Status of Women Committee on Nov. 14th, 2016

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Yes. When we talk about some of the reasons you see your situation where it is with the residential schools, we all can understand what you're saying as to how could this be an effect, but we're looking at today's technology and seeing the same effects. You're saying that even within your own culture you're seeing this creeping in as well.

[Sylvia Maracle]

Absolutely, yes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's the end of our time.

Thank you very much to all of our witnesses for the excellent programs you have and for what you're doing to try to eliminate violence against women.

We're going to suspend our committee while we switch the panels. Thank you for being with us.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're back for our second panel discussion.

I'm very happy to welcome from the Antigonish Women's Resource Centre and Sexual Assault Services Association, Lucille Harper, who is the executive director; from the Regroupement québécois des centres d'aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel, Mélanie Sarroino; and from the SAFFRON Sexual Assault Centre, Katie Kitschke.

Each of the ladies will have 10 minutes for their remarks, and then we will go to our questions.

Lucille, we'll start with you.

[Lucille Harper, Executive Director, Antigonish Women's Resource Centre and Sexual Assault Services Association]

First, I want to thank you for allowing me to come to speak. I appreciate the previous speakers, but I want to say that I want to live in a world where what women say matters, where women are heard and change attitudes and policy. I want to live in a world where 15,000 women turn out to hear women, and 15,000 men turn out to hear women. That's where I want to live, but that's not my point.

The Antigonish Women's Resource Centre provides support services and programs to women, adolescent girls, and youth living in rural and small-town northeastern Nova Scotia. We bring a feminist lens and an understanding of the complexities of living rural to the work we do with young women, indigenous, newcomer, immigrant, and refugee women and girls. Every day we hear stories from young women and girls about their experiences of being subjected to sexualized violence and the impact it has on their lives. That will be my focus today. Conscious of time, I want to start with the recommendations and then proceed with the context so that they're on the table.

Turning to the issue of sexualized violence, we live in a rape culture where the perpetration of misogyny and the devaluing of women is normalized. It permeates our institutions, policies, and program delivery. Any sexualized violence requires all levels of government to work together and with communities, institutions, agencies, and organizations to address the myriad forms of systemic social and economic inequality that women face. It requires addressing women's poverty; creating a universal child care program; implementing a living wage; improving the response of the criminal justice system; supporting sexual assault centres and women's violence prevention and response organizations, and more. The federal government must take a lead in doing this.

We need to address access of children to pornography. Our recommendation is that we negotiate an opt-in, opt-out system with the Canadian Internet service providers that would restrict children's access to Internet pornography along the lines of the U.K. model, so ask me about that.

End the trafficking of women and girls. Look at the Swedish government's approach to ending the trafficking and sexual exploitation of women and girls. Along with enacting laws to reduce the demand for purchasing sex, and rules making it easier to confiscate the proceeds of crime, it funds comprehensive services for trafficked and other women leaving the sex industry. The Canadian Criminal Code governing trafficking is strong, yet convictions are few. Make changes to prioritize the prosecution of traffickers and johns, protect immigrant and refugee women, and provide women with the services and supports they need to escape, heal, and live financially stable lives.

Review and amend immigration policies and legislation to ensure the secure status and protection of non-status refugee and immigrant women in Canada. Ensure services and supports for survivors of violence are made available to all women regardless of immigration status. Amend the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to guarantee protection to non-citizen survivors of trafficking, including access to services and permanent residence.

Keeping women in situations of insecure status can be deliberately used by abusive partners to maintain control over women. The Immigration and Refugee Board must implement guidelines for gender-based analysis of refugee determination. In particular, the designated country of origin should be ended, as women fleeing gender-based violence are particularly impacted by a system that deems certain countries as safe, while violence of women there may be endemic.

Address the criminal justice system. Until the criminal justice system makes changes, there will be no justice for survivors of sexual assault. As a first step, train police and crowns to work from a trauma-informed approach so they can reduce the re-traumatization of victims, can conduct competent interviews and investigations and increase the rate of successful prosecution, and ensure sentences reflect the seriousness of these crimes as a deterrent, but also to reflect the often lifetime impact of such crimes on their victims and the victims' families.

I'll provide a bit of background.

