Evidence of meeting #30 for Justice and Human Rights in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pornography.
A recording is available from Parliament.
3:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Just so I am clear on your question, I am understanding that you're asking if I agree that service providers should go to websites and look at the sites and then make sure that their customers are not viewing child pornography. Is this correct?
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
I really wanted to know whether they would make sure they are not offering their customers access to child pornography sites.
3:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Yes, we do that right now in Canada—I know it is a lot of information to take in—under Cleanfeed Canada. So we would make this available to Internet service providers, ISPs, on a voluntary basis. Right now we are covering between 80% and 90% of Canadian customers; we are right now blocking known child pornography sites from their clients' ability to view them. That is something we are doing and we are exploring other ways to broaden those lists to make it more comprehensive. That is what we are currently doing with other countries.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
You also say that a majority of these child pornography sites come from outside Canada.
3:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Right, and under Cleanfeed Canada.... There are two pieces to this that are very important to understand. Within Canada, when a Canadian or someone is involved in the making available of child pornography, we use the Criminal Code to take action against those people to be able to charge them and take action. When we are outside of our jurisdiction yet Canadians have access to it--that is, when we are getting foreign-based websites, so content posted outside Canada--we are putting it on that list because we don't have jurisdiction. That is what we're currently doing.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
From what I understand, when the sites come from Canada, it's possible to make sure they are withdrawn from circulation, they are no longer accessible to the general public. Is that in fact possible?
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
It is possible, however--
4 p.m.
Bloc
Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
This bill will help you, since it will give you an agency to which you can report child pornography sites. Then it will be up to the agency to take action.
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Yes, so under this legislation the service providers who come across and become knowing of sites are not going to know jurisdiction, and that's not their job to assess all of that. They would then report to the designated agency that URL and that agency would then take appropriate action. They are working with police or other options.
4 p.m.
Conservative
4 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Ms. McDonald and Ms. Milner, for being here.
I want to pursue the same line of questioning, but before I do that, there was some suggestion at the meeting when the minister was here that your agency was one of the ones that was being considered to be the designated agency. Are you in any kind of negotiation with the government at this point to be the designated agency?
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
We certainly are not in any negotiations at this point surrounding that, to be very direct and honest. Our agency feels that definitely we would want to be considered for that and has made that clear. And getting back, and just really for my opportunity to say this, I think the role of our agency again is to allow that police are involved in investigating and using their time and resources wisely, not necessarily taking phone calls on e-mail spams, etc. And I think we also play an important triaging role and clearing house for information so that we can present information like this, because we have a picture of what's happening in Canada.
4 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
At the present time—this legislation not in place—you get a report of this material being on a site someplace. If you believe it to be criminal, you report it to the local police force?
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Part of our job is to find out where it is, what jurisdiction it falls in, so we use the various online tools. We'll say, for example, this is sitting on a server in Toronto. We would then send that report to Toronto police. We do not do any investigation; that is a law enforcement responsibility.
4 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Let me just stop you there. So once you've identified the source, you report it to the police force in that jurisdiction—
4 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
—who would have jurisdiction. What if the site is outside of Canada?
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
Then we report it to the RCMP's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre in Ottawa.
4 p.m.
NDP
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Canadian Centre for Child Protection
They would send it to Interpol, who will make sure it gets to the proper police agency for local investigation.
4 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
So if you were the designated agency, would you follow that same procedure?
4 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Do you have the capacity at the present time to handle what we would expect would be a significant increase in volume of work?
