Bill C-270

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (pornographic material)

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to prohibit a person from making, distributing or advertising pornographic material for commercial purposes without having first ascertained that, at the time the material was made, each person whose image is depicted in the material was 18 years of age or older and gave their express consent to their image being depicted.

Stopping Internet Sexual Exploitation Act

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

moved that Bill C-270, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (pornographic material), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, imagine being the parent of a teenage daughter who has been missing for months and somebody discovers 50 explicit videos of that daughter being sexually abused on Pornhub, the most popular porn site in the world. Imagine how one would feel if intimate images of one's sibling was uploaded and Pornhub refused one's request to remove that content. Now, imagine if those videos of their exploited loved ones were being monetized and published for profit by Pornhub and were made available to Pornhub's over 130 daily visitors.

How would someone feel if Pornhub’s only response was an auto-reply email? Understandably, one would be outraged. One would be furious, yet this happens over and over. Survivors, including a 12-year-old from Ontario, have had to seek justice through their own lawsuits because in Canada, the onus is on survivors and on law enforcement to prove, after the material has been uploaded, that the individuals depicted in those videos are either under age or have not consented to their distribution. This is a serious problem that Bill C-270, the stopping internet sexual exploitation act, seeks to fix.

it’s important to note that for years, survivors, child protection agencies and the police have spoken out about this exploitation. They have not been silent. Survivors have shared how pornographic companies like Pornhub have been profiting from content depicting minors, sex trafficking victims, sexual assault, intimate images and gender-based violence for years. As early as 2019, companies like PayPal cut ties with MindGeek due to the availability of exploitive and abusive content.

In March 2020, a few parliamentarians and I wrote a public letter to the Prime Minister to alert him about the exploitation that was happening on MindGeek. We followed up in November 2020 with a letter to the then Minister of Justice, urging him to ensure that our laws were adequate to prevent women and girls from being exploited by Pornhub.

It was The New York Times exposé on December 4, 2020, in a piece written by Nicholas Kristof, that finally got the public's and the government’s attention. It was entitled “The Children of Pornhub: Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?” That article finally kicked off a firestorm of international attention on Pornhub, which is one of many pornographic websites owned by MindGeek, a Canadian company based in Montreal. About a year ago, it was bought and rebranded as Aylo by a company called Ethical Capital Partners, based in Ottawa.

A few days after that article, the House of Commons ethics committee initiated an investigation into Pornhub. I joined the ethics committee for its study on Pornhub and listened to the harrowing stories of young women who had videos of sexual assaults or intimate content shared without their consent. Many of these women were minors when the videos were created and uploaded to pornography sites like Pornhub. I want to take a moment to share some of their testimony.

Serena Fleites, whose story was covered by The New York Times exposé, had videos of her at age 13 uploaded by her ex-boyfriend. After that, her whole life came crumbling down. She experienced depression and drug use. She was harassed by people at her school who found her video and sent it to family members. She was blackmailed. She had to pretend to be her mother to have the videos taken down from Pornhub. This was all while she was 13 years old. In the end, she stopped going to school. She told us:

I thought that once I stopped being in the public so much, once I stopped going to school, people would stop re-uploading it. But that didn't happen, because it had already been basically downloaded by [all the] people...[in] the world. It would always be uploaded, over and over and over again. No matter how many times I got it taken down, it would be right back up again.

It basically became a full-time job for her to just chase down those images and to get them removed from Pornhub.

Some witnesses appeared anonymously to protect their identities. One witness stated, “I was 17 when videos of me on Pornhub came to my knowledge, and I was only 15 in the videos they [were] profiting from.” She went on to say, “Every time they took it down, they also allowed more and more videos of me to be reuploaded.” That witness also said, “Videos of me being on Pornhub has affected my life so much to the point that I don't leave my house anymore. I stopped being able to work because I [am]...scared to be out in public around other people.”

Another survivor who spoke to us at committee is Victoria Galy. As a result of discovering non-consensual images and videos of herself on Pornhub, she completely lost her sense of self-worth, and at times, she was suicidal. She told us at committee, “There were over eight million views just on Pornhub alone. To think of the amount of money that Pornhub has made off my trauma, date rape and sexual exploitation makes me sick to my stomach.” She added, “I have been forced to stand up alone and fight Pornhub”.