We live in a small town and in our town is a university, St. Francis Xavier University. Some of you may have heard of it. The population of our town of 5,000 doubles when the university is in session. As a sexual assault centre, we work with a lot of students who have been sexually assaulted.

One in four women is sexually assaulted while at university, many in the first months of their first year. This takes place in a rape culture of normalized sexualized violence, hypersexualization, slut-shaming, and slut-blaming that work together to obscure the act of violence, remove responsibility from the perpetrator, and stigmatize and silence the victim. Women who have been sexually assaulted are blamed and told to blame themselves. Few of these assaults are reported to police or even to campus authorities.

In our hypersexualized society, adult sexuality is imposed upon children and young people before they are capable of dealing with it mentally, emotionally, or physically.

We work with girls, and girls as young as 12 years of age tell us they've been sent unwanted pictures of their classmates' genitals. These are kids. They're pressured to respond with naked pictures of themselves. Embarrassed, confused, and not sure what to do or how to respond, they wonder if it's something about them. Do their peers see them as sluts? They tell us they're asked to perform oral sex on their peers, and to submit to anal sex. You can't get pregnant with anal sex.

Women are slut-shamed and slut-blamed, and slut-shaming is an effective tool of subjugation and used as a justification for perpetrating sexual violence. It removes the focus of responsibility from the perpetrator to the victim. Unfortunately, they have just elected a president in the United States who is a perfect example of it.

Incidents of sexual violence perpetrated against young women, captured on camera and shared through the Internet, are acts of sexualized cyber-violence. Too many girls have taken their own lives after being subjected to sexual assault and sexualized cyber-violence, and we need to take that really seriously.

It's interesting that you asked about pornography. With the advent of wireless Internet tablets and smartphones, children can and do access pornography that contains disturbing, violent, misogynistic images that link sex to violence against women. On average, boys view their first porn as young as 11 to 12 years of age, and this is all as they're developing. They're trying to figure out who they are as sexual beings, so of course there is an excitement to it that immediately gets linked with violence against women.

Scrolling through the Eastlink cable TV channel, children, young people, and adults see listings they may or may not be able to access, but just the listings say things like Red Hot Blowjobs, Teen Girls Next Door, Joanna Angel Filthy Whore, Teens Got a Tight Pussy, and Grandpa's Perversions, and on it goes. This is just on cable TV as you're flipping through the channels.

While many of us grew up in a text-based world, today's children are growing up in an image-based culture, and images impact a part of the brain different from the part affected by text. We will not know for a number of years the full impact that pornography has on the developing brain; however, research is telling us that it is harmful to a young person's healthy development. They're learning that sex is violent and degrading to women. It teaches boys that this is the way they must perform sex, and girls that this is what they must expect and accept. I could tell you story after story after story that we've heard from high school students and university students. In the U.K., legislation was proposed to protect children by limiting child and youth access to these sites. I hope you ask me about that.

I also want you to ask me about luring and trafficking, because we're seeing girls as young as 13 recruited and procured into sexual slavery by predators who profit from exploiting their bodies. This is on craigslist. It's unbelievable and it's, like, everybody's girls. The RCMP estimate that the annual financial gain for every woman and girl trafficked is $280,000 to the trafficker. The younger the woman or girl, the more profitable she is. They're often forced to perform sex acts 365 days a year and are required to hand over all the money to the traffickers.

That's probably it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

That's your time, but we will ask you about those things.

We're going to go now to Mélanie for 10 minutes.

[Mélanie Sarroino, Liaison and Promotion Officer, Regroupement québécois des Centres d'aide et de lutte contre les agressions à caractère sexuel]

Hello. Thank you for having me today.

I'm prepared in French so I'm going to present in French, but I'm very capable of answering in English. Most of my presentation has just been said, so thank you very much for bringing up those recommendations and those ideas.

The Quebec coalition of sexual assault centres, or CALACS, was founded in 1979. However, some CALACS are over 40 years old. We bring our members together, and we provide training and opportunities to discuss issues. We play an intermediary role with the provincial and federal governments. We also speak to the media to educate the public on the issue of sexual assault.

Our centres provide direct assistance to women and teenagers over the age of 14 who are victims of sexual assault. The centres also provide services to the victims' family members so they can learn how to help the victims.

Prevention and awareness are important, especially in secondary schools. Last year, we spoke to 30,000 secondary school students. We also educate and train socio-judicial workers. We're being increasingly asked to take action at the university level.

