

Identical sites may also be simultaneously located on different URLs. In such cases, it can be very difficult to remove the child pornography. Even if the site is closed down, the offensive material may still be accessible on the Internet. Moreover, illegal sites regularly change location so that they can avoid being shut down.

I want to deal with the penalties under this act before I run out of time. The fact is that these penalties are not tough enough. For individuals, the penalties being proposed are perhaps accurate. However, when we start dealing with companies, and if one considers that criminal groups are running these sites, these fines are simply the cost of doing business. I think the fine for a third offence is approximately $100,000. I will get to that at the end if I have time.

As I indicated, illegal sites regularly change location to avoid being shut down. In a period of 48 hours, Cybertip.ca counted 212 IP addresses in 16 countries for a single website. A website can also change location in just a few minutes by utilizing a network of personal computers as zombies. These zombies relay the content of the website hosted on another server.

Cybertip.ca recommended that when zombies are detected, ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service for those computers until the infected computers are restored.

Another reason this whole problem is snowballing day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year into a bigger and bigger problem is the fact that the computer hardware and software has gotten so much better.

I can recall, perhaps 10 years ago, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to do the very first concert on the web. Nobody had done it before. That was in the days when the cameras were operating at 15 frames per second. We all remember those images being choppy. It was certainly in its infancy. The Internet was very slow in those days. We did not have the gigabit ethernet pipes we have today.

What has happened is that today we have a much more technologically advanced system that is designed perfectly for these criminal elements to take advantage of. Taking advantage of it they are.

Governments are sitting around, basically proroguing Parliament every year. We are thrown a bill that is really non-controversial in the sense that just about everyone agrees with the bill.

We passed pardon legislation dealing with the Karla Homolka situation in June in literally a day and a half. If the government really wants to accomplish something here and get the bill through, it only has to sit down with the House leaders and make an arrangement to sit for perhaps a few hours extra in the evening, given that there is not a lot of disagreement about how important the bill is and how it should be passed and put into effect to deal with the issues.

Any person may inform an ISP or other person providing Internet services that a web page, host page, Facebook page, or e-mail appears to contain child pornography. The ISP or other person providing Internet services must then report the address of the site, page or e-mail in question as soon as possible to an organization designated by the federal government.

For example, under Manitoba law, the designated organization is the national reporting agency Cybertip.ca. I want to say that Cybertip.ca has played a very important role in this whole process so far.

After being notified by a member of the public or an agency that child pornography may appear through the Internet services it provides, the ISP or other person providing the Internet services may have reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is being transmitted through its services. It may also reach this conclusion on its own. When this is the case, the ISP or person providing the Internet services must notify the police as soon as possible.

I am running out of time, but I want to deal with a couple of other issues. There is a provision in the bill that the police must keep the computer data related to the child pornography offence for 21 days. Several people have questioned whether 21 days is appropriate. It seems not only to me but to a number of other people that 21 days may be too short a period for that to properly happen.

I also dealt with the offences. In terms of individuals, the fine is $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for a second and a maximum of $10,000 or six months for a third.

For corporations, the criminals who are running these sites, it is only $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for a second and $100,000 for a third, which is no more than the cost of doing business.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-22 about online child pornography.

It is hard to imagine a more despicable, disgusting and appalling crime than the abuse of a child.

It is impossible for any of us to imagine that such a thing is possible, but we all know that today it is far too common. Unfortunately, the victims who bear the brunt of this abuse lay all too silent.

Most child victims of abuse are never found or are found far later in their lives. Their lives unravel at inexplicable times, and when we scratch the surface and go back into what started this, we often find episodes of child abuse.

Those who commit the abuse are often not found. Once individuals are found, it is discovered that not only have they had a few victims, but generally there has been a long-standing pattern of victimization. Many have abused dozens and dozens of children over a prolonged period of time. It is a psychiatric sickness, but it is also a cancer in our society that is absolutely intolerable.

The bill goes some way toward dealing with that and specifically with dealing with online child pornography. It was introduced on May 6 in the last Parliament and is being resurrected again in this Parliament.

The bill basically obligates people to report all website addresses they are aware of that may contain pornography. There is an obligation to report them to police if it is believed that a child pornography offence has or will be committed, based on the services one has. The provider must also preserve the relevant computer data for 21 days after notifying the police.

