Information & Ethics Committee on Feb. 19th, 2021

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Colleagues, we'll call this meeting back to order.

For the next portion of our meeting, we have three witnesses and we have them on a panel to provide additional testimony. We thank these witnesses for joining us.

We have Francis Fortin from Université de Montréal. He's an associate professor at the school of criminology. We also have Laila Mickelwait, who is the founder of #Traffickinghub movement. We also have Megan Walker, the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre.

We thank you so much for being here with us this afternoon.

We'll turn to Mr. Fortin to begin with his opening statement. We'll allow the other two members of our panel to follow their testimony, and then we'll have some questions for the three of you.

Mr. Fortin, go ahead.

[Dr. Francis Fortin, Associate Professor, School of Criminology, Université de Montréal, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

Madam Clerk and members of the committee, I am very glad to be here this afternoon.

My name is Francis Fortin, and I am an assistant professor at the Université de Montréal's school of criminology, as well as a researcher at the International Centre for Comparative Criminology. The focus of my research is cybercrime and the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. Before getting into research, I spent 12 years working in cyber investigation and criminal intelligence at the Sûreté du Québec. I've authored a number of scholarly articles and three books, as well as a dozen or so chapters on cyberpedophiles.

Having a limited amount of time, I chose to divide my presentation into three parts. First, I will discuss options to encourage corporate compliance. Second, I will talk about ways to support and guide victims. Third and finally, I will address prevention and research.

Before I get into that, though, I want to say a few words about the current context. If you ask law enforcement agencies to break down the cases they deal with, two main categories emerge. The first category involves minors, and in those cases, a fast lane of sorts exists. Canada has a series of legal measures that make it easier to remove some child pornography content.

The second category involves adults, and the law is more vague in relation to those cases. For example, an adult who files a police complaint can be told that their case is a civil litigation matter. One of the witnesses gave such an example earlier. Basically, it's considered a civil matter, and the burden of taking the necessary steps falls on the complainant. As I see it, that's problematic.

Keep in mind that the revenge porn trend emerged a few years ago and shows no signs of slowing. As far as I know, Canada still has no active measures that allow authorities to take action in those cases.

Now I will turn to solutions, or ways to encourage corporate compliance. The key is to hold adult content providers accountable. One of this morning's witnesses mentioned the use of digital signatures. A number of worthwhile initiatives exist and are deployed mainly by law enforcement. Police keep child pornography databases and rely on digital signatures. Someone alluded to electronic fingerprinting earlier. These images have to be able to be shared on all platforms, including Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon, the GAFA platforms. I know that Google and Facebook use lists they obtain in the United States. These platforms should be required to block content that has previously been deemed illegal.

The requirement to report content is another option, although it remains a thorny issue. A tremendous effort is needed to educate web giants on the importance of reporting. The current approach tends to involve removing the content and claiming that nothing can be done. Things are even worse on the platforms of the web giants. They refuse to even remove the content. That is a far cry from relying on the platforms for co-operation and encouraging them to report issues to the authorities. Reporting is essential to investigate suspects who repeatedly engage in this behaviour.

Another option is to prevent content from being shared anonymously. It's easy to see how knowing and validating the identity of individuals who spread this content would significantly decrease the risks associated with illegal content. That would result in platforms having trustworthy content providers, since new users would ultimately have to undergo verification to gain platforms' trust.

Litigation is another avenue, as one of the witnesses mentioned. One of the benefits of involving the police is that they assess the complaint to determine whether it is founded.

I think that's an important step. I don't think platforms, content providers or anyone else should be doing an assessment of the complaint, especially in cases where there is a consensus. I'll come back to that point later.

The prompt removal of the content in question is an important consideration.

In all the cases you've heard about, there's one thing to remember: it's a race against time. In order for the parties to satisfy their legal obligations, it may be appropriate for companies to immediately suspend access to the content once it has been confirmed that there are reasonable grounds for doing so. That would happen even before guilt had been established. In this scenario, reasonable grounds would lead to the prompt suspension of content access.