It is a serious failure of our justice system when survivors have to launch their own lawsuits to get justice for the harms caused by companies like MindGeek. This Canadian company has not faced a single charge or consequence in Canada for publishing its videos of exploitation and for profiting from them. This is truly shameful.

Last year, a survivor named Uldouz Wallace reached out to me. Uldouz is a survivor of the 2014 iCloud hack. She is also an award-winning actress, executive producer, activist and director of Foundation RA. Uldouz had photos and videos taken in the 2014 iCloud hack and uploaded onto porn sites like Pornhub, and she fought for years to get them taken down. As a result of this, she told us, “I lost followers, I lost everything that you could think of. It was just such hard time for me. I ended up spending over a million dollars over a three-year span just to get the content taken down on me with no success.... They're making so much money off of the non-consensual uploading of images and videos. The re-uploading is also a billion dollar industry.” She added, “There's still no federal laws. There's barely any laws at all to hold anyone online accountable. There's currently foreign revenge laws but for people like me there's nothing.”

Rachel, a survivor from Alberta, said that it was devastating and that it is going to haunt her for the rest of her life. She said that she will always be someone's porn.

I want to point out the incredible courage of Victoria, Serena, Uldouz, Rachel and many other survivors who have spoken out. In the midst of one of the most difficult moments of their lives, they are fighting back against a billion-dollar industry that seeks to profit from their pain and exploitation. I thank Victoria, Serena, Uldouz, and Rachel for refusing to back down. I thank them for their courage. I thank them for their relentless pursuit of justice. I would encourage members to listen to their full testimonies, and they can do so at www.siseact.ca.

Throughout the ethics committee hearings and from the interactions I have had with survivors since, it is clear that this is a common problem. Pornographic companies are publishing and monetizing content without verifying the age and the consent of the people depicted in them. This is particularly a problem for Canada as many of those websites are hosted here.

Bill C-270, the stopping Internet sexual exploitation act, would stop this. I am going to quote right from the summary of my bill. It states that the SISE act would:

...prohibit a person [including companies] from making, distributing or advertising pornographic material for commercial purposes without having first ascertained that, at the time the material was made, each person whose image is depicted in the material was 18 years of age or older and gave their express consent to their image being depicted.

The SISE act would also allow individuals to revoke their consent. This is an important part to express the ongoing consent. Finally, the SISE act would provide for aggravating factors when the material created or published actually depicts minors or non-consensual activity.

I am also pleased to share that I consulted on the bill with a variety of child protection agencies, law enforcement groups and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to ensure that there are no gaps and that police have the tools to ensure they can seek justice.

The heart of the bill is consent. No one should be publishing sexually explicit material without the express consent of everyone depicted in that material. Children cannot consent to exploitation. Victims of sex trafficking and sexual assault cannot consent. Those filmed without their knowledge cannot consent, yet pornography companies freely publish this content and profit from it because there is no onus on them to verify the age or the consent of those depicted.

That is why the second recommendation of the 2021 ethics committee report is:

That the Government of Canada mandate that content-hosting platforms operating in Canada require affirmation from all persons depicted in pornographic content, before it can be uploaded, that they are 18 years old or older and that they consent to its distribution, and that it consult with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada with respect to the implementation of such obligation.

We have heard from survivors who testified that their images of abuse would not be online if companies like Pornhub had bothered to check for age and consent. Bill C-270 would fulfill this important recommendation from the ethics committee report and, importantly, I should add that this report was unanimously supported by all parties at the ethics committee.

The recommendation also suggests consulting with the Privacy Commissioner. I happy to share with my colleagues that on February 29, 2024, the Privacy Commissioner released his investigation into Pornhub's operator Aylo, formerly MindGeek. The report was initially scheduled to be released on May 23, but it was delayed for over nine months when MindGeek, or Aylo, and its owners, Ethical Capital Partners took the Privacy Commissioner to court to block the release of that report.

The Privacy Commissioner’s investigation into Aylo, MindGeek, was in response to a woman whose ex-boyfriend had uploaded intimate images of her to MindGeek's website without her consent. The young woman had to use a professional service to get it taken down and to remove her images from approximately 80 websites, where they had been re-posted more than 700 times.

