Health Committee on March 23rd, 2017

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

I'll need to go in French on this one.

Thank you.

I'll make a comment before asking my question. I'm against all forms of violence and lack of respect, regardless of the activity. I wouldn't want my questions to suggest otherwise.

The government is a legislator and it must take measures or propose rules. I think that, when it comes to the involvement of children, extreme violence, rape and lack of consent, obviously no one supports these types of activities. I don't think that's the issue. I'll refer to my colleague Mr. Carrie's analogy regarding Fifty Shades of Grey. The issue is the area between the two, between what's obvious and what may appear to be some leeway in terms of each person's level of tolerance.

You're proposing a Canadian sexual health program. I hope we're talking about good health. Who sets the standards for good health? The motion focuses primarily on online violence and degrading behaviour. We're talking not only about physical illnesses, but also about mental health and addiction. What may seem less obvious is found in the grey area between what's tolerated by some and less tolerated by others. What some people do, and what seems to be tolerated and accepted, could appear violent to others.

Where's the line? Who decides where the line is drawn? What points of reference are used by the people who draw the line?

A program established by a person who has zero tolerance could differ significantly from a program prepared by someone whose behaviour is much more libertine.

Thank you.

[Prof. Jacqueline Gahagan]

I'm not sure where to start.

Really, the question of who sets the standard is a difficult one to answer, because those standards change over time. Social mores, norms, and so on change over time, and my only suggestion and recommendation would be to look nationally at countries that actually have done this process well, which is to say that they have convened groups of individuals who have cutting-edge knowledge about how to calibrate teams of people to make that determination. So if you're saying the standard is now this, then figuring out how to make that standard resonate within a Canadian context is the challenge. I should tell you that when my sister Michelle was at Queen's law school, one of the favourite topics that would come up in class was who determines what is considered moral, and who has the right to make that determination, and that continues to be a very hotbed issue. She has long since left Queen's University, but that issue still comes up, and here we are today, in 2017, having the conversation about who decides what's moral, what's illicit, and what's inappropriate. I think your job, as I understand it, is to help stickhandle that decision-making process by bringing the best evidence forward to make that determination. So in 2017, what are considered normative expectations around sexuality and sexual imagery, etc.? I do hope that through this process—and I'm sure this will be the case—you will bring together a team of people who will be able to make that determination. The issue of everything from A to Z, so what's happening in the middle and whether we can actually calibrate what the level of tolerance is in Canadian society for particular types of imagery, is to me a very big, very important question.

That's also going to help you answer the question regarding the kinds of images and messages we need to give our kids in school in such a way that we're actually equipping them with the appropriate information to make lifelong informed decisions about sexual health, whether that has to do with the consumption of pornography, however that is defined, or whether that's in their relations with their spouses or their children or what have you. We need to think about that in the context of where we in Canada are with that notion, because I can tell you quite certainly that we're not able to do that in the school system. We put hundreds of millions of tax dollars into a school system that purports to provide cutting-edge sexual health education to our youth, and yet we see this continuing conversation about poor sexual health outcomes and bad relationships, to quote our colleague from the U.S. who has just left us.

If we're really trying to equip Canadian youth with the information to make informed decisions, we need to do a better job of getting that information into the hands of children, parents, and teachers. Everybody has to be part of this conversation, which is exactly why I'm suggesting having something like a national sexual health promotion strategy that says in Canada as of 2017 or 2018, whenever this comes to fruition, this is the standard of acceptable information for the purposes of teaching kids what is pornographic, what is considered criminal, and what is a criminal offence when you're sexting your friends or taking little porn videos out in the schoolyard and exchanging them with people without consent.

I don't believe that today, in 2017, our kids have a sense of that particular issue, and it's not going to get better by saying, as our colleague from the U.S. has, that all pornography is toxic to the brain. I don't necessarily believe that position. I think there is something in the middle ground that gives us a good starting position to give appropriate information to youth and young adults in Canada so that they can actually make informed decisions about what, if any, role pornography plays in their lives.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Your time's up. It was a great question.

[Michel Picard, Liberal, Montarville, QC]

It was a good one.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

I'm glad you ended with that last couple of comments, and I'm sorry Dr. Layden isn't here, because I've been a bit troubled by the certainty of the line that's being drawn by Dr. Layden between all pornography and, quite frankly, an almost unlimited litany of social problems.

In social science, the correlation-causation issue is endemic to the very.... I don't know how we draw lines between watching pornography and rates of divorce or rates of affairs.

So I wonder if you have any comment on that, and I want to drill a little more into this idea that all depictions of human sexuality are necessarily bad.

Dr. Gahagan, what do you think of that?

[Prof. Jacqueline Gahagan]

My starting point is clearly not that all pornography is toxic to the brain. I don't believe that's true. And if we look at the foot traffic in a cyber sense, kids are accessing this information for, as Kathleen has already said, a variety of purposes including education, information, and yes, maybe according to the definition of pornography, for sexual excitement. So, yes, that's all part of the package. But is there another way of developing sexual health information in a way that captures that depth and breadth of human sexuality in such a way that the starting point is not “if you do this, it will lead to divorce, violence”, etc.? I think the cause and effect piece can continue to be hotly debated, and I'm the type of person who likes to find solutions to well-known problems. So in other words, let's close the loop and find concrete ways to deal with this. From my perspective, it's about giving people information to make informed choices. And if we're not doing that, at the end of the day, we're going to continue to have this debate about whether something is too graphic, not graphic enough, a teachable moment, or creating higher rates of divorce.

I think there is some informed position in the middle that I believe we can come to. We're Canadians, after all; we're a sensible group. We can come to that kind of consensus on the type of information and how best to package it.

But the variability in how that information is currently getting out there is, from my perspective, the problem.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Ms. Hare, do you have anything to add to that?

[Kathleen Hare]

Yes. Just adding to exactly what Dr. Gahagan has just said, I don't start from the place that pornography is a toxic medium. There's a huge field of evidence on this. There's 40 years of research on this, and the findings are inconclusive and contradictory. Specifically in my study, people talked about having both benefits and challenges with it. Some of the benefits that people were talking about were in terms of having an increased sense of acceptance of their own sexuality, having an increased understanding of the realm of possibilities out there and the different possible identities, and also being more accepting of other people's sexuality.

When you ask them what they wanted translated to sexual health education, it was those messages. It was that this is positive, they can explore who they are, and they can be more accepting of who other people are and their sense of sexuality. I think that was really kind of the take-away message. That's what I've certainly been trying to convey.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Well, that's why I want to be clear that all of us around this table are concerned about violent and degrading depictions.

[Kathleen Hare]

Yes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I think we all share the premise that they have negative health impacts. So I wanted to be clear about that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

The time's up. But I want to say to the witnesses that you are our first witnesses on this study, and I don't think we could have done any better. We really appreciate your contribution, and you've helped us on a delicate subject. It's been very informative, and I want to thank you on behalf of all the members of the committee.

That brings our committee to an end right on time, almost. So thanks very much, everybody.

The meeting is adjourned.