I think it's important to consider issuing an operating licence as a way to support all of these measures. Companies would have to satisfy those compliance requirements in order to operate. It could be done through the adoption of an ISO standard or the issuing of a licence to operate in Canada.

The second thing I'd like to talk about is support and guidance for victims.

It's clear from their stories that they found themselves fighting the situation on their own. They were up against something that they didn't understand, something that had never happened to them. Obviously, that's extremely difficult.

Basically, there has to be a shift towards victim support. That means creating a new position, a victim liaison of sorts, who would help and guide victims. As soon as problematic content on a platform was flagged, that liaison would get involved.

Whenever a new case came to the attention of police or other front-line workers, they would contact the person designated to guide and support the victim. That person's role would be to quickly assess the complaint, and respond accordingly and swiftly. Establishing such a role would help victims because the liaison worker would be familiar with the process, know what steps to take and know who to contact at the main providers. That would prevent the cat-and mouse-game the victim gets caught up in, figuring out on her own what to do and who is responsible under the law. There would be a single person dealing with the different platforms.

A list could be drawn up outlining the steps to take when an incident of this nature occurs, similar to the process in the case of an accident. On one hand, police handle the investigation and deal with the criminal aspect, and on the other, the liaison steps in to manage the accident, so to speak. Furthermore, that person could—should, in fact—have the necessary powers to be effective.

The liaison could work with police and organizations involved in preventing sexual exploitation. In fact, I could readily see victims groups, even the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, taking on that role in the future.

A novel approach would be to establish a special victims task force, which would bring together police and liaison workers, and have all of the necessary legal tools to track down content. The task force would, of course, uncover information about suspects, but would not be responsible for the follow-up. The information would be turned over to the appropriate investigative authorities, and the task force would focus on tracking down content and ensuring platforms comply with the new measures. If Canada were to introduce an operating licence system, as I mentioned earlier, it would make the task force's job easier, as would having the contact information of those in charge.

That brings me to my third point. I want to underscore the importance of focusing on prevention in schools.

A continued focus on awareness is needed to make sure young people understand the significance of pictures and videos. Victims readily put their trust in people or technology. Many cases involve young people who trusted apps and sites like Snapchat because they felt secure knowing that the content would be removed. They ended up realizing, however, that their pictures and videos were shared without their consent.

Lastly, I want to stress how relevant research is.

In Canada and the U.S., we have no evidence focused on the phenomenon. The sexual exploitation of children on the Internet is hard to measure. I recommend that the government adopt measures to make it easier to access data, so that researchers like myself can build a body of evidence to effectively inform public policy.

I have been working on this problem for nearly 20 years now. I don't think we can rely on the industry to regulate itself. That's quite clear from the stories you've heard.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you so much.

We'll turn to Mrs. Mickelwait now for her opening statement.

[Laila Mickelwait, Sex Trafficking Expert, Founder of Traffickinghub Movement, As an Individual]

Thank you.

For anyone who's viewing this online and also for the committee, I want to offer a content warning before I get started of graphic, very offensive language and descriptions of sexual violence. I don't do this to be sensational. I do it because I think it's important for the committee to have an accurate idea and understanding of the situation with the content on Pornhub without mincing words.

As I proceed, I want to ask the committee to keep in mind that CEO Feras Antoon said to this committee, “every single piece of content is viewed by our human moderators”—every single piece of content.

COO David Tassillo said, “There should be zero videos tabbed under either [child pornography or non-consensual acts] categories. Those categories are banned from being used on our site, as the keywords are.” They said, “child abuse material has no place on our platform. It makes us lose money.”

I believe it's important to elevate the voices of survivors, and I want to read some quotes and testimonies from survivors who have reached out to me over the past year.

Kate said, “I was 15 years old. My ex was 20. He was into homemade videos and stuff so he had videotaped us having sex. One day he said, 'Let me show you something'. He pulled up Pornhub on his phone and showed me that he had posted a video of us having sex. I tried to contact Pornhub and get them to take it down, but they never contacted me back or did anything about it. He also posted my 'sexy pics' on his account. Grown men and women were looking and watching me there. I'm disgusted.”