Our third area of action is rights advocacy.

As I told you, we carry out a great deal of prevention work in schools. With the support of Status of Women Canada, we're developing a prevention program by collecting the best practices established by our CALACS over the years, in order to provide a better prevention service in schools. This coincides with a Quebec government pilot project under way to reinstate sex education courses in schools.

Unfortunately, we don't know what will happen after the two-year pilot project ends next year. We really want the Quebec government to continue providing sex education courses.

Through the program, we also aim to provide training to the people who work in schools so that they don't convey sexist and sexual stereotypes. People who work in schools say that, when they speak about the issue, sometimes teachers—who are usually male—make sexist jokes and take a bit away from their efforts. It's very important to educate school staff on how to handle the disclosures that students—mainly women, but also men—may make after a visit from representatives of a CALACS.

Our work is also innovative. We make video clips for parents to help them reinforce what their children learn in our workshops. The clips also give parents the tools to hold these types of conversation.

I'd like to share a story. Yesterday, my six-year-old son asked me whether I was sexy. This is to give you an idea. It gave me quite a turn, and I told myself that I wasn't ready for this conversation. Fortunately, I work in the field and I have access to tools to help me hold these conversations. He's only six years old and he's already talking about the word “sexy”. I may be too old, but I find that very shocking.

The issue that often arises and that has been mentioned a great deal is hypersexualization and pornography culture. You've probably talked at length about it in your two months of hearing people speak, but it's a real problem. We believe this issue, among others, is responsible for rape culture because it trivializes sexual violence against women and girls. Obviously, and unfortunately, it sends the message that women and girls are sexual objects at the disposal of men and that our reason for existing is really to please men. The message conveyed to men is that women are sexual objects that they can take, purchase and force to do as they wish, with very few consequences.

All these issues make rape culture increasingly pervasive. The phenomenon is blatant. Recently, in Quebec, more and more events have been showing the magnitude of the problem. Sexual assaults have been occurring on our university campuses. Many, if not all, initiation rites on university campuses have sexual connotations. At a demonstration, a young women accused a provincial liberal MNA of sexual assault. The list goes on.

The Quebec government has responded by launching a strategy to prevent and combat sexual assault. It's a good strategy. Unfortunately, it focuses too much on the legal aspect of the issue.

Too much money and too many measures focus on the legal aspect. It's not that the legal aspect isn't important. We want to see attackers convicted and sentenced. However, the figures show that only 5% of victims file complaints. However, very few measures or resources are allocated to the 95% of victims who need support.

That's something deplored by people who work in the field in Quebec, including the Quebec coalition of CALACS. Other sexual assault centres in Canada have already mentioned the enormous shortage of resources needed to accomplish our main task, which is to help victims of sexual assault. Half our centres currently have waiting lists, and that's unacceptable. It takes everything for a woman to pick up the telephone, call and ask for help. It's unacceptable that she's told that she will receive help, but only in six months.

We need more resources to help us carry out prevention work in a larger number of schools.

I'll move straight on to the recommendations in case I run out of time. We can talk more about it later.

We're asking both the federal and provincial governments for the same thing.

First, we want them to develop and launch an awareness campaign for the general public that addresses, among other things, the harmful effects of hypersexualization and pornography on women and young girls.

We then want them to conduct an intersectional analysis of the issue that takes into account all the systems of oppression and systematic causes that make certain women more vulnerable. These women include aboriginal women, racialized women, immigrant women, refugee women, women who have a disability, women who are deaf, women who live in poverty, women in prostitution, and LGBTQ women. We want the government to conduct an in-depth study on the impact of hypersexualization, while also taking into consideration these systems of oppression.

We also want Statistics Canada to conduct a new national survey on violence against women, particularly sexual violence. The last data is from 1993. I know the methods used to conduct the 1993 survey were criticized. We want sensitivity to be demonstrated. Women must not be asked questions in the forms or over the telephone in a way that makes them feel guilty. However, we need data to help us carry out our work in the community.

We also want the provinces to be strongly encouraged to reinstate sex education courses in schools. I think something of that nature is being done in Ontario. There's a pilot project in Quebec, as I said earlier. However, it must be done across Canada.