Failure of sole providers to report such a thing will result in fines of between $1,000 and $10,000, and failure of corporations to do this will result in fines of between $10,000 and $100,000. It is important to note that the bill does not require online providers to proactively seek out child pornography.

Therefore, the Liberal Party of Canada, given its long-standing history of addressing this issue, will be supporting the bill to go on to committee stage.

Legislative initiatives to deal with this go as far back as 2002, when the Liberal government of the day, for the first time, introduced legislation to deal with and criminalize online pornography and those people who contribute to it.

It would be worthwhile to talk a bit about facts and to discuss the depth and scope of this terrible problem.

The Internet is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides great opportunities to learn and disseminate information. The dark side of this, of course, is the issue we are talking about today, which is child pornography. It is important for us to understand what this actually means. No one thinks it is innocuous, but it certainly has to be dealt with in terms of how serious it is, as I mentioned, because of the long-standing trauma it inflicts on children. Children are not only being exposed to child pornography on sites but are also being victimized by it, as individuals try to lure children through the Internet capabilities they have.

Here is a little bit of information. Seventy-six per cent of offenders convicted of Internet-related crimes against children admitted to sex crimes against children that were previously unknown to law enforcement. Each offender admitted to 30.5 victims; so every person picked up as an offender has, on average, abused 30 children. That is an absolutely staggering number of children per abuser.

Of the 1,400 cases of reported child molestation, child pornography was used in the majority of cases by those who were the molesters. Child molesters almost always collect child pornography, and 80% of purchasers of child pornography who have been charged have actually been active abusers. We can see the strong connection between those who are actually engaging in and looking at child pornography and the fact that those individuals are also abusing children. There is a direct correlation.

The absence of contact with a child is probably the most significant factor in limiting the production of child pornography and the opportunity to access to children, which is an essential factor in the production of child pornography and child abuse.

The RCMP stands out as a shining example of a Canadian police force that has done an extraordinary amount of work in this area. The RCMP is known worldwide as being a leader in the area of combatting child pornography. All of us in the House should commend the RCMP for the excellent work it has done and the men and women who have to endure looking at these sites and horrible images. This cannot be an easy thing for them to do. For those men and women who work within the RCMP and who have to look at these sites, witness this horrible abuse and try to identify those individuals who do this, we thank them for their service to Canada and particularly for their service to the children of Canada and the world.

The RCMP has a site called cybertip.ca. This site has received over 35,000 reports, 90% of which were considered to be child pornography. If people who are watching this debate today are aware of or know of individuals who are engaged in child pornography or child abuse, I ask them to please contact 911 or cybertip.ca.

Only 30% of children who disclose that they have been sexually abused do so during childhood. As I said before in my opening comments, as a physician I have seen a lot of patients who have been abused sexually and oftentimes they have different problems. When their lives start to unravel and an indepth history is done, too often it is found that they have a history of sexual abuse.

I used to be a correctional officer. I also, as a physician, I worked in the jails. The number of people in jail who had been abused sexually as a child is very large. Many of them not only have psychiatric problems, but they also have substance abuse problems, a lot of which stems from early sexual abuse. Many of the pedophiles in jail were sexually abused as children. It is a vicious cycle that goes around and around.

The Liberal Party supports the bill. We also support the work that the RCMP has done.

One of the things we have to look at is the early childhood period. We need a better way to reach these children so when they are abused, they have a safe place to go to talk about it so the perpetrators can be arrested and the children can be taken out of that situation.

As I said before, only 30% of children disclose that they have been sexually abused before the age of six, which means that 70% of children who are sexually abused prior to the age of six never tell. They endure years of abuse unknown to anybody. We can deal with this by providing opportunities.

I will give the House a real life example of the impact of this.

I worked in a jail where two sisters around the age of 14 had been picked up for prostitution. Their mother, who I knew because I had treated in the detox unit and in emergency, had a substance abuse problem. She was prostituting her two little girls to raise money to pay for her drug abuse problem.

