Evidence of meeting #24 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was facebook.
A recording is available from Parliament.
As an Individual
Absolutely. The police knew too. They knew exactly who did it, who had the image, what was going on with it, and who they were sharing it with. They had everything.
We had an RCMP officer come to our home one time with Rehtaeh's friend, and her friend said, “I'll get the photo”, because they still hadn't seen it. This was after weeks of investigating, and they hadn't even done anything. Rehtaeh's friend said, “There it is”, and then he forwarded it to the RCMP.
Conservative
Bob Dechert Conservative Mississauga—Erindale, ON
What would you say if you had not known who had the image?
As an Individual
I would have said, if I had not known who had the image, that you could still use cellphone data. You could still get it that way to find out. It shouldn't have been very hard to do whatsoever. But in this case, they were sharing it with texts, which meant that their number and name were right there.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
We'll have the other two witnesses respond to your question, but you're way over time, so I'm going to deduct it from Conservative time elsewhere.
Ms. Reda.
As an Individual
I met my predator on a social media website. I knew who my offender was, because he lived around the corner from my elementary school. Seeing him on there and recognizing him, I thought, “Whatever, everything will be okay. This isn't like a stranger that I don't know.”
Sure enough, this man for an entire month groomed me. He made me gain trust in him. He made me run to him, to the point, ladies and gentlemen, that I sat in my living room with my mother sitting right across from me with her back to me while this offender masturbated on webcam. My mother had no idea, because I hid it from her so well, because he taught me how to hide it from everyone else.
When it came time for him to actually lure me off the Internet and sexually assault me, he started using all those images of me to extort more disgusting acts. In one instance, he told me to break a broomstick in half and shove the pointy side in. I want you all to hear this. He made a 12-year-old girl insert sharpened pencils into her vagina. He made a 12-year-old girl perform sexual acts on her dog.
What's sad about this, ladies and gentlemen, is that before he was caught, I went to my police, because he was impersonating me on the Internet. He was attacking my friends. He was telling them to go online, stand up, turn around, take your top off, and if you don't do it, I'm going to post this photo of Ally.
So what did my friends do? Now they were victimized because they were trying to help me. Now I'm left with the blame and the shame that maybe if something had been done, I wouldn't be responsible for all these young girls all over the world. I still live with that today.
Conservative
As an Individual
I do not necessarily. I think the biggest thing for me was the instant jump that I shouldn't have done such and such, and that not having done it would have prevented all of this.
I don't feel that victim shaming and blaming is the way to go about this. I feel that when I called the police to tell them what had happened, they should have said, “Okay, we have this and this in place to take care of this. We are familiar with Internet crime, we have a process, and we will help you.” That would be my biggest message about all of this; that they had no recourse.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Thank you for those comments, everyone.
Thank you for those questions.
Our next questioner is from the Liberal Party.
Mr. Casey.
Liberal
Sean Casey Liberal Charlottetown, PE
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To all of the witnesses, let me say that I haven't been here all that long—it's only been three years—but I don't know that I've ever attended a committee meeting at which the testimony has been as powerful as today. To all of you, thank you so much. Be assured that it has been extremely impactful.
I expect you also know that at the political level of this debate, we and the official opposition have urged a splitting of the bill to remove the elements that specifically deal with cyberbullying from the online surveillance elements that were lifted from an earlier piece of legislation. I appreciate the comments that have been made by each of you on that topic—your reference, Ms. Chiles, to an omnibus bill, and Ms. Todd, yours as well.
Rest assured that this has been heard and that the message has been conveyed and that this is still something that we would very much like to see. I can tell you that if this suggestion is taken, the measures that specifically deal with revenge porn and the non-consensual exchange of intimate images could be fast-tracked while we spend more time studying the implications of the online surveillance provisions. We continue to believe that this is the right way to go. I thank you for adding your voices to that issue.