Beth said, “I was 16 and I was drunk once at a friend's party. I woke up. I was naked and pictures of me were on Pornhub, along with my name and my phone number. I had calls and texts to the point that I changed my number.”

Nicki said, “When I was 14 years old, I made the decision that changed my life. I was having a sexual FaceTime call. I showed him areas of my body that were private. I didn't know at the time but he was recording and he had uploaded it to Pornhub. The name of the video even had the words 'young teen' but that was not enough for Pornhub to analyze it and make sure it was consensual or legal. Years later my classmates found it on the website and told me about it. I was 16 when they found it. The first one had over one million views. We got the first one taken down, but the identical video was posted over and over again. I reported it to the police, and they opened an investigation. They told me they had contacted Pornhub to make sure it wouldn't be shown anymore, but the video was posted again. During these times of being posted multiple times, I was bullied by my entire school. Every boy and girl in my high school saw my body, and it changed my life.”

Sarah said, “I found out an explicit video of me was posted to Pornhub. I was underage. I did not send it to anyone to the best of my recollection, and it got hacked from my phone. I was horrified and I reported it and filed a complaint. Police took a statement. I'm waiting for the detective to contact me. Even if the video is taken down it could always come back. This could ruin my life and my future. I'm terrified and I'm traumatized.”

Anastasia said, “There's a video on their site that was taken of me without my knowledge while I was underage. It is still up on their site despite my reporting it numerous times, stating that I'm underage in the video and that it was taken and posted without my consent.”

Linda said, “I'm now 20 years old and I'm a sex and porn trafficking survivor. At the age of nine, my biological mother sold me in exchange for drugs and for money. This happened until I was rescued at the age of 17 and placed in a safe house. For eight years I was raped and beaten, and the video was taped by hundreds of men, women and even married couples. I never thought I would live to be 18 years old. I was hospitalized dozens of times and one time I was forced to drink ammonia until I passed out and was raped for hours after that, even though my mouth and my throat were burning. I was forced to have sex with other children, especially young girls. I still have nightmares and extreme PTSD from this, but it's not fair that my life is so hard now because I was forced into a life of pornography as a child. I've had to get police involved on multiple occasions to get these videos removed from RedTube, owned by MindGeek, and Pornhub, of me being raped as a minor. I don't understand why it's so difficult. Please stop allowing people to make money off the torture and the coercion of children. It's not fair.”

Keira said, “At the age of 15 I was coerced into being filmed during a sex act, and that video was uploaded without my consent to Pornhub. The uploader was also underage, and they had no way of confirming anyone's age or consent. I have been dealing with image issues, PTSD and sexual discomfort since the incident, into adulthood. This is my personal account, and I have heard similar stories from other women. I will never forgive Pornhub for allowing my abuse to be shared publicly and causing me to relive that pain years later.

Amanda said, “Leaked nude photos from when I was underage were put online, allowed to be uploaded by Pornhub and men were allowed to vote on which child was the most attractive. Pornhub told me that there was no point in making a fuss since people had already screenshot the photos, so deleting the video is pointless.”

Tiana said, “When I was 14 years old, someone recorded me performing oral sex without my knowledge or consent. The video was used as blackmail and was shared on Pornhub. Police contacted Pornhub, and it took them a while to delete it. It ruined my life, and people still bring it up to this day.”

Caroline said, “I spent two months begging Pornhub to take down a video of me being orally raped at the age of 15. I was crying, screaming. I had a bloody nose. It was up for a year and a half before I knew about it.”

Beth said, “I was 10 the first time I was raped. My uncle saw those porn stories and used me to play out his fantasies. Two years later I found the videos of me on Pornhub.”

I could go on and on. My time is short. I have many accounts of children who personally reached out to me, whom I've talked to, who have had their abuse immortalized on Pornhub.

All of the following is a small sample of evidence that has been documented on Pornhub in 2020, before the mass deletion of 10 million videos from unverified and unknown users.