Lastly, we want an acknowledgement of the expertise of community contacts who work each day in the field with women and girls who are victims of sexual assault. We want the community contacts to constantly work with their respective provincial governments and with the federal government. Thank you again for giving us this opportunity to speak.

We want more funding so that we can actually meet the demand.

Since I have some time left, I'll talk a bit about the legal system.

This myth of consent and myth that a woman is always sexually available makes things very difficult for the victim once she ends up in the legal system. These myths and prejudices are echoed by both prosecutors and defence lawyers. We saw it in the Ghomeshi case, and we've also seen it in Quebec recently. We also saw the case of an Alberta judge who asked a young woman why she hadn't kept her knees together. A great deal of awareness needs to be raised. Before that's done, I admit that I have a great deal of trouble encouraging women to go through the legal system. It's a trying and difficult experience. Often, if the attacker is found guilty, he will receive a slap on the wrist. In other words, his sentence will fall short of the crime committed.

There's still much work to be done. In the meantime, we must at least support organizations that truly help women in the community.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

Katie Kitschke is next, for 10 minutes.

[Katie Kitschke, Executive Director, SAFFRON Sexual Assault Centre]

Thank you. I could just say ditto for what these ladies said. I don't know if you watched me as they were talking, but I was nodding my head. A lot of these are issues that we all feel, and work towards. I'll read my preamble and then I'll talk a bit more and answer questions for sure.

First of all, my name is Katie Kitschke. I'm the Executive Director at SAFFRON Sexual Assault Centre located in Sherwood Park, a suburb of Edmonton. We're a community of about 100,000 people. SAFFRON provides two core services at our centres. We provide counselling for people who have experienced sexual violence as well as for their family members and supports. Our second core area of service is public education.

When I started with SAFFRON in 2008 as their public education director, we were offering presentations to students starting in grade 10. I asked why we were only presenting to students in grade 10, and the response was that's when the issues are starting. I said that we need to start in kindergarten, that we need to start having these conversations as young as possible. It took me a few years to convince the powers that be, so I was able to do junior high and then eventually move down to grades 4, 5 and 6, and eventually down to kindergarten. I actually had an epiphany the other day. This is not in my notes. I was attending an inter-agency meeting in my community. There's a parent group in our community. They were talking about some fall programs they have about how to tell if your child is developing naturally. They're for zero to five years old. I said that this who we need to be talking to, that we need to be talking to the parents of the zero- to five-year-olds, because that's the piece we're missing. We're missing the parents. We are in the schools, and we have this captive audience with the students, which is wonderful, but the key piece we've been missing is the parents. It's hard to get the parents engaged, especially as the children get older, because it's never their children who are at risk, or it's never their children who are perpetrating anything.

My epiphany is that we need to talk to them in that zero-to-five age range. We need to talk to them about how to talk to their kids about sexuality, how to model healthy relationships, how to create appropriate boundaries. We are seeing parents giving babies who are 18 months olds, if not even younger, iPads. We're seeing children having access to technology so much younger but they're missing that piece of education, because their brains aren't ready to understand it. That's the piece we really need to take on and focus on, that education piece with parents, as young as possible so that those tools—what a healthy relationship looks like and what boundaries are—can be given to our children as young as possible. We have to talk to them as young as possible about consent, and not force them to hug uncle Frank or whatever if they don't feel comfortable.

Part of the problem is that a lot of parents don't know how to have these conversations, and they definitely don't think they need to have those conversations in the zero-to-five age range. I think they do, and I think they need to do so in an age appropriate way. We spend so much time teaching our children how to walk and talk and to have all these other life skills, but we forget to teach them about sexuality. That's a really important component of what we're missing, but I digress. Sorry.

The public education program we currently have goes from kindergarten up to grade 12. We talk to them about healthy relationships, consent, boundaries. We tell the very young ones that if they don't want to be hugged, they don't have to be hugged, and if they want to hug somebody, they have to ask for permission to get a hug. We give them the right tools and the right words to say if they're feeling uncomfortable, or if they're feeling that their power is being taken away from them. As they get older, again in an age appropriate way, we talk to them about what sexual assault and sexual harassment are, because very often we have people growing up in these families, and it's been normalized. A lot of our clients who have come into our centre have said that they didn't know this wasn't normal in other people's families. We have conversations about what healthy relationships look like and what healthy sexuality looks like.

