The current rules under PIPEDA assign a fine to companies that violate the provisions that are related to privacy. All businesses have to follow these rules and have a specific format for how they collect, use, handle, disclose, access and allow people to access their own information as held by a company and as used by a company.
When we do the digital charter implementation act, it wouldn't be far-fetched at all to increase the fine for online platforms without banning them entirely or making it impossible for them to operate. It's a harm reduction idea. It's a safer idea than forcing people onto the dark web, where we literally have our hands tied. We can't intervene or help at all. It's recognizing that with the digital charter implementation act, we have the opportunity to look to the future and say, all right, as much as we might like to say that it is not okay to do this to people, by banning things and by prohibiting them, we're forcing them underground. How did Prohibition work out?
We have this opportunity now to actually talk about it. What do we expect from social media? What do we expect from other platforms without putting the criminalization...? For me, this isn't about criminalization. It's about the rules for companies. Without criminalizing the actual people who are in the content, we can put the onus on the company to do user verification.
Think about the same types of things your bank might use. You have a PIN. Some online platforms will require you to submit your driver's licence. If someone who is a user uploads content that has not been made consensually, that can be flagged and be sent immediately to the moderator. I actually also own a website and run a website, so I know how this works. That can be flagged and sent to the website owner. They can then go and look up the user. You have their driver's licence. You can track them. It's perfect. It works really well—way better than the dark web.
By increasing the amount of controls and security that the company has to do, without regulating the actual people who are involved but putting the onus on the company, it reduces the criminalization of sex workers. It helps us to locate and assist people who are being exploited or who are having images uploaded non-consensually. It gives them more power, because when you flag the video, it immediately comes down.
We can do that. We have the technology to do all these things. We can do it automatically. Automation is a real thing.