The report shared how the publishing of the woman’s intimate images led to a permanent loss of control of the images, which had a devastating effect on her. It caused her to withdraw from her social life and to live in a state of fear and anxiety. The Commissioner stated:

This untenable situation could have been avoided in many cases had MindGeek obtained direct consent from each individual depicted in content prior to or at the time of upload.

Pornhub’s own Monthly Non-Consensual Content reports suggest that non-consensual content is still regularly uploaded and viewed by thousands of users before it is removed.

We find that by continuing to rely solely on the uploader to verify consent, MindGeek fails to ensure that it has obtained valid and meaningful consent from all individuals depicted in content uploaded to its websites.

Ultimately, the Privacy Commissioner recommended that Pornhub and its owners adopt measures that would verify age and consent before any content is uploaded. I would urge all members to read the Privacy Commissioner's report on Pornhub.

While Pornhub and its owners are the biggest pornography company in the world, this bill would ensure that age verification and consent applies to all pornography companies because whether it is videos of child exploitation, sex trafficking, AI deepfakes, sexual assault or an intimate encounter filmed by a partner, once a video or image has been uploaded, it is virtually impossible to eliminate. Each video can be viewed and downloaded millions of times within a 24-hour period, starting an endless nightmare for victims who must fight to get those videos removed, only for them to be uploaded again within minutes or hours.

Canada must do more to prevent this exploitive content from ever reaching the Internet in the first place. I hope I have the support of my colleagues in ending this nightmare for so many and in preventing it for so many more. To the survivors, some of whom are watching today, we thank them. Their voices are being heard.

I want to thank the organizations that have supported me along the way in getting this bill to this point: National Centre on Sexual Exploitation, National Council of Women of Canada, Ottawa Coalition to End Human Trafficking, London Abused Women's Centre, Defend Dignity, Vancouver Collective Against Sexual Exploitation, The Salvation Army, Survivor Safety Matters, Foundation RA, Montreal Council of Women, CEASE UK, Parents Aware, Joy Smith Foundation, Hope Resource Centre Association, Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, Colchester Sexual Assault Centre, Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention Services of Halton, and Ally Global Foundation.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Housing]

Madam Speaker, the topic that the member is dealing with is particularly important. One of the arguments that he is making is with respect to taking down this heinous material online. I agree with him. However, the bill does not make any provisions for it.

Bill C-63, which is government legislation, does make provisions for taking down these types of heinous materials. The member's leader has said that he would vote against it. I wonder if the hon. member will be supporting Bill C-63 or if he is going to stick with what is here that would not accomplish the objectives that he is seeking, which I hope we would all be in favour of.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-63 has no criminal offences around the uploading of this kind of content. In this bill, it would be a criminal offence to upload. We want to make sure this content never hits the Internet. A 24-hour takedown period is not good enough. We want to ensure that companies are doing their due diligence to ensure that their content is of people who are of age and that people consent to it.

An important piece of this bill is also that, if somebody has made a written request saying they revoke their consent, immediately that content must come down.

[Andréanne Larouche, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague and I were at a meeting this morning, and one of the things we talked about was the online exploitation of children in the Philippines. Digging into the issue, we can see how far behind Canada is. This issue has received international attention, and other models are out there.

I would like my colleague to comment on other such models currently in use around the world that may have inspired his bill.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, there are a number of initiatives around the world that seek to tackle this online content and child safety online. I would point to the work of Baroness Beeban Kidron in the U.K. The U.K. Parliament, in general, has been working to try to tackle some of these things. I know that France, Germany and Spain have all passed legislation trying to tackle the safety of kids online.

I think about six American states have passed legislation around keeping kids safe online, and I know that the American Congress has before it right now a bipartisan bill called the kids online safety act, which is proceeding through their legislature. This is something that is being tackled around the world. This morning, the Filipino embassy pleaded with Canada to help prevent sexual predators in Canada from accessing livestreaming content from the Philippines of CSAM, child sexual abuse material.

This bill would only be a start to preventing some of the heinous crimes that are being committed on the Internet.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for bringing forward this private member's bill, which directs our attention to some really important problems.