Videos on Pornhub are titled “Young Teen Gets Pounded”; “Old Man with Young Teen”; “Young Girl Tricked”; “A Club Where you can Play with Little Girls, and It's So Fun”; “Cute Amateur Teen Drunk and Stoned”; “First BBC on Drugs”; “Stolen Teens' Secret Peeing Scenes”, with video cameras inside girls' toilets videotaping them without their knowledge; “Amateur Sex Tape Stolen from Teen Girl's Computer”; “Daddy Fucks Young Teen Boy Virgin, First Time”; “Tika Virgin from High School Jakarta Grade Two”; “Jovencitas violadas”, meaning “young rape”, from an unknown user; “Drunk Teen Fucked by Black Stranger”; “Innocent Teenage Girls are Used and Exploited”; “Crying Teen”; “Passed Out Teen”; “Very Young South American” with the tags “teenager” and “young”, and a comment says, “This girls looks 13”; “Chinese Northeast Middle School”; “Junior High School Student”; “Anal Crying Teen”; “I'm 14”, with a video of a young boy masturbating; “Gay 14”, a video of a young boy masturbating; and “Pinay Junior High Student”.

I could go on and on. Again, suggested and promoted searches by Pornhub that were found on their site as of 2020 are search terms that Pornhub actually serves up to its consumers: “abused teen”, “crying teen”, “punished teen”, “anal crying teen”, “teen destroyed”, “young Black teen”, “young, tiny teens”, “young girl”, “tiny, young girls”, “sleeping teen”, “middle school sex”, “Snapchat teen”, “middle student”, “stolen teen sex tape”, “stolen teen homemade” and “very young teens”.

As for comments on the site, there are hundreds of documented comments, if not thousands of documented comments, where users are flagging these child sexual abuse material videos to Pornhub, and they're ignored. They're on the site for months and even years. Examples are, “Isn't this technically child porn?”, “She looks 13. That's illegal”, “Wow, she looks like she's 12”, “I'm not legal but I have a winning video”, “She looks nine. Trade CP?”, and “She looks like she's 12, like she hasn't even hit puberty.”

Again, David Tassillo told this committee that, “Child abuse material has no place on our platform. It makes us lose money.” I would like to tell the committee that is not true, because child sexual abuse has made its way to Pornhub in a significant way. Every single video of a child that is found on Pornhub or of an abused adult is heavily monetized. It's monetized with ads of premium memberships, data collection. In some cases it's being directly sold for the profit of Pornhub: 35% to Pornhub and 65% to the person who uploaded the sex act through the model hub program.

I want to point out to the committee that any minor used in a commercial sex act is a victim of sex trafficking according to international law as well as domestic law. I think it's very important for us to realize that.

I also want to make it clear that Pornhub added insult to injury by adding an intentional download button to their system whereby every single video on Pornhub was made available to possess by consumers. It was transferred from MindGeek servers to individuals. One hundred and fifteen million users a day have the ability to commit the federal crime of downloading and possessing child sexual abuse material because Pornhub built that feature into the design of their website.

Feras Antoon said to this committee that “the spread of unlawful content online and...the non-consensual sharing of intimate images...goes against everything we stand for at MindGeek and Pornhub.” He said, “this type of material has no place on our platforms and is contrary to our values and our business model.” He said, “When David and I joined MindGeek in 2008, our goal was to create the most inclusive and safe adult community on the Internet” and that it was designed to value privacy. He said, “We knew this could be possible only if safety and security were our top priority.”

Anne wrote me and said, “Revenge porn is a major issue. I was a victim of it two years ago when I wouldn't take back my ex-fiancé. A couple of weeks later I received a call saying that my private photos I had sent him were uploaded to Pornhub. It was such a hassle to get them down.”

We have scores of testimonies of victims who have experienced the same thing.

Jessica says, “Most of my videos were done by my ex. I was too high to consent. I was blacked out. He put them on Pornhub without my permission.”