I told the two young women that they would wind up dead if they did not stop, and they laughed it off. A year and a half after that one of the girls was found dead in a ditch in northern British Columbia. After that, I was walking through the pediatric ward doing my rounds and this girl looked familiar. She was still a teenager and she had a very bad stroke affecting half of her body. Because of the environment she was in, she had been exposed to drugs. I do not know what happened to her after that, but what a profoundly tragic end to two little girls who could have had a full and complete life if it were not for the situation they had been in.

If we take a look at the broader scope, there is child sex tourism. This is a situation where we have adults from the west going to countries, generally third world countries but sometimes a lot go to eastern Europe, where laws are lax and interest is limited in terms of child abuse. Adults are going far away to Southeast Asia, eastern Europe, areas of extreme poverty, and they are using the very unstable situation to fulfill their warped and twisted sexual appetites.

The victims of this are literally millions of children. In fact, it is estimated that in India, there are 1.2 million child prostitutes. In Thailand, a favoured destination of pedophiles, 40% of the prostitutes are children. If we look at the cycle, sometimes individuals go into rural and impoverished areas that are in the grips of deep poverty. They tell parents that if they bring their sons or daughters to them, they will ensure the children get jobs and the money will go to the parents. They tell them that their children will do domestic work or some other legitimate form of activity. Instead they take the children and use them as sex slaves.

The children have no hope and no future. They are horribly abused. They suffer from malnutrition. Sometimes they get pregnant early on. They acquire HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. They die an early death. They are victims of extreme violence. They are often gang raped and no one hears about them. They are silent victims in this ever-growing epidemic.

Bill C-22 is an effort to try to deal with this.

We all see cases from time to time that come to forefront when individuals are caught. However, the number of people who are engaged in these behaviours, westerners who go abroad to engage in the sexual abuse of children, and who are actually caught is very small. Only a tiny fraction of these parasites are caught.

It speaks to the failure internationally of countries working together and collectively to address this. Too many times, domestic police forces turn a blind eye. In many of these impoverished countries, children have no rights. They are not really seen as being worthy of the protection of whatever legal rules they have. As a result, children are treated as little more than chattel. This leaves an environment that is ripe for this kind of dramatic sexual abuse and the horrible situations these children endure.

It occurs all over the world, as I said. It is very common in eastern Europe. It is very common in parts of Africa and certainly in Southeast Asia, but we are not immune from this here. Individuals acquire children and bring them to Canada and the United States. Children are abused in our country and we do not even know about it. The Internet is a route to doing that. When people are aware of the type of child pornography on the Internet, it is not a victimless crime. It is very much a crime, period, and the victims are the most underprivileged people in our society.

There are also a number of other very interesting endeavours taking place. The RCMP has, again, been at the forefront of it. It is trying to do a scan to determine the extent of the problem. It is trying to get a better handle on who does this so the people can be identified. It is trying to do a better job of understanding why people would try to go down this route in the first place and how they can be identified before they start to wrack up the number of victims.

Victim identification is also another challenge. Canada has not done a very good job on this. This is certainly something that needs to be addressed and dealt with.

All of us are very pleased that this issue has been brought forward, unlike the gun registry, which dominated the beginning of this Parliament. It is not even, by any stretch of the imagination, an issue that should be consuming Parliament in any way shape or form. There are thousands of other important issues that affect Canadians, such as jobs, money in their pockets, health care and myriad of other issues. This, at least, is an issue that is important.

It is also important to understand that the RCMP is working in an area that has received short shrift. When there is a disaster, in times of extreme insecurity, such as what occurred in the Tsunami in Southeast Asia, what is occurring in Pakistan today and what occurred in Haiti during the earthquake, children are extremely vulnerable. People lure children, taking them into sex slavery and prostitution. Like vultures they descend into these environments and try to find children who are lost, orphaned and found on the streets. At a time of insecurity, when the rule of law has been shattered, they go in and try to find children to abduct. This is a huge challenge, one on which compliment the RCMP for engaging in.

Right now the there is a strategy called “Operation Century”, which is an effort to try to prevent children, during the time of natural disaster, from being subjected to these kinds of abuses and from being abducted from their homes to be trapped. It is part of a national strategy in which the RCMP is engaged.

This all started back in 2002 when, for the first time, legislation was adopted and implemented to deal with something that was very new, which was the use of the Internet as a tool to capture children and use them for sexual abuse and to commit violent acts against them.