I'm going to take a page out of Mr. Dechert's book. We spend a lot of time as parliamentarians talking about changes to the law. It's what we do; we revise and create laws. But I happen to think that on this issue, as on so many others, legislative change is a small part of what we as parliamentarians, and Canadian society, need to do to address this problem.
You touched on it in some detail, Ms. Todd, when you talked about the non-legislative measures—education and awareness, mental health programs, the role of industry, and help for families, including a place to go.
Perhaps I could start with you, Ms. Todd, and invite others also to talk about what advice you have for the government outside of changes to legislation that would make a meaningful difference.
What are the biggest things that the Government of Canada should be doing other than changing the law?
Thank you.
As an Individual
I think I said it in my little speech. We need to bring together other organizations, other people, community leaders, in order to make the difference.
I say that laws are great. We have seat belt laws and we have drinking and driving laws. Having them sets the bar, such that if you do something criminal and break the law, there are going to be consequences for it. You are going to be penalized because you understood that there was a law.
We need those, but at the grassroots end of things we need to provide the education and awareness to our children at a younger age. We need the resources. For me, if it were mandated, it would be mental health programs and education in the schools and the programming.
As well, funding from the government would be there to help the various provinces. I remember that exactly a year ago we were in Winnipeg, and we talked about mental health programs and education. I believe the government told us at the time that it was all legislated provincially. Well, it's really hard that everyone has to go to their province. All provinces are struggling with education and health care. To have it mandated at the very top of our government spectrum would help so much in making sure that the resources are there.
As an Individual
I would give an example of something the government is already doing. I'm quite happy with it and I feel that there's a lot of progress being made on bullying. That is funding programs such as the one with the Red Cross, whereby the Red Cross is going out to the schools, taking the leaders who are identified in the schools, and training them in conflict management, mediation, and those kinds of skills to help deal with bullying. In exchange, each of those children who are being trained under that program then goes forth and trains 20 more. That's part of their contract, if you will, for the training. That, in my view, was a fantastic initiative. We can't stop there. There is much more that needs to be done.
If I may take 30 seconds, I would like to address your question. There are other things that government can do, but the one thing that you all bring to this table is the ability to change the laws. This is what several of us are commenting on. We need this law, in addition to the laws that are there now, to tighten up and make it faster for police to deal with these instances. I don't want to leave you with a checklist of things that the government can do besides law. I really want to leave here knowing that you are going to do something with the law and do it soon.
As an Individual
I think, sir, that among other things the government can do besides create laws would be to start engaging social media companies a lot more and start saying to them that they need to act like citizens of our country, that they need to be responsible like that.
It's not, to me, that you should make laws against Facebook, but why wouldn't Facebook want to have a hand in helping us? Why would Twitter allow people to be violated over and over again on their platform? This is their image.
I think it would rest with something like that. We need to start engaging social media companies a lot more and need to put much more responsibility right back on them. If I had a product out there that children were using to kill each other with, I don't think it would be for sale in Canada. But Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—all these things—are widely, openly used. We have examples here. Children are dying because of this. It's hard for me to understand why these companies aren't stepping up to the plate without having to be pushed or nudged or legislated.
In Italy, they have arrested people from Facebook. They've put out warrants for them because they allowed this to happen after people were complaining. Should we do that in Canada? I don't know. But the thing is, why would we have to? I think we really need to start engaging these companies a lot more, saying that they need to have a bill of rights for their users and need to strictly enforce it.
That would be my desire. It would be my desire that we not have to do any of this at all, but I know that's probably naive and unrealistic. If I worked for a company like that, I would want it to do this anyway, because it would be my image. Our families are on these websites.
As an Individual
I just want to take two seconds to quickly show you how fast social media is when posting stuff on the Internet. I just got a post saying that I'm apparently slamming the federal government right now. That's just how fast this happens. That's an example right there.
What I ask and have been asking from the government since the day I was assaulted, the day that my offender's charge was dropped because of a plea bargain, and given that my offender for an international case got two years and 11 months for abusing girls all over the world and sexually assaulting me—two years and 11 months....
