Absolutely one of the key ones, as I've already alluded to, is the rate of sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections. That's a key indicator of success in terms of whether or not you have increased or decreased those, but there needs to be some evaluative component in the way that sexual health education is being offered. If you look at what public health does in responding to outbreaks—SARS, for example—there has to be a target. What is the target? It's SARS. What's the intended outcome? It's reducing the likelihood of SARS spreading.
When we think about the logic in public health terms of doing better in terms of how we provide sexual health education, and evaluate what impact it's having, there are particular sources of data we can look at and track over time. In fact I did a project with the Public Health Agency of Canada in developing a sexual health assessment tool.
Do we have a snapshot of Canadian sexual health that cuts across age, across region, across school boards? No, we don't. Do we have sufficient data to say that these are public health indicators that we can actually improve on? I would argue that we could. The U.K., Australia, and Wales, as I alluded to earlier, have wonderful national sexual health standards. They make those available to people as a public health priority, not as an optional piece of information that people can consume or not consume.
I think we need to be more strategic about what intended outcome we're looking for if we're talking about the public health effects of pornography.