The following is a small sample of content on Pornhub as of 2020. On September 24, you could search the initials “GDP”, for “girls do porn”, which is a known sex trafficking operation which Pornhub is well aware is for trafficking victims, and you could turn up 338 results for these sex trafficking victims on the site. Other videos were titled “Fucked Sister Hard in the Ass While She Was Drunk and Sleeping”; “Drunk Girl Gets Handcuffed and Abused Next to the Party”; “Fucked Sleeping Schoolgirl After a Drunk Party”; and “Tinder Girl Passed Out At My House, So I Stuck It in Her Ass”.

Tiziana Cantone was a victim who committed suicide. Her video was on the site as of 2020. Other titles were “Anal Sex With a Drunk Girl”; “Drunk Asian Girl Humped By My Friend”; “Hidden Camera: Girls in the Toilet At Prom”; and “CCTV in Changing Room: Full Naked Hockey Team”. Suggested search terms to users on the site include “real hidden camera”; “hidden camera”; “voyeur”; “spycam shower”; “stop fucking me”; and “rape” in Chinese.

When pressed on the allowance of these kinds of non-consensual and illegal videos on his site, David Tassillo said to this committee, “We are a start-up still.” He said that about a site that is the 10th-largest-trafficked site in the world, and that makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year on this content.

In only a couple of minutes more, I want to finish. Feras Antoon told the committee that Pornhub was designed to celebrate freedom of expression. However, there are many instances of extreme racism on the site as of 2020, including “Black Slave Girl Brutalized”; “How to Treat Your Nigger”; “Real Drunk Stupid Chink Whore”; “Racist White Slut Sucks and Fucks Black Dick and Says Nigger”.

Lastly, I want to point out that VP Corey Urman has said in the media many times that they have a vast and extensive team of human moderators that is viewing each and every single video before it is uploaded to the site. I want to tell the committee that I have evidence that, actually, as of early 2020, Pornhub had under 10 moderators per eight-hour shift reviewing content on the site, in Cyprus. They had only 30 to 31 employees per day looking at content, and that's for all of MindGeek tube sites. These constitute the world's largest and most popular tube sites, with millions of videos uploaded per year.

Lastly, David Tassillo said, “We digitally fingerprint any content removed from our site so that it cannot be re-uploaded.” He said this to the committee, but we have emails of Pornhub telling victims that they do not guarantee that their child abuse will not be reuploaded to the site, and they callously tell victims, “Please educate yourself on the limits of our software.”

On behalf of two million people who have signed the petition from 192 countries to hold Pornhub accountable and over 300 organizations around the world that are calling for accountability by Pornhub, I want to thank this committee for taking this issue seriously and for conducting this investigation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Mrs. Mickelwait.

We'll turn to Ms. Walker now.

[Megan Walker, Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre]

Good afternoon.

I hope everybody is well today. This is a heavy subject and you've had heavy testimony.

I really want to honour the lives of the victims who have come forward today, Ms. Galy and the two guests that you've had, as well as Ms. Fleites, who appeared last week. It takes an incredible amount of courage for women to come forward. We always say the most important voice is the voice of victims and we must always listen to survivors.

The London Abused Women's Centre last year had 143 women report to us that technology was used in their assault and another 64 reported that pornography was prevalent in their relationship and oftentimes they were forced to play out the scenes in pornography.

One of the women we served, who was involved with Pornhub, wrote, “It was soul destroying to find videos of me Pornhub. Discovering how readily available they were broke me. Being hit with the reality that anyone could see the darkest points of my life nearly killed me. I had to stop looking for more videos after I found four. I was suicidal and have deep-seeded shame about those videos even though I was a child. It causes a fear I can’t put words to.”

One of the common themes we hear from victims of pornography who are not able to have their pictures or images removed is that they feel incredible shame and are oftentimes suicidal. As far as the shame is concerned, we want to make sure they understand any shame and blame they may feel belongs to the abuser and to Pornhub and MindGeek. They do not have a responsibility to feel that. With respect to the suicidal ideations, I want to say that as bad as this is—and I can't even go to a place where I understand that—I believe that with help and counselling there is hope.