Is the member familiar with the report from the Department of Justice on cyber-bullying and non-consensual distribution of images from just a year ago, which takes quite a different approach from his bill and says we need to rewrite the existing offence so it is easier to prosecute and include measures, which are now in Bill C-63, to allow forfeiture, seizure, restitution and peace bonds in connection with these kinds of things?

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to support that initiative. I would say we can do both of these things. This bill is to try to prevent, in the first place, any of this content from being uploaded, rather than trying to deal with the mess after the fact.

What the member is suggesting is more about dealing with something after it has been uploaded. That is an important aspect. Bringing the people who upload this content to justice is an important piece, but this would be put in place to prevent the uploading of this content in the first place.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, to be very clear, with regard to the issue of non-consensual pornography and child pornography, I like to believe that every member in the House would be deeply offended by any activity that would ultimately lead to, encourage or promote, in any fashion whatsoever, those two issues. It angers a great number of us, to the degree that it causes all forms of emotions. We all want to do what we can to play an important role in making our online world experience a safer place.

I must say that I was a little surprised when the member for Peace River—Westlock responded to the issue of Bill C-63. I did have some concerns.

When one thinks of non-consensual pornography and child pornography, they are already illegal today in Canada. We know that. I appreciate what is being suggested in the private member's legislation, but he was asked a question in regard to Bill C-63, the government legislation dealing with the online harms act. It is something that is very specific and will actually have a very tangible impact. I do not know 100%, because this is the first time that I heard that members of the Conservative Party might be voting against that legislation. That would go against everything, I would suggest, in principle, that the member opposite talked about in his speech.

The greatest threat today is once that information gets uploaded. How can we possibly contain it? That is, in part, what we should be attempting to deal with as quickly as possible. There was a great deal of consultation and work with stakeholders in all forms to try to deal with that. That is why we have the online harms act before us today.

I wanted to ask the member a question. The question I was going to ask the member is this: Given the very nature of his comments, would he not agree that the House should look at a way in which we could expedite the passage of Bill C-63?

By doing that, we are going to be directly helping some of the individuals the member addressed in his opening comments. The essence of what Bill C-63 does is that it provides an obligation, a legal obligation, for online platforms to take off of their platforms child pornography and non-consensual pornography. For example, the victims of these horrific actions can make contact and see justice because these platforms would have 24 hours to take it off. It brings some justice to the victims.

I do not understand, based on his sincerity and how genuine the member was when he made the presentation of his bill. I have a basic understanding of what the member is trying to accomplish in the legislation, and I think that there are some questions in regard to getting some clarification.

As I indicated, in terms of the idea of child pornography not being illegal, it is illegal today. We need to make that statement very clear. Non-consensual pornography is as well. Both are illegal. There is a consequence to perpetrators today if they are found out. What is missing is how we get those platforms to get rid of those images once those perpetrators start uploading the information and platforms start using the material. That is what the government legislation would provide.

Hopefully before we end the two hours of debate the member can, in his concluding remarks, because he will be afforded that opportunity, provide some thoughts in regard to making sure people understand that this is illegal today and the importance of getting at those platforms. If we do not get at those platforms, the problem is not going to go away.

There was a question posed by I believe a New Democratic member asking about countries around the world. People would be surprised at the motivation used to get child pornography on the net and livestreamed. I have seen some eye-opening presentations that show that in some countries in the world the person who is putting the child on the Internet is a parent or a guardian. They do it as a way to source revenue. They do it for income for the family. How sad is that?

How angering is it to see the criminal element in North America that exploits these individuals, and children in particular. This is not to mention of course the importance of non-consensual pornography, but think of the trauma created as a direct result of a child going through things a child should never, ever have to experience. This will have a lifetime effect on that child. We know that. We see generational issues as a direct result of it.

That is the reason I like to think that every member of the House of Commons would look at the issue at hand and the principles of what we are talking about and want to take some initiative to minimize it. Members need to talk to the stakeholders. I have had the opportunity in different ways over the last number of years to do so. It is one the reasons I was very glad to see the government legislation come forward.

I was hoping to get clarification from the member on Bill C-270. He may be thrown off a little because of Bill C-63, which I believe will be of greater benefit than Bill C-270. After listening to the member speak though, I found out that the Conservative Party is apparently looking at voting against Bill C-63.