We also provide professional development training. This is really important, and this is also one of my recommendations. SAFFRON is part of the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services providers. There are 12 agencies in Alberta, and we're all part of this group.

We all strive to create an environment in Alberta where everyone who lives in Alberta, whether in remote areas or in urban centres, receives the same level of care. That's one of the recommendations that I think we need for the federal government. It shouldn't matter where people live in Canada. Everyone should have the same level of care.

Across the provinces and in the municipalities, we should be looking at what are we doing, at what is being provided. Are we all providing the same level of care and the best care that we possibly can?

We also know that sexual violence is linked to many other social issues, including addictions, mental health, sexual exploitation, medical problems, self-harm, suicide, parenting issues, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, etc.

The majority of our clients are not just dealing with sexual violence. The majority of our clients are dealing with many of these social issues. We are seeing an increase in the number of our clients who have mental health issues and extreme mental health issues. As soon as they go to a doctor or to a mental health agency to report that they've been sexually assaulted, their mental health is put aside and they are sent to us.

We need to have better partnerships with sexual assault centres and mental health agencies so that we can provide the best care for our clients. We also need training in the sexual assault centres on how to work with individuals who are suffering from certain types of mental health issues.

As my colleagues mentioned here, we're living in a culture where violence against women has become common. Street harassment, cyber-violence, and disrespectful behaviour not only exist, but are almost encouraged and condoned. I have five children, and my four daughters will not walk on the streets. My daughters go to school in downtown Edmonton, and they are terrified to take the bus. They are terrified if they ever have to walk on the street because almost every single time they've ever had to do it, they've received some type of harassment.

Very often what we see is that there is a perpetrator of that street harassment and there are the people who are encouraging the behaviour. It has become a reality for many people, and not just for young people. I've definitely received street harassment, as well.

We need to understand that this is a reality not just in Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, or Vancouver, but in communities of 100,000 people and in communities of 20,000 people because it's allowed to be there. There's a tolerance for it.

In the work we do with our clients, we definitely see a lot of cyber-violence. We see cyberstalking and sexual exploitation, and again, it is regardless of where people live. It used to be that people would move to the small towns to get away from the big bad crime and things like that, but now with the Internet it can happen to anyone anywhere, even in the most remote communities.

Disrespectful behaviour towards women and girls is so prevalent in our society. We see it on TV. We see it in movies. We see it in social media. Now we're even seeing it in politics. It's a scary time.

On one hand, it's a wonderful time because we're here talking about sexual violence, and that thrills me, and on the other hand, it's a scary time because we are fighting so much to get to a place where this no longer exists, but we're fighting what almost sometimes feels like a losing battle.

I think that we have to decide as a country that this is not going to be the reality for our women and girls. We need to engage men and boys, as everyone here has said. This is a huge piece of what we need to be doing.

As was mentioned, all men and boys are not committing sexual violence. It is some who are committing the sexual violence. We need to engage those who want to help out and do something to stop it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thank you.

We'll start our questioning with Mr. Fraser, for seven minutes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I hope all of you submit all of your recommendations in writing to the clerk. There was a lot to take in and process in a very short amount of time. I thank you for your concise submissions.

I'm struck first and foremost by the importance of independence. I'm picking it up as a theme, whether it's independence from street harassment, not having a safety plan, or independence from poverty. Whether you're a vulnerable person, maybe with a disability, a refugee, or an immigrant, it seems to me there's a theme of independence. As a six-foot, seven-inch, white, North American male, I've never really had to think about that when I'm walking through the streets at night.

Ms. Harper, we're trying to make recommendations to the government that we hope will be adopted. I know you hit on poverty as one source of the lack of independence that really is an increased risk factor. Could you describe how we could make a recommendation that would best help overcome this systemic barrier?

[Lucille Harper]

Poverty is a whole conversation. I know that another standing committee is looking at poverty issues.

Poverty really keeps women trapped. When women are trapped, it makes them vulnerable. When women are trapped and then objectified and seen as valuable primarily for their bodies, that poverty keeps women in extremely vulnerable situations.

When we're looking at who lives in poverty, we're looking at racialized women, indigenous women, and women with disabilities. We're looking at women who have a really tough time breaking out of the poverty they grew up in, accessing education, or after education, accessing the kinds of employment they need in order to have economic independence. That's one of the factors that keeps women trapped very often.