We know that Pornhub has facilitated and distributed the uploading of videos of minors being sexually exploited and assaulted. We also know that non-consenting adults and trafficked women have been raped and tortured for the world to see. Pornhub has actively participated in the downloading of these videos, which is leaving a lifelong imprint of trauma in the lives of millions of women.

It took The New York Times' article for Pornhub to remove millions of videos after an investigation showed a large number of them featured underage girls and non-consenting and trafficked women and girls. Pornhub is complicit in the trafficking of women and girls. This item alone, which it took The New York Times last year to expose Pornhub on, shows that Pornhub, even though the CEO and the COO acknowledged they were parents and grandparents, really doesn't care about the lives of women and girls.

Many of the videos were posted on Pornhub's website under the headings of “torture porn”, “teen porn” and “fetish porn”, and all of those headings continue to remain in place today.

MindGeek's CEO testified, as you heard from Laila, that “every single piece of content is viewed by our human moderators.” This is an absolute joke. It's ridiculous, and frankly, it's impossible, given how many millions of videos are uploaded. Further, only a team of forensic pediatricians can age girls, not men and women hired at perhaps minimum wage to look at videos all day long of rape scenes, to identify who is underage, who is consenting and who is not.

We know that the goal of MindGeek's CEO and COO is to make millions of dollars so that they can support their lavish lifestyles through their premium, the sale of ads and harvesting and selling their data. None of that would be possible without the exploitation of children and women. In fact, we know from our experience that men will pay more to see children exploited.

I have reviewed sections 162 and 163 of the Criminal Code of Canada. I am not a lawyer, but taken literally, it appears that almost every single section in the code could apply to MindGeek, Pornhub and all of their affiliated businesses as well as their CEO and COO.

In addition to the potential crimes, MindGeek appears to be and likely is in violation of international laws on trafficking and child sexual exploitation, and also has not complied with the mandatory reporting requirements in Canada. Pornhub has facilitated and profited from the exploitation of girls and women.

The London Abused Women's Centre offers a number of recommendations.

The first is that robust funding be made available to support all victims. They are suicidal. This is heartbreaking, and they need to make sure they have access to service.

Given the testimony from at least one survivor who stated that she was sexually exploited as a child, and given the testimony of MindGeek's CEO and COO acknowledging that children and non-consenting women have been exploited on Pornhub, we recommend that the committee immediately send witness statements to the police for a criminal investigation.

Also, given the testimony of MindGeek's CEO and COO acknowledging their failure to self-regulate, it is recommended that Parliament legislate the end of self-regulation by MindGeek, its affiliated and subsidiary companies and the pornography industry.

We recommend that a third party not associated with MindGeek, its affiliated and subsidiary companies or the pornography industry be retained to verify age and consent.

We recommend that Parliament legislate that all credit card companies be prohibited from providing services to MindGeek, its affiliated and subsidiary companies and the pornography industry until the third party recommended in the clause I just read is established.

Finally, I would say that it is recommended that the Canada Revenue Agency conduct a forensic audit and criminal investigation on the finances and ownership of MindGeek and its affiliated and subsidiary companies in order to determine if they are in compliance with the relevant Canadian and international tax, disclosure and other laws and regulations.

It is the role of government to regulate all industries in order to protect its citizens. When an industry is predatory, especially the porn industry, it is incumbent on the government to regulate the production and consumption related to that industry.

I thank you for giving me this time today.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you very much.

We thank all three witnesses for your contribution to the study and for your open and frank testimony this afternoon.

Earlier on, in an open and frank discussion, there were words repeated that had been posted to Pornhub. Obviously, we all condemn the use of that language. I would caution members to not use language that would create additional hurt to those people who would be listening.

Thank you, witnesses.

I'll turn to Mrs. Stubbs.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses who are here.

I hope and I'm quite confident that I'm speaking not only for myself out of what was previously obviously my own colossal naïveté in being completely unaware—as I hope millions of other Canadians were—that on these sites there is a significant proportion of victims of non-consensual assault, of child sexual assault and of rape and human trafficking. I'm outraged and disgusted.