We come up with things collectively as a House to recognize important issues and put forward legislation that would have a positive impact, and I would suggest that Bill C-63 is one of those things. I would hope the member who introduced this private member's bill will not only be an advocate for his bill but be the strongest voice and advocate within his own caucus for the online harms act, Bill C-63, so we can get the support for that bill. It would literally save lives and take ungodly things off the Internet. It would save the lives of children.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Speaker, on November 21, 2022, a team from the TV show Envoyé spécial travelled from Paris to my office on the Hill. The France 2 team was there for a major investigation into Pornhub and the tragic experience of women and girls being sexually exploited by massive online pornography companies for profit.

The French public television team wanted to see me because, during the 43rd Parliament, I was a member of the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics, where we studied this unbelievable industry. I would actually describe this industry as disgusting, and people can understand why. It exploits and abuses women to create and distribute pornographic content with neither their knowledge nor their consent. I was absolutely shocked by what I heard.

The committee heard from Serena Fleites, whose story was reported in a New York Times article. According to the article, the 14-year-old found herself in sexually explicit videos uploaded to Pornhub. It is abominable.

I was also shocked by when the administrators of MindGeek, the parent company behind Pornhub, whose office was in Montreal at the time, came before the committee. I was stunned by the administrators' pathological lack of consideration for victims. As far as they were concerned, it was not really their fault if those videos ended up on their platform, and it would not harm their lives. It was appalling.

The work we did in committee on Pornhub's practices enabled every member from every party present to understand the dubious mechanisms by which platforms distributing pornographic material get rich by exploiting the flaws in a technological system that is far from being able to control the content being distributed. In fact, it is built and designed to encourage criminal sexual exploitation practices by covering them up.

The committee I was on heard about the failure of moderation. We were told that the content was moderated, that people's privacy and reputations were protected. We heard about the failure to prevent the presence of child sexual exploitation material, despite the claims of the MindGeek representatives who testified in committee.

The committee made a number of recommendations, including the following: We must now, as a matter of urgency, pass legislation to respond to these crimes and deal with these troubling issues. I would remind the House that this study took place during the 43rd Parliament, which ran from 2019 to 2021. Now it is 2024. We had to wait for a bill from a Conservative member before we could finally talk about it in Parliament. What is the government waiting for? We are talking about human dignity. Young girls are having their reputations tarnished. Young people are committing suicide because they have been manipulated and cheated, because people have abused their trust. This has to stop.

I am going to give some figures on what happened from 2014 to 2022. This is important because we will understand the seriousness of the situation. Police reported 15,630 incidents of online sexual offences against children and 48,816 incidents of online child pornography.

The rate of police-reported online child sexual exploitation has risen since 2014, reaching 160 cases per 100,000 Canadian children and youth in 2022. Between 2014 and 2022, making and distributing child pornography accounted for three-quarters of child pornography cases, while possessing or accessing child pornography accounted for the remainder. The rate of online child pornography increased 290% in that short period of time.

Girls were overrepresented as victims for all offence types over the nine-year period. The majority of victims of police-reported online sexual offences against children were girls, particularly girls between the ages of 12 and 17.

Incidents of non-consensual distribution of intimate images most often involved a youth victim and a youth accused. Nearly all—97%—child and youth victims between 2015 and 2022 were aged 12 to 17 years, with a median age of 15 years for girls and 14 years for boys. Nine in ten accused persons were minors. For one-third of youth victims, a casual acquaintance shared the victim's intimate images with others. The goal is that once the image has been uploaded, it can be uploaded again, even months after it has been viewed.

I am calling on my colleagues to refer this bill to committee so that it may be improved and become an example to the world. We must no longer allow sexual exploitation.

Bill C‑270 “amends the Criminal Code to prohibit a person from making, distributing or advertising pornographic material for commercial purposes without having first ascertained that, at the time the material was made, each person whose image is depicted in the material was 18 years of age or older and gave their express consent to their image being depicted.” To me, that is essential.

The voluntary agreement, in writing, of the person whose image is depicted in the pornographic material will be required before the content can be uploaded to the platforms.