I'm going to tell you a story.

Two of our staff did a workshop for Mount Saint Vincent University on girls. They were sitting in the cafeteria at the library in Halifax. They overheard a conversation of two high school girls sitting beside them. The girls were being offered money for sex, and the conversation was about what an insult is. Twenty dollars is an insult, so at $20 you're not validated. It's kind of a blow-off, a comment about who you are. The higher the offer of money is, the more you're validated. These are high school girls.

There is story after story I could tell you about some of this stuff, but that is an everyday casual conversation girls are having that was overheard. That's some of what we're dealing with. That's on your question about poverty, but it really is a very clear marker of the way in which women's sexuality has been attached to some kind of access either to men with wealth or to other ways of trying to earn an income. It's a really big question, Sean.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

It is. I appreciate that.

I have just a few minutes remaining, and perhaps another big question. I would ask you to be as concise as possible.

Ms. Harper, you led with a comment about how you hope everyone can be listened to. Ms. Kitschke, you mentioned at the end that some men and boys are the perpetrators.

I find it difficult to engage the people who don't want to be engaged, the potential perpetrators. There are a lot of people who have all the best will, and who attend these seminars during frosh week or in their communities. How can we best tap into the group of potential perpetrators of sexual violence or violence against women and girls?

Maybe, Ms. Kitschke, you could go first.

[Katie Kitschke]

I think we need to engage those men and boys who are not potential perpetrators. As was mentioned by Jamie from the BC Lions, the bystanders in some cases are encouraging the behaviour. We need to change them, have them be the watchdogs, I guess, for lack of a better word, and really try to spread a message such as the comment about the inappropriate behaviour and the gentleman yelling, “Respect”.

That's where we need to start, because there's more—

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Perhaps I could jump in because I only have about a minute and a half.

I don't necessarily think the federal government is the best group to be doing this. We've heard from many witnesses that community-based organizations are much more successful in responding to the needs of their community. How can we as a federal government provide families or community organizations with the tools they need to promote this awareness among the potential intervenors?

[Katie Kitschke]

As has been mentioned by everyone, the answer is funding. We are only limited by the amount of funding we receive. If we had unlimited funding, what we could do.... We would blow your socks off.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Regarding community organizations specifically, is that the best return on investment?

[Katie Kitschke]

I think so because they're front line. They are the ones that are working....

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

I see some heads nodding in agreement. Perhaps I can take it that the other witnesses agree.

[Mélanie Sarroino]

Yes, but perhaps I could add something quickly.

I don't know how it is elsewhere, but sometimes in Quebec we're accused of trying to create our own jobs by asking for funding. That's so insulting because honestly, all of our workers, all of our counsellors, the only thing they would wish for is not to have jobs anymore because that would mean that there wouldn't be any more violence against women. Could people please stop saying we're creating jobs for ourselves. That's not it at all.

[Lucille Harper]

I just want to say that it's really tough work when you are working with survivors. When you're working with women, the issue of sexual violence underlies so many other issues that women bring into our centre—and I'm sure with all of us—and you're hearing those stories day after day after day, it's really tough work. In some ways, the people who are doing that work are really—

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

I'm sorry, but that's your time, Sean.

We're going to Ms. Vecchio for seven minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Ms. Harper, I'm going to start with you, if you don't mind, regarding the opt-in, opt-out U.K. model when it comes to pornography. We don't have a lot of time, so could you just explain a little more about that for us?

[Lucille Harper]

That's a really interesting model. The U.K. government approached their primary Internet providers, namely, Virgin, BT, Talk Talk, and SKY. They worked with them to put an automatic pornography filter on all new accounts. This means that on all of the various devices that kids have, they can't automatically go into pornographic sites. Now, they are smart and they will figure out a way around it at some point, but they don't have that pop-up stuff. If you want to access pornography, you need to be 18 years of age and your name needs to be on the account. If you're the account holder and you're 18 years of age, you just call your Internet provider and tell them that you want to opt in and you can access whatever it is you want to access. It's not perfect, but it works really well to keep it out of the hands of young children.

The one thing we spend so much of our time doing is trying to undo the culture in which we're living. To get to those conversations that we're talking about, there's a whole lot that needs to be undone and if that one thing was done, limiting the exposure of very young children to pornography, it would be hugely helpful.