I want to thank all of you for what I know have already been years of advocacy. There will continue to be more and in the same vein, and obviously say—

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Pardon me, Ms. Stubbs. I'll interrupt. I think there's an issue with the channels and the translation on the English channel currently.

We'll try it again, Ms. Stubbs.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Obviously, like all of us, I salute the victims and the survivors who are speaking out and who, from my perspective, are actual heroes. I think that word tends to be used loosely in some ways, but it's certainly fitting in their cases.

I want to say right off the bat what I am hoping for from all three witnesses who are here. You touched on this, but because of our limited time, if you have any other additional policy or legal remedies that you recommend, both on the issue of prevention but also to empower—which I think is a key issue here—individual ownership and rights over the circulation of our own images online, and of course anything else you haven't been able to address, could you please submit that to the committee in writing? I know that would be of high value to all the members here.

Laila, I have a question for you. You addressed a number of issues regarding the MindGeek representatives' testimony here and proved many of their claims to be false. I just want to start with a question for you about what MindGeek's response has been to you and to the work that you and other advocates are doing, and to victims and to journalists who are covering this issue, and any comments you might have about that.

[Laila Mickelwait]

Thank you for that important question.

The response of MindGeek has been really inexcusable. They have sought to call advocates who are speaking out about this liars. They've called me personally a liar many times, and said that I was intentionally misleading. They have harassed. Those whom we know are connected with MindGeek and Pornhub have engaged in the harassment, the abuse and even the doxing of not only advocates like me and my own family, but also victims.

It's one thing to go after advocates. It's another thing to go after victims. Victims have been blackmailed. They have been intimidated into silence. They have, even in some cases, been physically attacked, where victims have actually sent me photos of themselves after a physical attack.

With regard to journalists, I have been sent emails from journalists around the world, even from Europe and even in Canada, where journalists have attempted to cover this issue, long before The New York Times did. The #Traffickinghub campaign took off in February with hundreds of thousands of signatures, even in the first couple of weeks. Now we're over a million. Even before that, The Sunday Times was investigating in early 2019 and journalists wanted to cover this issue, but those from MindGeek, often using fake names and identities, like this Ian Andrews character, would intimidate journalists and would even threaten legal action against them and would silence these stories from getting out.

I think that kind of behaviour is what.... One porn producer told me that she called it the “MindGeek Mafia”, and that's exactly what it feels like.

One advocate who had spoken against MindGeek in the past, when I first began this campaign, called me and said, “Laila, do you have a safe room?” I said, “No, why?” She said, “I think you should get one.” I didn't understand that at the time, but I think I understand it now.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Laila.

To your point about the gap between what they claim related to child sexual assault material and non-consensual material, do you have any comments in terms of what employees at MindGeek actually are experiencing? If you've ever spoken to any, might they have given you any understanding about how their so-called moderators—I think they actually call them “content formatters”—work?

[Laila Mickelwait]

Yes. A number of whistle-blowers from MindGeek have reached out. I have been in contact with them. Attorneys have also been in contact with them. They've also been put in touch with law enforcement.

These whistle-blowers who've come forward have revealed things about the way Pornhub has acted with reckless disregard for human safety. They have acted in what I would think is gross criminal negligence. Just the idea that the world's largest and most popular porn site, with seven million uploads per year, 13 million videos available on the site at any given moment and 11 million comments posted to the site per year, many of which indicate that this is child rape, sex trafficking and non-consensual, that they would think it was okay to have 10 individuals per shift—including bathroom breaks, cigarette breaks and lunch breaks—reviewing these millions of videos and guessing, using an archaic Excel spreadsheet....

I have been given internal documents from MindGeek. I know MindGeek's executives refused to hand over such documents to the committee when they were presenting before you and you asked for them. I do have some of those internal documents using an archaic Excel spreadsheet, where in 2016 they had under 100 flagged red words that they were prohibiting on the site. You can compare that with what they've done now. It's absolutely reckless.

The suggestion that David Tassillo and Feras Antoon came before this committee and said they were leaders in child safety is incomprehensible.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Thank you, Ms. Stubbs.

