Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 19th, 2021

[Megan Walker]

Absolutely, it's a criminal offence. It's very clear in the Criminal Code that this is a criminal offence. To the lawyer who was on—I'm sorry I've just lost your name in the lateness of the afternoon—I want you to know that everything you've said is so important. It's why we came up with a recommendation that there be some sort of a Canada Revenue Agency audit that would examine all of their subsidiary companies and try to determine if they're compliant with the relevant legislation. I don't believe they are. They're so secretive. As you know, you've had difficulty finding information. I think we cannot do this on our own. We need CRA to come in and assist us in determining just how extensive the tentacles of this company extend.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Ms. Mickelwait, were you looking to jump in there as well?

[Laila Mickelwait]

I would like to. Thank you so much.

MindGeek came before this committee a couple of weeks ago and said they were a partner of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. I would suggest they're not a partner. I think you should ask NCMEC about that statement. I think they would tell you that they're not a partner.

What MindGeek did was what they should have done many years ago, which is finally register, in 2020, to begin reporting to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in the U.S.A. On the 2019 ESP report for NCMEC, there were zero reports from MindGeek or Pornhub. Not only that, we have evidence of their senior community manager telling a user online, publicly, who had said, “There's child porn all over Pornhub”, and what could they do, that they did not need to report it to the authorities, to just report it to them. In that same year, there were no reports from Pornhub to NCMEC. Moderators have told me that they didn't even know what NCMEC was—the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. I would think these reviewers would need to know who that agency was in order to be taking the proper procedure.

I'll lastly say that victims have said that sometimes they have reported their child exploitation to Pornhub and then gone over to NCMEC to report there as well, and they discovered that there was no report coming from Pornhub or MindGeek about their particular instance of exploitation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Bowe.

[Michael Bowe]

I'll be really quick.

Not only did they not report it, but there were times when they were forced to report it because of the people who were bringing it to their attention, and on their site, instead of saying that this was taken down by NCMEC, they would put up a notice that said this was disabled because there was a violation of copyright. There's this whole attempt to conceal the fact that this stuff was on their site.

They also would do that when people would call out certain child pornography or assault tapes. They would disable the tape, scrub the page to take out the obvious indications that there was child pornography on there, but leave the link up. The reason they did that.... When they came and testified to you and said, “Why would we do this? It's bad for our business,” that was an outright falsehood.

As I testified before, this is all about search engine optimization. They could disable the video, but they kept all the other content up there such that....

Ms. Mickelwait mentioned a bunch of very well-known examples of this woman who committed suicide. There have been some very high-profile instances where stuff was posted to Pornhub. If you were to put that name and something like “sex tape” into a search engine today, the first search result will be Pornhub, even though the video's not there. When you put that search language into Google or Yahoo, it brings you to Pornhub first. Then, even though the video's not there, Pornhub's algorithm will guide you to other like-type material. That's the point. That's what they were doing.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Yes, Mr. Angus.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I know we're going late here because we're all very much seized with this, but I would like to ask about some documents.

I'm not sure if we asked for these documents, but I did ask them about their legal obligations under Canadian law and that they have to report every incident on the service to the police—and that's Canadian police. It's not NCMEC. They said they'd filed in the U.S. We didn't get to go back to that, but under Canadian law, they are legally obligated to file with police as well as the centre for protection here in Canada.

Can we ask them if they will provide us with the list? I think I had asked them, but I'm not sure if we got that. This would be the list of how many cases they have referred to U.S. or Canadian or international authorities of known cases of child abuse that have been raised to them.

Are we asking for that?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I'm looking for and seeing what I understand to be consent from the committee members that we do request that information, if we have not already.

We will work with the analysts and the clerk to ensure that this is a request.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Is it on the list?

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I see heads nodding in confirmation that this would be requested.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Okay. Thank you for that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mr. Angus.

Ms. Mickelwait, we'll turn to you.

[Laila Mickelwait]

I have just one last comment. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share this. I think it's relevant to this conversation.

There's another piece of information that I was made aware of through a MindGeek whistle-blower moderator that I think should be fully investigated. It's this idea that they have multiple different folders that they're supposed to put flagged content into that is illegal or child sexual abuse material. He suggested that there is something called “Folder A”, where very young-looking children go that are under the age of 12, but there is also “Folder B”, which is used for 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds. He suggested that he was not confident that this was being reported, even though that is illegal child pornography. I think, as a point of investigation, it's very important to be looking into that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

I want to thank you, witnesses, for joining us and for extending your time to be with us. We apologize for the early delays, but I believe the testimony shared with us has been essential and will be profoundly impactful in terms of the study and where we go.

Colleagues, I know this was an unconventional way to end the meeting, in terms of more of an open discussion, but I believe it was a productive use of our time. I do appreciate your indulgence in allowing me to undertake the meeting in that way.

Committee members, our next meeting will be Monday, February 22. I look forward to seeing you there. If there's anything you need, please contact me directly or go through the clerk. Again, thank you for your indulgence in extending the time.

I'll adjourn now to allow you to get on with your weekend. Thanks so much.

The meeting is adjourned.