Health Committee on April 11th, 2017

[Cordelia Anderson]

First of all, I really support both of those policy levels that she discussed. I think they're essential to doing something about the toxic flow and the ease of access.

I also want to call your attention to something I believe you've heard quite a bit about and we also see happening in the U.S. Our sexuality education and information council in the U.S., SIECUS, just put out a brief called “Pivoting from Opposition to Porn to Positive Framing for Sexuality Education”.

I advocate healthy sexuality education K to 12 and preschool. We need it for a lot of reasons. However, the solution is not to do that at the expense of looking at the harms of pornography. That would again be like constantly feeding your kid toxic water, having them swim in it, having them navigating it, and then educating them about it, about the clean, healthy water. That is really important for lots of reasons, but we have to do something about it.

Think about it, if you will. We all talk about what had to happen with tobacco. You had to have policies to change access. You had to have age issues, you had to have warning signs, and you had to have a truth campaign, which I think we really need, the truth versus the lies. Help us to see the lies. You had to have lawsuits so people had an easier access to sue because of harm and damages to their children, to themselves, to their relationships, and that money was put back into the truth campaign.

We need those kinds of layers as well. We need to be training providers because it is really terrifying to me how many therapists and health professionals don't have accurate information about what's going on so that they would not, in fact, be able to recognize when harm has occurred.

If we don't have some of these broader policies to block the flow and to hold those accountable who are profiting from this, we're missing the mark that we've seen essential in other successful public health campaigns such as getting to people on drinking and driving, which Gail mentioned, such as tobacco, getting people to use car seats and seat belts, and water health.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Specifically on the issues of age verification and perhaps some sort of filter, what are your thoughts?

[Cordelia Anderson]

I think it's critical. I think it makes sense. It would be wonderful if all the technology companies volunteered.

As Dr. Dines pointed out, there is research to show that with those who left it as really optional and didn't put the energy into it, there was very low compliance. There are other studies that show very good outcomes from digital filters, but it has to be encouraged that they be on everything, all the technology. People who want to opt in and get access still can, and then they know they need to put better filters on if they don't want their own children or others to have access to it. I think it's key.

The change with age verification that makes this different than it was before is actually that the technology is changing. It's far more complex than I could fully articulate to you, but there are people who could spell that out in great detail. I think Dr. Dines and I both have some information with us, as does Dr. Cooper, about what that is. The technology has changed such that it is really getting to be something that isn't just me clicking and saying I'm 18 but is much more robust and much more possible.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

I see, Ms. Cooper, that you're nodding in agreement. Do you have any comments you'd like to put out in terms of the U.K. experience?

[Dr. Sharon Cooper]

I think that the ability to opt out and opt in is extremely important. Most of the parents and parent organizations that I dialogue with talk about this sense of frustration over the fact that they are paying their own money for their children to ultimately be sometimes betrayed and even abused because of the access to this kind of content.

I feel one of the things that governments could also foster would be corporate responsibilities—not voluntary responsibilities—for licensure purposes in a given country to provide parents the opportunity to opt in or opt out, or at least to have alternative technology.

For example, almost every cellphone that you purchase now has a camera. The camera can sometimes be a very negative thing for children and adolescents with respect to victimization. If parents wanted to buy a cellphone for their children without a camera, they'd have a hard time even finding that kind of technology. I would think that every telecommunication company should be encouraged to have opportunities for options for parents who want to protect their children in this manner. That should be linked to licensure based upon countries of origin.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Ms. Cooper, do you have any comments on meaningful age verification?

[Dr. Sharon Cooper]

It's very interesting, because brain research now helps us to understand that the brain is not completely mature until you're almost 25 years of age. The prefrontal cortex, the part where you make good decisions and have cognitive understanding of the consequences, is the last part of the brain to be completely mature. From the standpoint of age verification, certainly 18 would be the minimum age, in my opinion.

One more thing I would say is that in addition to this realization about brain development, countries across the world need to review their laws with respect to the consequences of young people who make mistakes and who may end up in the criminal justice system now that we understand that the prefrontal cortex is not even close to mature at this point. In the United States, we are thinking about whether or not we should ever prosecute a minor as an adult for a crime that they may have committed even at the age of 17 or 16 or 18. Instead, we should be thinking more perhaps about the age of 21. This is another legislative thought process that one might consider, particularly within the context of this normalization of digital harm that we see in information and communication technology.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you.