We're going to turn to Mr. Sorbara now.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, colleagues, and good afternoon to the witnesses. Thank you for your testimony today.

Obviously we've been listening quite intently to how we can make this world a safer place for individuals, obviously most particularly for minors. Things have happened that we don't like. I think I can say that very bluntly, and as a father of two young daughters, some of the testimony has been very hard to listen to.

I'd like to start off with the individual from London. We've announced many measures on human trafficking, Megan. As you are aware—you deal with individuals who have been human trafficked—and I understand the area you represent. A number of announcements have been made there.

Can you comment on the resources that have been made available? Are we going in the right direction? All levels of government seem to be working at tackling this issue of human trafficking.

[Megan Walker]

We served 1,300 victims of human trafficking of women and girls last year. As you may know from the media, one source of our funding through the federal government was not renewed. Fortunately, because of the support we have in the city of London, the city raised the money, $12,000 a month for almost a full year, so we could continue our program, because we have a real problem—and not only in London but in every single city off the 401.

Then we were advised that we could apply for a new grant through WAGE, which we did. It's two years of funding. That's it. This is a serious issue impacting all aspects of society. We don't want two years of funding. We need core funding. We can't appropriately manage and plan for our programming to trafficked women and girls without a commitment from all levels of government that the funding will continue.

We're fortunate that the Government of Ontario has provided us with core funding, as has the City of London. However, we are missing funding from the federal government.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Just to follow up, you have applied for that WAGE program. Is that correct?

[Megan Walker]

We were successful in receiving the funds. We have not received them yet, but we were successful in being granted the funds. However, it's only up to $200,000 for a two-year period.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Okay. I wanted to make sure we got that on record that you were successful in receiving the funding for the two-year period. Obviously we'll be there to support you, and I know the member of Parliament from your area is very supportive of the program for obvious reasons.

[Megan Walker]

We're very fortunate, because not only is Peter supportive but all our MPs have worked collaboratively from all parties, which is what we need to tackle this issue. That's what I'm seeing today, as well, with all of you, so thank you.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Absolutely.

Welcome, Mr. Fortin.

Professor, could you comment on the issue of consent and the whole idea of consent in terms of uploading material to the Internet and on Pornhub's site? How are we to deal with this issue of consent? If there is no consent, that material shouldn't be there and should be removed in a very quick manner. My conclusion is that they have failed on that issue of consent and being able to deal with it effectively.

Could you list maybe one or two recommendations on where we could improve this to ensure the material that would be applicable to be added to that website is added if it's consensual material? If the material is underage material, non-consensual.... We heard some very devastating testimony earlier this afternoon. It was just absolutely awful to hear what these individuals had to go through. This material should be taken off the Internet. It should be taken off those sites, whichever site it may be, as quickly as possible, to do as little harm as possible to these individuals.

Could you comment on that, sir?

[Dr. Francis Fortin]

Thank you for your question.

Consent is challenging in many ways. It's a complex concept that took years to define. The courts provided guidance. I think the way we think about and view consent is progressive.

From the stories of the witnesses in the first panel, it's plain to see that the due diligence around consent was lacking. One of the challenges is figuring out what to do in situations where a video is submitted and the person consented initially but later withdraws that consent. A whole host of safeguards would need to come into play.

There is no doubt that much more needs to be done to protect minors, particularly in terms of imposing very strict rules on companies. Things get trickier when it comes to adults. I would suggest having someone who specializes in matters of consent act as a go-between between victims and companies. That responsibility can't be given—

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Sorry, Mr. Fortin.

If I could just jump in there, we did receive information from MindGeek or Pornhub that they did update their terms of service in the period following The New York Times article and so forth, if I remember the events and the way that played out.

It just seems that when I read those terms of service and how content was uploaded, those terms of service were not followed. That was very concerning to me. The onus needs to be, much like when you purchase a product in society or a service, that there are certain terms of service standards that are met. In this case, clearly, there was failure on their part, in my humble opinion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Chris Warkentin]

Mr. Sorbara, you are out of time, but I will allow the question to be answered.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you.