There is a national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. The strategy was first launched in 2004 under then Prime Minister Paul Martin, and it extends to this day. I am very happy that the House has chosen to take this.

I hope all of us can agree that this is about our most vulnerable citizens, the children of our country and children from afar. Children deserve to have a life free of these kinds of abuses and violence, sexual abuse and exploitation to which some are subjected. No children should be subjected to that.

I think all of us support the RCMP's efforts to prevent it. We must work together to implement the legal tools that it needs to deal with an every-changing complex issue, which is the use of the Internet to exploit children.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I recognize the hon. member has completed his remarks and used the time allotted. There will be 10 minutes for questions and comments following his speech, but I think in light of the time, it is almost 11 o'clock, we will proceed with statements by members. He will have the full 10 minutes when debate resumes on this bill in due course.

The House resumed from September 24 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be here today speaking on Bill C-22 and also to be here with my colleagues.

My hope is that we have support in this House from every party. I know that Conservative members of Parliament strongly support this legislation. It is the right thing to do for the protection of our children. It is a new and important piece of legislation.

I do not think there is anyone in this House who would disagree with me that the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been incredibly positive for Canadians. It is a wonderful tool. However, as with most things that are good for us, there is a potential for abuse, and this is also true with these new and evolving technologies.

While the Internet has provided us with new and easier ways of doing many things, it has also provided new and easier means for offenders to make, view, and distribute child pornography. This has resulted in a significant increase in the availability and volume of child pornography.

The Internet has contributed to the massive growth of the child pornography industry, which is deemed to be worth more than $1 billion worldwide. It is estimated that there are over five million different child sexual abuse images on the Internet.

According to the recent report called, “Every image, every child” released by the federal ombudsman for victims of crime, there are over 750,000 pedophiles online at any given time. Tens of thousands of new images or videos are put on the Internet every week, and hundreds of thousands of searches for child sexual abuse images are performed daily.

The continued advancement of Internet technologies makes these crimes not only easier to commit, but also harder to investigate. There is an increasing burden on law enforcement to stay abreast of the changing technologies in order to to effectively investigate the crimes.

Child pornography is a particularly serious form of child victimization. Not only are the children abused and exploited through the making of child pornography; they are further exploited each time these images are shared or viewed.

To refer again to the “Every image, every child” report, I was shocked to learn that between 2003 and 2007 the number of online images of serious child abuse increased fourfold, and that these images became more violent and featured younger and younger children. It is disgusting.

According to the federal ombudsman's special report, 39% of individuals who accessed child pornography were viewing images of children between the ages of three and five, and 19% were viewing images of infants under the age of three. These statistics are nothing short of tragic. I am confident that most Canadians are just as appalled as I am, as each of us are, at this information.

Our government is committed to ending the growing problem of sexual exploitation of children. As part of these efforts the Minister of Justice, of whom I am so proud, reintroduced Bill C-22 in this House. Today we also have the chair of the justice committee in the House, the member for Abbotsford. I want to thank him for being here.

The main goal of this legislation is to help Canadian law enforcement officials detect potential child pornography offences on the Internet. Bill C-22 proposes, in precisely the same manner as Bill C-58 did in the last session of Parliament, that the law require those who provide Internet services to the public to do two things.

First, it will require them to report any information or tips they receive regarding websites where child pornography may be available to the public. They will be required to make this report to a designated agency. Second, it will require them to notify the police and safeguard any evidence, if they believe that a child pornography offence has been committed on their Internet service.

Failure to comply with these reporting duties would, in the case of an individual, a sole proprietorship, constitute an offence punishable by graduated fines up to $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for the second offence, and $10,000, six months in prison, or both, for the third offence and subsequent offences. In the case of a corporation, the graduated fine would start at $10,000 maximum, increase to $50,000 on the second conviction, and to $100,000 on third and subsequent convictions.

The duties imposed by this bill, in addition to helping reduce the availability of online child pornography, would facilitate the identification and rescue of victims of child pornography and assist law enforcement in identifying the offenders who create, possess, and distribute child pornography.