Makers and distributors who do not comply with the requirements of the legislation will be subject to fines of up to half a million dollars and a prison sentence of up to two years. Alternatively, the offence may be punishable on summary conviction and liable to a fine of not more than $100,000. What is more, convicted distributors or makers will be subject to an order.

I could go on at length, but I have only 30 seconds left. I just want to close by saying that this is a serious subject that raises a lot of questions, that this bill must be referred to committee and that the Bloc Québécois will vote in favour of it.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Madam Speaker, New Democrats support, as all parties do, tackling the important issues that the bill before us seeks to tackle. We also know that there has been an explosion of sexual exploitation of individuals online without their consent and an explosion of child pornography. What we have to do is find those measures that would be effective in bringing an end to these heinous practices.

Like the member for Peace River—Westlock, I would like to support and salute the survivors who have told their tales, at much personal sacrifice and much personal anguish, publicly acknowledging what has happened to them and the impact it has had on their lives. We would not be making progress on these issues without that work by those survivors, so I think we all want to salute them for their bravery in taking up this problem.

However, the challenge with these issues is to find what will actually work to end sexual exploitation. We know that a lack of resources for enforcement is almost always at least equally important to any gaps in legislation. What we need to see is dedicated funding to specific and skilled police units to tackle these questions because it can become highly complex and highly convoluted in trying to bring these cases to prosecution, and we know that is one of the problems with the existing legislation. It is difficult to prosecute for these offences under the Criminal Code as it now stands.

We look forward, as New Democrats, to hearing from expert witnesses in committee on what measures will actually be the most effective in bringing an end to these practices, and whether and how the measures proposed in Bill C-270 would contribute to bringing an end to online sexual exploitation. The bill, in some senses, is very simple. It would require checking ID and keeping records of consent. Some would argue that the existing law already implicitly requires that, so is this a step that would make it easier to prosecute? I do not know the answer to that, but I am looking forward to hearing expert testimony on it.

While this legislation is not specific to women, it is important to acknowledge the disproportionate representation of women as victims of both child pornography and of sexual exploitation online without consent. However, I would also note that we have had a recent rash of cases of sexploitation or sextortion of young men who thought they had been speaking to other partners their own age online. They later find out that they were being threatened with the images they had shared being posted online and being asked for money or sexual favours to avoid that. Yes, it is primarily women, but we have seen this other phenomenon occurring where men pose as young women to get young boys to share those images.

Obviously, we need more education for young people on the dangers of sharing intimate images, although I am under no illusion that we can change the way young people relate to each other online and through their phones. Education would be important, but some measures to deal with these things when they happen are also important.

If we look at the Criminal Code, paragraph 162.1(1) already makes it illegal to distribute an intimate image without consent. Of course, child pornography, under a succeeding subsection, is also already illegal. This was first brought forward and added to the Criminal Code 11 years ago. I was a member of Parliament at that time, and the member for Peace River—Westlock joined us shortly after. It came in an omnibus bill brought forward by the Conservatives. In that bill, there were a number of things, to be honest, that New Democrats objected to, but when the bill, which was Bill C-13 at the time, was brought forward, our spokesperson Françoise Boivin offered to the government to split the bill, take out the section on online exploitation without consent and pass it through all stages in a single day. The Conservatives refused, at that point, to do that, and it took another year and a half to get that passed into law.

New Democrats have been supportive in taking these actions and have recognized its urgency for more than a decade. We are on board with getting the bill before us to committee and making sure that we find what is most effective in tackling these problems.

What are the problems? I see that there are principally two.

One, as I have mentioned before, is the difficulty of prosecution and the difficulty of making those who profit from this pay a price. All the prosecutors I have talked to have said that it is difficult to make these cases. It is difficult to investigate, and it is difficult to get convictions. Are there things we can do that would help make prosecution easier, and are the things suggested in the bill going to do that? I look forward to finding that out in committee.

The second problem is the problem of takedown, and we all know that once the images are uploaded, they are there forever. They are hard to get rid of. As members of the government's side have pointed out, there are measures in government Bill C-63 that would help with warrants of seizure, forfeiture, restitution and peace bonds in trying to get more effective action to take down the images once they have been posted. I am not an optimist about the ability to do that, but we seem to lack the tools we need now to make a stab at taking the images off-line. It is also important to remember that whatever we do here has to make our law more effective at getting those who are profiting from the images. That is really what the bill is aimed at, and I salute the member for Peace River—Westlock for that singular focus because I think that is really key.

