Thank you, Mr. Chair, committee, for allowing us to come today to talk about issues related to your review of PIPEDA. I don't think we'll be very long in our opening remarks. Our issues are pretty specific. We just really want to raise those for you, and we'll be happy to try to answer any questions.
Very briefly, the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime is a national non-profit advocacy group for victims. We work with victims from across the country in providing direct advocacy services. We also try to raise issues with all levels of government, advocate on behalf of victims to promote their rights and their interests, and promote laws to better protect them. It's that latter role that I'm here in today, to try to promote some amendments and raise some awareness on issues that we think require some attention to better protect children, in this case, from Internet child sexual exploitation.
I should mention that we are funded by the Canadian Police Association. We have been sponsored by the police association since 1993, so we have had a lot of interaction with various law enforcement officers across the country. Some of those are investigators who work directly with these issues.
Contrary to a lot of public opinion, I think what law enforcement unfortunately faces on a day-to-day basis in dealing with these issues is not children frolicking on beaches or pictures of kids running around in their underwear; it is the rape and torture of children, sometimes babies, by men, and often their fathers or uncles. Those images are kept and put on the Internet for anyone and everyone to see. They are traded like baseball cards. There are thousands of images of children all around the world. Last week, we saw a huge bust resulting from Australia that has had impacts in many countries, Canada included.
One of the issues we want to speak to today is what the impact of PIPEDA is on law enforcement's efforts to try to address these issues. In our interaction with the members of the Canadian Police Association that we deal with from time to time, and also in following media reports, it seems there is some confusion with regard to the PIPEDA legislation and whether or not Internet service providers can or should provide information to law enforcement regarding subscriber information, like people's names and addresses. It's our position, very succinctly, that ISPs should frankly not have discretion to share that information with law enforcement efforts. At the very least, with this legislation, we need to make it clear that ISPs can and should share information.
We have provided a brief. I apologize for not getting it to you sooner so that it could be translated, but we have left copies with the clerk.
The issue of child pornography has been raised in various committees over the last couple of years. We sent a brief to all members of Parliament six or seven years ago about child pornography, along with some recommendations that we had made at that time. Some of them have been implemented, like the creation of a luring offence and the creation of a national tip line, which is now in operation and had I think 6,000 tips in the first year of operations alone.
Various other committees have heard from experts who have far more expertise in this area than us. I just want to read a very quick quote from OPP Detective Inspector Angie Howe, who spoke to a Senate committee in 2005 on Bill C-2, which had a variety of different measures, some of them regarding child pornography. What she said then was:
The images are getting more violent and the children in the photos are getting younger. As recently as one year ago, we did not often see pictures with babies, where now it is normal to see babies in many collections that we find. There is even a highly sought-after series on the Internet of a newborn baby being violated. She still has her umbilical cord attached; she is that young.
I say that not to shock you or disgust you—although I suspect you are disgusted—but just to really get the message across of what it is law enforcement is fighting.
In our efforts to raise these issues, we have heard of the notion of Big Brother and that law enforcement wants access to all this information. What they're doing every single day is sitting in front of a computer, sifting through tens of thousand of images. One accused person could have 10,000 images of children being raped and tortured. That's what law enforcement is dealing with, and those are the children we come here today to try to speak for.
You're dealing with PIPEDA, which is an act relating to privacy. Can you imagine any greater violation of your privacy than having the most awful images of you captured for anyone and everyone to see? Unfortunately, no one is speaking for those children. No one is talking about their privacy rights.
We have a Privacy Commissioner who I'm sure does an absolutely fabulous job on a variety of issues, but as far as I know, she has not once spoken for those children. Later, I'll refer to a letter she wrote to us about the PIPEDA legislation and what the discretion really is for ISPs.
In the letter, she says that ISPs may look at this on a case-by-case basis—frankly, a case-by-case basis is not good enough for us anyway—but nowhere did she talk about what her office is doing to raise the interests of those children. No one is speaking for them, and that's one of the reasons why we came here today. We're here to try to lend a voice to their concerns and their issues. What's being been done to protect their privacy rights? We have to balance that with the privacy rights of Internet users, but part of the equation has to be the privacy interests of those children.
The issue for us has been raised in the media by law enforcement and in a couple of court cases. It's with respect to subsection 7(3) of the legislation, which sets out the provisions where an organization may disclose personal information. The first condition, as you will see, is with a warrant. Obviously, if police go get a warrant, then the ISP has to comply.
There is, unfortunately, some confusion with the second stipulation, which refers to a response to a request by a government institution that has lawful authority to obtain the personal information for the purpose of enforcing a law, carrying out an investigation, or gathering intelligence. It's that issue of “lawful authority” I think that has led to some confusion, and our basic suggestion to you is to clarify that.
There was a case in Ontario in which Toronto police were investigating someone. They sent a letter of request for information, pursuant to a child exploitation investigation, to Bell Canada. Bell Canada cooperated with that and provided information to the police, but this was challenged in court. At that time, the court said that the section I referred to does not establish what “lawful authority” is. The court went on to say that really, in that court's mind, a warrant was needed. Fortunately, that decision was overturned by a higher court. And just for your information, the search led to the discovery of a large child pornography collection.
But that's the issue that this committee should task itself with. What is lawful authority? If law enforcement were here to speak to this—and I would encourage you to actually have some of the investigators come to talk about their experiences with PIPEDA—I think what you will find is that a lot of the larger ISPs tend to cooperate with law enforcement even if they don't get warrants but just have letters of authorization. Not all of them do, though. For some ISPs, use of PIPEDA is left to their interpretation. We're asking for your committee to clarify that or recommend that it be clarified.
People ask why police don't just get warrants. One of your previous witnesses, I think from the industry department, referred to the speed with which these things sometimes happen. At the time, I think the chair actually asked a question about a case from St. Thomas, where there was live abuse going on with a child. Sometimes there just isn't time to go get a warrant.
The other thing, from our perspective, is that police don't need a warrant. What we're talking about is someone's name and address, which they can get off a licence plate. They don't need a warrant to get your name and address if they see you speeding away from the scene of a crime or failing to stop. Are we really going to give better protection or more enforcement for people who fail to stop than we are for those who might be abusing children?
In some jurisdictions, some pawn shops are required to have information about customers who come in and sell merchandise. That information can be used to track back stolen property. Is stolen property really more important than our children?
That's the basic thrust of our testimony here today. Again, we're not experts in law enforcement, but these are the concerns that law enforcement have expressed both publicly and to us, if you look at some of the media reports. Just last week, over this bust, you'll note that the head of the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, from the RCMP here in Ottawa, said we have to rely on ISPs to help us. Frankly, we don't think there should be any discretion for ISPs to help law enforcement, certainly in these cases. At the minimum, though, we would ask this committee to clarify subsection 7(3).
We would also ask that some consideration be given to perhaps amending the statement of principles of the legislation, to make it clear that the legislation was never intended to negate or interfere with the moral and ethical duties of companies. Companies will often complain about the costs of these things, about what it costs them to cooperate with law enforcement. It's our argument that we all have a duty to cooperate with law enforcement. We're seeing now, in British Columbia, twelve citizens potentially giving a year of their life to jury duty. We all have to do that. There are consequences and there are costs for us to do that.
We work with women who are abused by partners, who testify in court and put themselves sometimes at great risk to assist with the enforcement of the law. We're all part of the solution here, and I think it's incumbent upon ISPs to step up and do their part.
I can speak a little more to the cost issue if that's something you want me to speak to.
The last issue I would raise is whether this committee could use its influence to encourage the Privacy Commissioner to take a more active role in protecting the privacy interests of children.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.