Cordelia, I know you talked about how we cannot legislate or incarcerate our way out of this issue. Could you make comparisons to other public health things that have taken place, perhaps, in your own country?

[Cordelia Anderson]

I mentioned them very quickly, but I think a good example that we often use is tobacco, another piece I wanted to mention. You may remember when there was smoking on planes and may remember when we advertised cigarettes to children, in that there was cigarette smoking in kids' cartoons. Policies had to come to change that, to make it not so easy for children to buy cigarettes for themselves or on behalf of anyone else. There was decades of the industry knowing full well that it was harmful but telling everybody who was saying it was harmful that the research wasn't valid, so that there had to be a lot of research.

The industry also came to those who were first fighting against smoking, looking at this as a harm. There was Larry Cohen at the Prevention Institute in California; it had one of the first counties that started to say “no smoking” in a certain part of a restaurant. The tobacco industry came to him and offered him a lot of money to do education as long as he would stop his policy work, because they knew that education alone was not going to hurt their bottom line. It's often that you'll see alcohol companies supporting education about drinking and driving but still making sure that nobody is limiting access to the product in, for example, poorer communities, or their advertising.

Advertising policy changed with tobacco. It used to be the Marlboro Man. I don't know whether you guys had it there too, but it was the image of sexy, the image of virile. In fact, there were doctors who used to say this is healthy, this is good for you, much as in our parallel here. The policy had to change to say, “Wait a minute. We're not saying this is healthy. We see this as harmful, and we're not going to advertise it in this way, and we are not going to use children, for example.

One of the policies I would like to see, ideally applying also to women, is to say we're not going to use children as sexual objects to sell products and are going to stop the sexually exploited advertising of children, because that's part of that hypersexualization, the bleed-over that Dr. Dines talks a lot about from pornography to mainstream media.

We need to look at our advertising. In fact, there's an example in our country here from the wine companies more than 15 years ago. It was called “Dangerous Promises”. They agreed to come together and not use women's bodies to sell their wine product, and the wine ads are very different from beer ads, which are notorious for using women's bodies in very hypersexualized ways to sell their products, with a very false message that the only way to get men's attention is to objectify women.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Davies.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all the witnesses for being here.

Ms. McDonald, I want to start with you. In the Criminal Code of Canada today as we speak, under paragraph 163(1)(a) it is an offence to make, print, publish, distribute, or circulate “any obscene written matter, picture, model, phonograph record or other thing whatever”.

It is also an offence to possess such material for the purpose of publication, distribution, or circulation, and in the Criminal Code, an “obscene publication” is defined as one that has the “undue exploitation of sex, or of sex and any one or more of the following subjects, namely, crime, horror, cruelty and violence” as a “dominant characteristic”.

It seems to me that the current definition right now in the Criminal Code would be sufficient for the police authorities in this country to be arresting and charging people for circulating or distributing much of the material that I think you and the other witnesses are talking about, namely sex that has violence as a characteristic of it.

Do you think greater efforts need to be made to enforce the Criminal Code in relation to the production and distribution of violent and degrading pornography in this country?

[Lianna McDonald]

I think we need more clarification. That's a really great question.

We looked at that legislation when we were having challenges with what we would call sexualized child modelling. We had images of children who were being terribly sexualized and used to market, and we would believe, as a front door to actual child-abusive imagery behind that.

We looked at that same provision to see whether we could try to use it to capture this segment. We tried to explore that—and I'm absolutely no criminal law expert, and it would be worthwhile perhaps for this committee to have discussions about this with the proper experts—but there appear to be some challenges with the way the community standard challenge is interpreted. I can really only speak to that at this point.

I also would say, however, that another problem we face, which is consistent with child abuse images as well, concerns where the content is hosted. Depending on jurisdiction and where the actual material is sitting, you have challenges in forcing legislative remedies, which might apply in one country but not exist in another.

Going back to my colleague's comments, this is a really big problem. Arresting our way out of this, when we now have this huge problem, raises one question. How would we throw the resources to that problem, or perhaps how might we prioritize, tackling some areas that we might be able to with the existing legislative tools that we have?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you.

Ms. Anderson, Ms. Cooper, I think you very articulately set out the damaging impact of violent and degrading pornography on young people under the age of 18. I'm going to assume that you would argue that violent and degrading pornography has an equally corrosive effect on adults over 18.

