Evidence of meeting #19 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 43rd Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was site.
A recording is available from Parliament.
1:35 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Have you made any money off of Serena's exploitation?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
At this time I do not know. We don't know if the content was there. We don't know the timeline. We don't have access to the video because to this day we have not been given enough information to identify the video, the claims that were being made because she said that she sent emails. I am not saying that any of that is untrue, so please, I don't want to be misrepresented on that. However, at this point did she—
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
We don't know if she used an email like 123@gmail.com. That's where we're having an issue, trying to establish a timeline.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Do you know that in Canada child pornography includes the depiction of minors?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
Yes, we're aware of the laws in Canada.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Can you confirm that Pornhub video titles and search recommendations never included the depiction of somebody being under 18?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
We purposely block all of those from our searches. We have a running list of banned words that we use, which basically stops those terms from being searched. Even if the term is not part of our banned list—and I know this was an object of one of Nicholas Kristof's articles, the “14yo” and “14 yo”—we had actually blocked “14yo” from actually returning any results.
In one instance when it was “14 yo”—I can't remember which one it was—it did return results, but just because you're asking for the content, it doesn't actually mean that the content is there. It's a textual-based search system, so it will see the word “14” and it will see the word “yo” and it might return something based on 14, like “Dave's favourite videos, volume 14,” and the “29 yo” because it's textual based.
The system is not designed to detect intent, but as soon as we do see these variations, what we do is add them to the database so they can't be searched for. On top of that—
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Your brief claims that you report child sexual abuse materials to NCMEC.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Can you confirm that there were no reports from Pornhub or Mindgeek to NCMEC in 2019?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
At this point they were manually done; they weren't automatically done, so they were done ad hoc. As we were made aware of them, we would send them off.
What we did in 2020 was to streamline the system to make sure that everything would go through, and it was all consolidated and everyone had a path. We built it into our content management system and then it went to—
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
In 2019, there were no reports of CSAM to NCMEC from either Mindgeek or Pornhub. Can you confirm that?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
Not at this juncture. I don't have that information handy.
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
I definitely know, though, we did work with all of the—
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
My research on it says there have been no reports.
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
On our side we know that we've worked with all levels of authorities, whether the RCMP, provincial police, municipal police, Interpol, FBI—
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
—and to the point where we were actually commended in Canadian newspapers as being one of the fastest repliers and easiest companies to work with. This was actually done by an RCMP officer.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
It's been reported that you have registered to report child sexual abuse material to NCMEC in 2020. On what date did you register for that?
1:40 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Entreprise MindGeek Canada
To automatically review the reporting, I believe it was in early 2020. I don't have the exact date with me here, but that is the automated system that we're discussing.
As I said, this has been a constant evolution of our company and it's been at the core of what we've always wanted to accomplish, but in some means we are a start-up still and are still growing.
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Are you familiar with the mandatory reporting of child Internet pornography legislation in Canada?
1:40 p.m.
Conservative
Arnold Viersen Conservative Peace River—Westlock, AB
Under this law, starting in 2011, you would have to report this to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, not NCMEC and the RCMP. Failure to do this would result in jail times. Are you aware of that?