I would like to make it clear that this legislation was carefully tailored so as to achieve its objectives while minimizing the impact on the privacy of Canadians. Suppliers of Internet services would not be required to send personal subscriber information under this statute. The legislation is also tailored to limit access to child pornography and avoid creating new consumers of this material. Hence, nothing in this legislation would require or authorize a person to seek out child pornography.

Before I proceed further, I would like to explain to the House who is covered by this legislation. I am sure most members are familiar with the term “Internet service provider”, or ISP. An ISP provides access to the Internet. In essence, it acts as an on-ramp to the Internet. That is the service it provides. An ISP is one example of a provider of Internet services, but the term is broader than that. A provider of Internet services refers to all those who provide an Internet service to the public, including things like electronic mail services such as webmail, Internet content hosting services, and social network sites.

This bill is an example of Canada's commitment to fighting the scourge of child pornography and protecting children from online sexual exploitation. However, the Internet is a complex instrument. We all know that. Our knowledge and understanding of the full impact of the Internet in facilitating the demand for, and distribution of, child pornography is still evolving. The Internet presents a real challenge to the prevention and policing of this material due in part to the relative anonymity of the parties and instant worldwide access by millions of people.

I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to recognize the great efforts already made by Canada's major ISPs to address the challenge of online child sexual exploitation. Most ISPs have adopted acceptable use policies, which outline the rules for using an Internet account, the conditions of access privileges, and the consequences of violating these rules and conditions. These polices allow the ISP to terminate accounts in the event of unacceptable online behaviour, and we thank them for that.

I would also like to mention that the Canadian Association of Internet Providers has helped to develop standards for the industry, including an ISP code of conduct, to which many Canadian ISPs adhere. We thank the association for that.

A further initiative that bears mentioning is the Canadian Coalition Against Internet Child Exploitation, which was created in 2003 by some Canadian ISPs and police agencies. The main objective of this body is to assist law enforcement officials in their efforts to address online child pornography.

I would like to speak specifically about one important initiative that has developed from this collaboration between the ISPs and the police. It is called Project Cleanfeed Canada and it aims to reduce accidental access to child sexual abuse images, as well as to discourage those trying to access or distribute child pornography.

To achieve this goal, Cybertip.ca, which is the national tip line for reporting online child sexual exploitation, creates and maintains a regularly updated list of foreign-hosted Internet service providers associated with images of child sex abuse and provides that list to the participating ISPs. The ISP's filters automatically prevent access to addresses on the list by blocking these addresses.

Most of Canada's major ISPs participate in Cleanfeed Canada, which results in 90% of Canadian Internet subscribers being protected. There are continuing efforts to reach the remaining 10% of Canadians.

I am confident that Bill C-22 will be a complement to these existing efforts, especially Cleanfeed Canada, by requiring that all providers of Internet services report child pornography websites, which can then be added to the Cleanfeed Canada list.

Bill C-22 will also ensure that all providers of Internet services to the public will be held to the same standard of reporting when it comes to online Internet child sexual exploitation. Some may criticize this initiative as having a limited impact on the business practices of providers of Internet services, who already voluntarily report cases of online child pornography, and in fact, it is true that Bill C-22 was drafted in a way that closely mirrors the current practices of Canada's ISPs. However, I would like to reiterate that this legislation applies more broadly and covers more than just the typical ISP. It applies to all providers of Internet services and its impact will be much broader.

I recognize, and I am sure our colleagues do too, that more is needed to combat this disgusting social ill than just strong criminal laws. The government is committed to a broader approach that is effected to protect our children. That is why, in 2008, our government announced a renewed commitment to work with our partners through the national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. This is a successful initiative that has played a very big role over the last few years in helping to make sure that the growing number of young people online stay safe and that we take action to crack down on the sexual predators.

The Government of Canada is investing $71 million over five years to help ensure that the national strategy remains the success that it is today. With these great investments, our government is further strengthening our ability to combat child sexual exploitation over the Internet through the work of the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, which works to reduce the vulnerability of children to Internet-facilitated sexual exploitation by identifying victimized children, by investigating and assisting with the prosecution of sexual offenders, and by strengthening the capacity of municipal, territorial, provincial, federal and international police agencies.

