Canadian Heritage Committee on June 11th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I am sorry. We have a certain time with votes, Philip. Mrs. Thomas suggested five minutes before the vote. We have time for Ms. Selby to finish and for one more person in order to get all of our witnesses done before we vote.

I'm sorry, Dr. Selby.

[Taleeb Noormohamed, Liberal, Vancouver Granville, BC]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, we actually don't. We have until 5:39, do we not? That leaves three more minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

We have 13 minutes and 29 seconds before we vote. That leaves room for one five-minute presenter—that's the last witness—and then our five minutes before we vote.

Thank you.

Dr. Selby, I'm very sorry, but you will have a chance to elaborate during the question period.

I will now go to Marc-Antoine Vachon—

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Go ahead, Ms. Thomas.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

I'm sorry, no; you just robbed her of her last 30 seconds. Please give that back to the witness.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Do you mean the last 12 seconds? All right.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

No, it's 30 seconds, because you continuously interrupted her.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I am here to keep the time, but go ahead.

You have 30 seconds, Dr. Selby.

[Dr. Jocelyn Monsma Selby]

When I began training in this area, common wisdom said that it would take 15 to 20 years from accessing problematic sexual content on the Internet before individuals realized they had a problem. I'm now seeing 17- to 19-year-olds in treatment.

I'm an independent third party voice and do not receive compensation from any organization, including the adult industry, for my work in advocating for the protection of children.

Thank you for hearing me out today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Dr. Selby. I'm sorry, but I have to keep to the time we have decided on as a committee.

We will now hear from Marc-Antoine Vachon, a lieutenant with the Sûreté du Québec.

Mr. Vachon, you have five minutes.

[Marc-Antoine Vachon, Lieutenant, Sûreté du Québec]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to begin by greeting all the members of the committee and thanking them for giving me the opportunity to speak to them here today.

My name is Marc‑Antoine Vachon. I have been in charge of the Internet child sexual exploitation investigation division at the Sûreté du Québec since 2020. I have spent most of my career working on and fighting crimes of a sexual nature. I have been mainly involved in this fight since 2006.

Sexual violence, especially when the crime is against a minor, remains a concern for the public, police organizations and government authorities.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the number of reports of child pornography is constantly on the rise. Since 2019, at the Sûreté du Québec, we have noted a 295% increase in the number of reports received and processed, from 1,137 to 4,493. Police organizations need to adapt to changing behaviours of child pornography users, as well as constantly evolving technologies.

As a provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec is responsible for coordinating investigations of sexual crimes against children committed over the Internet or using electronic equipment, including child pornography, sextortion and luring.

The fight against sexual violence has been at the heart of our priorities for many years. In this regard, since 2012, the Sûreté du Québec has been pursuing its provincial strategy against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet, which focuses on prevention, technology, training, coordination and repression.

Over the past five years, we have been able to improve this structure thanks to additional funding from the federal and provincial governments. The results clearly show the usefulness of this funding.

In concrete terms, three specialized investigative teams and a coordination team are dedicated specifically to countering this phenomenon by ensuring that reports are processed; conducting and coordinating investigations involving sexual predators and consumers of child pornography at the provincial level; partnering with various reporting agencies such as Cybertip and the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre, located here in Ottawa and managed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; providing operational expertise to various internal and external requesters, including municipal police forces and the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions; identifying and stopping predator networks distributing child pornography; identifying, through various means of investigation, individuals who produce and make available child pornography on the territory.

The implementation of the integrated child pornography enforcement team in October 2021 has contributed to a more effective fight against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. This team, made up of members from the Sûreté du Québec, as well as from municipal police forces in Montreal, Quebec City, Laval, Longueuil and Gatineau, conducts joint operations mainly aimed at producers and distributors of child pornography.

In the fall of 2023, this team coordinated an interprovincial operation with our colleagues in Ontario and New Brunswick as part of the “Respecter” project.

Completing the project's various investigations, mainly aimed at identifying the distributors of child pornography in these areas, required the participation of 470 police officers and 31 police organizations. The coordination done by the Sûreté du Québec now makes it possible to strengthen our capacity to take action against the sexual exploitation of children; synergize law enforcement efforts against a global problem; optimize case management when there is a potential situation of child exploitation; identify more sexual predators on the Internet; increase the number of arrests; and, of course, prevent potential minor victims.

The Sûreté du Québec is actively working to combat the access to, and the production, possession and distribution of child pornography in order to protect the most vulnerable and bring sexual predators to justice. Since 2019, efforts have made it possible to arrest more than 1,100 individuals and identify more than 230 real victims on our territory, the province of Quebec.

I want to emphasize that the fight against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet is possible thanks to the participation and collaboration of all actors and partners who care about the well-being of victims and who take relevant action, both police officers and citizens—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You have 30 seconds, Lieutenant Vachon.

[Marc-Antoine Vachon]

—who are invited to report any situation of sexual abuse to the police.

Thank you for your attention.

I look forward to our discussion during the question and answer period.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We now have seven minutes and 14 seconds before the vote. That comes as close to the five minutes as we can get, so I will suspend and we will try to get the House online for you to look at what's going on in the House.

We are suspended.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

The clerk would like to report back to you on your request that she find out about resources.

[The Clerk]

Our partners have confirmed that, should the committee wish, we do have resources available until 7 p.m.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I shall now begin.

Go ahead, Mr. Lawrence.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

I just have a quick comment. We'll wait for Taleeb to come back if it were to go to a vote, but I'm hoping we don't have to do that.

Mr. Champoux from the Bloc had a brilliant suggestion that we just allow for enough time to do one full round, which would take us to between 6:30 and 7:00. We'll go ahead and then we can discuss it as we go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

One full round is 24 minutes.

We'll go with the six-minute round, so I'll begin with Mrs. Thomas for the Conservatives.

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I have a point of order.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Chair, I would like to clarify something.

I completely agree that we should do a full round of questions and comments, but we are starting a little earlier than I had expected. If, at the end of this round—

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

The interpretation's not working.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

There's no interpretation. Can we please have interpretation?

I'm sorry, Martin. You'll have to repeat yourself—

[Michael Coteau, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

I'm sorry to interrupt you. There wasn't English—