Ms. Dines, I will come to you. I think you made that point quite well.

We can put in age filters for people under 18. What do you propose we do? If we can't arrest our way out of it, and a filter is an age filter, what positive proposals do you have to deal with the impact of violence and degrading pornography on people over the age of 18?

[Cordelia Anderson]

Dr. Cooper, do you want to start?

[Dr. Sharon Cooper]

Yes. I'll just say something briefly on that. That's a really good question.

A lot of it has to do with the fact that many people don't recognize the addictive nature of this kind of content. I really do like a campaign that is growing in the United States called “Fight the New Drug”. It's being marketed to adolescents and young adults, but it's helping them to understand why adult pornography is the leading cause of erectile dysfunction in men under the age of 40. It's not high blood pressure or any of the other medical problems that you often see when you have erectile dysfunction. It is instead this constant diet of sexualized images and pornography that lead to chronic masturbatory behaviour and an inability to have a normal sexual reaction in the face of a normal person.

Again from a public health perspective, it's beginning to help the public understand not only the addictive nature but also how this ruins relationships. A wonderful symposium was held at Princeton about four years ago called the Social Costs of Pornography. A book was published at that symposium with all the information. The key point they brought out was that you are now seeing more and more couples in marital counselling who are coming because of pornography problems within the relationship.

It's helping people to understand this is not a benign pastime. This is not just something else to do instead of playing Grand Theft Auto. This has the potential to not only hook you, but also to break you, and break your family and break your role as a parent. I think looking at it from the perspective of warning individuals it's not just children we have to be concerned about, but most assuredly we have to be concerned about adults.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Before I give you a chance to respond, are you referring to pornography, period, or are you referring to violent and degrading—

[Dr. Sharon Cooper]

Pornography, period. That's correct.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Okay. Thank you.

[Cordelia Anderson]

It's a very good question. I'm going to give you two examples of ongoing efforts because as strongly as I believe in age verification it really doesn't address this issue of the harm to somebody over 18, especially the young, developing brains, but to all adults, again going back to the brain impact and brain science.

I'm going to give you a couple of examples about things that are under way.

The one example I'm going to give you is child sexual abuse images. I think we can learn some things from it. It's a company called Thorn that has a deterrence project. They tested a series of messages that go out primarily to men who are searching for child sexual abuse images. When they are searching they get different messages, recognizing there's not one motivation for everybody; there are different sets of motivations. Different messages work to say they need help. Some of them say that if they can find you, law enforcement can find you. They've tested different kinds of messages, and they encourage people to then get help.

I think a different set of messages would go out to people searching, because right now they think, “It's all there. It's great. I'm supposed to be looking. What's wrong with me if I'm not looking? In fact, I'm going to be berated more for not looking and using it, and a number of health professionals and others in my life might tell me I'm supposed to be looking”, so there's no counter-narrative. We need to look at counter-narratives, not only through education but perhaps through messaging that comes up via technology. There are solutions.

There are also very good campaigns just to reach boys and men. One that was launched out of Minnesota I'm very excited about. It's called, “I Don't Buy It”. It's a series of groups that work with men to come together to look at the intersection between sex trafficking, sexual violence, and use of pornography, and how they are really being manipulated by this industry and manipulated by people who say this is how they're supposed to be either for that other group's profit or a really false sense of masculinity that's not healthy for them or healthy for their relationships. They get engaged in that. There are ways they can get active. They learn how to see what's right out there in front of them. They learn how to take action, and they learn to get involved in a meaningful way and speak up and help other boys and men.

I think there are other strategies we need to look at about how we use technology to educate, how we do broader education about the harms and messaging, which is part of the truth campaign I mentioned that was used with tobacco. It was we're going to help them see the lies. We need to look specifically at how we engage our boys and men to recognize how they too are being harmed by this.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Thank you very much. That completes our first round.

I understand, Ms. McDonald, that you have to leave. I want to thank you very much, on behalf of the committee, for your testimony. We hope to have you back sometime.

[Lianna McDonald]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

I'm sorry, Mr. Oliver. We haven't finished our first—

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I had one question for Ms. McDonald if she has a few more minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bill Casey]

Ms. McDonald.

[John Oliver, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Do you have a few more minutes before you go? I just have a couple of quick questions.