We are also further strengthening the ability of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to help young people stay safe online through initiatives such as Cybertip.ca, which, as I mentioned earlier, allows the public to report suspected cases of child sexual exploitation they may find online.

Currently, most reporting of child pornography across Canada is done voluntarily. The vast majority of tips come through Cybertip.ca, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week anonymous tip line for reporting of child sexual exploitation on the Internet. Cybertip.ca provides a valuable function for law enforcement across Canada by screening, prioritizing, and analyzing each and every one of the 700 reports it receives every month. The skilled analysts collect supporting information using various Internet tools and techniques, and if the material is assessed to be potentially illegal, a report is made to the appropriate police services.

By providing this service of reports and forwarding only the most relevant information to the police agencies, Cybertip.ca saves valuable police time and resources. This allows police to devote their time and efforts to actual investigations rather than to the time-consuming tasks of analyzing all the incoming reports of child pornography.

Cybertip.ca collaborates closely with many of the Canadian ISPs and international partners and it has a memorandum of understanding with most Canadian law enforcement agencies.

As part of the mandate of Cybertip.ca, it also collects statistics regarding online child pornography in Canada. Each month, Cybertip.ca receives 800,000 hits on its website and 700 reports of suspected child abuse images. Between 2002 and 2009, Cybertip.ca had triaged over 33,000 reports, and approximately 45% of those reports were forwarded to law enforcement. It is very effective.

The material that is deemed not to be illegal is often followed up with educational information. Ninety per cent of the reports received by Cybertip.ca relate to child pornography.

As a result of these efforts, at least 30 arrests have been made, approximately 3,000 websites have been shut down, and most important, several children have been removed from abusive environments.

The work of Cybertip.ca is being bolstered by recent efforts of some provincial and territorial governments. We are thankful for that. The Province of Manitoba enacted legislation on mandatory reporting of child pornography in April 2009. Under this law, all members of the public are required to report suspected cases of child pornography to Cybertip.ca. Ontario has enacted similar legislation, but it is not yet in force. Nova Scotia's mandatory reporting legislation came into force just a few months ago, on April 13 of this year. I would like to extend my congratulations to them and to Cybertip.ca for their efforts in this regard.

This government is committed to protecting our children. I hope my fellow members in the House understand just how important this legislation is. I urge every member to support this legislation as we work together to protect our future, which is our children.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the member will know that 87% of the child pornography sites are in five countries of the world, which leaves about 13% from the other 55 countries.

The member should also know that countries such as Sweden and Germany have actually blocked the sites completely.

The current government, while it has taken years to get this bill this far in the House, is proposing to spend another $42 million having the police chase around after these sites when in fact Sweden and Germany already have the answer: simply block the sites and the problem should be solved.

I would like to ask the member what sort of research the government has done on the Swedish situation and the German situation and report back to us and tell us why we cannot follow the same route.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his interest. As he knows, this is very important.

We are working with all our international partners. My speech a moment ago highlighted the importance of Cybertip.ca. It also highlighted the importance and the voluntary participation of Canada's ISPs.

We are getting it done. However, the technology with the Internet changes so quickly and we need to ensure our police departments have the support they need to protect our children. I hope the member supports Bill C-22. I think he does. The bill would go to committee and could move very quickly into the Senate. We would then have legislation that would protect our children. I count on the member's support as we work also with our international partners.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my friend from Langley. We used to serve on city council together in Abbotsford. I want to commend him for supporting this very worthwhile legislation that would protect our children going forward.

Despite the comments from the NDP across the way, my colleague knows the Internet really has no boundaries. It is worldwide, and this government is doing everything it possibly can to protect children.

I want to ask my colleague whether he believes the problem of child pornography on the Internet is something that is growing, that it is an increasing threat, or is it something that has been static for a number of years?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Abbotsford brings up a very good point. Is the problem growing? Yes, it is.

We have a responsibility to protect our Canadian children and children around the world, and Canada is doing its part.

As I said, we are working with our international partners, we are working with Canadian ISPs, and we are providing the funding to help the police do their work.

The problem is growing. It is expanding, it is evolving, it is changing, and we need to be right on the front line. This government is providing the funding. With this legislation and the funding, we will be effective.

I support the bill and I hope every member of the House does also.