We also have to be aware of unintended consequences. When subsection 162.1(1) became law, in court we ran into a problem fairly early on of minors who share private images between each other, because technically, under the law as it is written, that is illegal; it is child pornography, and it certainly was not the intention to capture 15-year-olds who share intimate images with each other.

Whenever we make these kinds of changes, we have to make sure they do not have unintended consequences. Whether we like the practices that young people engage in online or not is not the question. We just have to make sure we do not capture innocent people when we are trying to capture those who profit from exploitation. The second part, in terms of unintended consequences, is I think we have to keep in mind there are those who are engaged in lawful forms of sex work online, and we have to make sure they are not captured under the broad strokes of the bill.

Again, I am looking forward to hearing the testimony about what will work to tackle these problems. We know the images are already illegal, but we know we lack effective tools in the legal system both to prosecute and to get the images taken down. New Democrats are broadly supportive of the principles in the bill. We are looking forward to the expert testimony I am certain we will hear at committee about what will actually work in tackling the problem. I look forward to the early passage of the bill through to committee.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Madam Speaker, I have a lot to say about the bill. I will just start with a brief personal anecdote. I want to be very clear when I say this: I do not do this as victim porn or looking for sympathy. It is an example of how if somebody like myself, in a position of privilege, has a hard time accessing the justice system, what about others?

When I was a minister of the Crown, over 10 years ago, I received very explicit sexualized online threats, very graphic descriptions of how somebody was going to rape me, with what instruments, and how they were going to kill me. I was alone in a hotel room. My schedule had been published the day before, and I was terrified. The response at that time from law enforcement, and the process I had to go through as a minister of the Crown, to attempt to get justice in a situation that did not involve intimate images, sticks with me to this day. If I had to go through that at that time, what hope is there for somebody who does not have my position of privilege?

What the bill would do is recognize that the forms of discrimination and harassment that, as my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke says, disproportionately impact women, sexual minorities and other persons, have outpaced Parliament's ability to change the law. Here we are today.

Briefly, I want to respond to some of the points of debate. First of all, my colleague from the Liberals suggested that we expedite Bill C-63. That bill has been so widely panned by such a variety of disparate stakeholders that the government has not even scheduled it for debate in the House yet.

Second, and this is particularly for my colleagues who are looking to support this, to send the bill through to second reading, Bill C-63 would not provide criminal provisions either for any of the activities that are in the bill or for some of the other instances that have been brought up in the House for debate tonight, particularly the non-consensual distribution of deepnudes and deepfake pornography.

I raised the issue in the House over seven months ago. The intimate image distribution laws that are currently in the Criminal Code were only put in place in 2014, about a decade after social media came into play, and after Rehtaeh Parsons and Amanda Todd tragically died due to an absence in the law. Seven months have passed, and the government could have dealt with updating the Criminal Code with a very narrow provision that the Canadian Bar Association and multiple victims' rights groups have asked for, yet it has chosen not to.

There are so many articles that have been written about what is wrong with what is in Bill C-63 that we now need to start paying attention to what is wrong with it because of what is not in there. There is no update to Canada's Criminal Code provisions on the distribution of intimate images produced by artificial intelligence that are known as deepnudes.

I want to be very clear about this. There are websites right now where anyone in this place can download an app to their phone, upload any image of any person, including any person in here, and imagine what that looks like during an election campaign, erase people's clothes, and make it look like legitimate pornography. Imagine, then, that being distributed on social media without consent. Our Criminal Code, the Canadian Bar Association, as well as law professors, and I could read case after case, say that our laws do not update that.

At the beginning of February, there was a Canadian Press article that said that the government would update the law in Bill C-63, but it did not. Instead, what it chose to do was put in place a three-headed bureaucracy, an entirely extrajudicial process that amounts to a victim of these crimes being told to go to a bureaucratic complaints department instead of being able to get restitution under the law. Do we know what that says to a perpetrator? It says, “Go ahead; do it. There is no justice for you.” It boggles my mind that the government has spent all of this time while countless women and vulnerable Canadians are being harassed right now.

