Yes.
Evidence of meeting #23 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #23 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
September 28th, 2016 / 5:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Yes.
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Okay.
Witnesses who come to testify have data only for 13 or 15 and up. I think StatsCan collects data only for 15 and up. There seems to be a real lack of information on the pre-13-year-olds. Is that an accurate statement? You track it, but in terms of other organizations.... Kids are going online much younger, but we are not tracking what's going on at a younger age.
5:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
We are. It's one of the things on which we probably need to do a better job at, because we use it to funnel. We do student advisory groups for young children all the way through Canada. We run these in schools. We take the information, and it helps set out the change in trends. What a grade 4 child was facing three years ago is very different from what a grade 4 child is facing today. Kids are on Snapchat in grade 4.
We are adapting things as we need to. There could be some benefit, but I would be very careful and cautious in how we structure the research or evaluation we would want to do, how carefully we would construct those questions, and what exactly we are looking at.
There is a big difference between what kids are doing in terms of technology and the issues they are facing, and looking at the issue of how children are being sexually abused and sexually exploited, because there are whole bunch of different factors around that. We always benefit from getting better data and information. We collect it rigorously. I wouldn't at all hesitate if those limits were in place.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
5:25 p.m.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Do you do much work with campus-aged people, or is it predominantly children?
5:25 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
It's children.
We have been asked, though, because of the age of consent issue, and the things surrounding affirmative yeses are not that simple. As an example, if a young person is intoxicated, they can't ever consent. We are sort of inserting ourselves into that dialogue, because we are seeing from the outside that this is going to be a problem.
5:25 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Thank you very much. That was fantastic testimony. It's been very helpful. It's very hard for me as the chair to have to cut you off when I want to hear the extra answers that you have, but I invite you to send the materials that we talked about to the chair.
I just want the committee members to know that at the next meeting, we will have a visit from the Canada-United Kingdom Inter-Parliamentary Association for the first hour. It's coming to talk about best practices for eliminating violence against women. This was previously set up.
Then, in the second hour, we're hearing from the Children and Youth in Challenging Contexts Network. That will be excellent.
I think we'll have a subcommittee meeting before then, because the Liaison Committee has asked us to plan out any travel expenses the committee has until June. I know several people have asked for extra witnesses to be added to the current study, and we've had some people ask to appear before the committee. We will schedule that steering committee.
Otherwise, I will see the rest of you again next meeting.
The meeting is adjourned.