I also want to highlight something my colleague from Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke said, which is that there is a lack of resources for law enforcement across the country. While everybody had a nice couple of years talking about defunding the police, how many thousands of women across this country, tens of thousands or maybe even millions, experienced online harassment and were told, when they finally got the courage to go to the police, that it was in their head?

One of those women was killed in Calgary recently. Another of those women is Mercedes Stephenson, who talked about her story about trying to get justice for online harassment. If women like Mercedes Stephenson and I have a hard time getting justice, how is a teenager in Winnipeg in a high school supposed to get any sort of justice without clarity in the Criminal Code if there are deepnudes spread about her?

I will tell members how it goes, because it happened in a high school in Winnipeg after I raised this in the House of Commons. I said it was going to happen and it happened. Kids were posting artificial intelligence-generated deepnudes and deepfakes. They were harassing peers, harassing young women. Do members know what happened? No charges were laid. Why were no charges laid? According to the article, it was because of ambiguity in the Criminal Code around artificial intelligence-created deepnudes. Imagine that. Seven months have passed. It is not in Bill C-63.

At least the bill before us is looking at both sides of the coin on the Criminal Code provisions that we need to start looking at. I want to ensure that the government is immediately updating the Criminal Code to say that if it is illegal to distribute intimate images of a person that have been taken with a camera, it should be the exact same thing if it has been generated by a deepnude artificial intelligence. This should have been done a long time ago.

Before Bill C-63 came out, Peter Menzies, the former head of the CRTC, talked about the need to have non-partisan consensus and narrowly scoped bills so it could pass the House, but what the government has chosen to do with Bill C-63 is put in place a broad regulatory system with even more nebulousness on Criminal Code provisions. A lot of people have raised concerns about what the regulatory system would do and whether or not it would actually be able to address these things, and the government has not even allowed the House to debate that yet.

What we have in front of us, from my perspective, is a clear call to action to update the Criminal Code where we can, in narrow provisions, so law enforcement has the tools it needs to ensure that victims of these types of crimes can receive justice. What is happening is that technology is rapidly outpacing our ability to keep up with the law, and women are dying.

I am very pleased to hear the multipartisan nature of debate on these types of issues, and that there is at least a willingness to bring forward these types of initiatives to committee to have the discussions, but it does concern me that the government has eschewed any sort of update of the Criminal Code on a life-versus-life basis for regulators. Essentially what I am worried about is that it is telling victims to go to the complaints department, an extrajudicial process, as opposed to giving law enforcement the tools it needs.

I am sure there will be much more debate on this, but at the end of the day, seven months have passed since I asked the government to update the Criminal Code to ensure that deepnudes and deepfakes are in the Criminal Code under the non-consensual intimate image distribution laws. Certainly what we are talking about here is ensuring that law enforcement has every tool it needs to ensure that women and, as some of my colleagues have raised here, other sexual minorities are not victimized online through these types of technologies.

[Ben Carr, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to join the second reading debate with respect to Bill C-270, an act to amend the Criminal Code on pornographic material, which was introduced on April 28, 2022, by the member for Peace River—Westlock.

I want to take an opportunity off the top to thank an organization that has played a critical role in advocacy in terms of dealing with so many of the challenges that the members opposite have raised. This organization, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, is located in the heart of my riding in Winnipeg South Centre. I want to thank Lianna McDonald, Signy Arnason, Noni Classen and the entire team at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection for the work that they have done and continue to do in helping to protect children across this country.

I know we all agree that non-consensual distribution of intimate images, child sexual abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking, as well as any images of such conduct, are among the most heinous crimes. I know that we are all deeply concerned that depictions of these crimes have been uploaded and shared on online platforms.

Ensuring that our policies and legislation effectively address this serious issue is a priority for our government. Victims must be protected, and digital platforms have a critical role to play in protecting them.

I know we all agree that non-consensual distribution of intimate images, child sexual abuse, sexual assault and human trafficking, as well as any images of such conduct, are among the most heinous crimes. I know that we are deeply concerned—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, NDP, Carol Hughes]

The hon. member will have eight minutes the next time this matter is before the House.

The time provided for the consideration of Private Members' Business has now expired, and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.