What is my goal here today? I support this bill, I really do, because it's a change that we need. But I'm here to tell you that we need to make our laws stricter. We need to strengthen them. The offenders who do these things go in, get a slap on the wrist, come back out, and offend again and hurt another child. Then it's taxpayers' money going again. If we figure this out the first time, we won't have this problem.
As an Individual
One things that is just a sidebar and that has just come to mind a bit more since we've all been chatting is that when I tried to tighten my privacy settings on Facebook, so that these people.... Many of us don't realize that we have an “other” inbox on Facebook. When you go onto your Facebook from your desktop or your laptop, you can actually see an “other” folder. In that folder were all of the people who were not my friends but had been able to link from this MyEx.com to me. I was unable, no matter what I did, to actually set my privacy such that those people could no longer message me.
So it was a free-for-all until the attention stopped, basically. There was absolutely nothing I could do, short of shutting my life down, which everybody recommended I not do, because when you have an active healthy social media presence, it actually helps push the garbage down. They encouraged me to stay active on Facebook and stay active on Twitter. It was hard for me to do that, knowing what was going on, but I felt exposed regardless, just because Facebook did not allow me to set the parameters so that I felt safe.
I'm all for freedom of speech. I think there is a very fine line between what we're trying to accomplish here and taking away people's rights to speak. There is a line between bullying and just being a jerk that is very grey. My biggest point here is about Facebook settings and having responsibility and awareness within these groups—online media companies, whatever. We shouldn't have to ask for those things. They should be there already. If we choose to have a tight ship, that should be our choice as citizens, and it's simply not like that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Thank you very much.
Our next question is from the Conservatives, Mr. Goguen.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses for testifying today.
It certainly takes a great amount of courage to share your experiences with us. It's painful, I would think, to remember these horrible events, and of course for those of you who have lost children, our deepest sympathies. Certainly you have our commitment to try to act in such a fashion so that these horrible acts don't repeat themselves in the future.
All of you have commented on the necessity of the police authorities acting rapidly. There's been some discussion on the protection of the privacy of the perpetrators. Obviously we don't live in a police state and there has to be some sort of balance in striking privacy rights.
Mr. Hubley, by way of example, don't you feel, as a victim, that privacy is invaded when you're cyberbullied?
As an Individual
I'm sorry, I don't quite understand. The victim's privacy is—?
As an Individual
Yes. It's absolutely invaded when something like this happens.
I'm sorry. I'm not going to be here to protect the privacy of the cyberbully. I don't care what laws you guys want to pass to do to the cyberbully; the worse they are, the better, and you'll get my support. I'm here to protect the victims. I want you to do whatever you can to protect the victims, because in this case, and many other cases, it's our children. They can't always protect themselves.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Given the choice between protecting the privacy rights of victims—and they're numerous—and a minimal intrusion into the privacy rights of a perpetrator, isn't the greater good of Canada and Canadians in protecting the privacy of the victims versus the privacy rights of the perpetrators? Shouldn't that be where the line is drawn?
As an Individual
If choices have to be made, I would certainly agree with you.
In Canada, ideally we want to try to protect everybody in the scenario, but the priority has to be the victim. We're seeing the damage that this is causing, and how quickly. Glen and others have shared with you how quickly the damage can be done. Yet, if we can get in there right away and act....
What I've read in the bill here is that they have to get a warrant, so they have to appear before the judge to get a warrant. Therefore, a case has to at least be established in order to get that warrant. That's going to take a bit of time. It's not like you're going to have police officers running out and tapping into everybody's Facebook account to find out what they're doing. I don't want to see that happening.
Conservative
Robert Goguen Conservative Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB
Oh no, that wouldn't be possible. That's not the Canada we know and love.
We have the Canadian Centre for Child Protection that has created Cybertip. It's federally funded. Of course that's not the be-all answer to all of the crime that's on the Internet.
Some of you may know of this organization. Cybertip is a tip line. It's funded by the federal government. It's primary function is to receive, process, and triage reports from the public with regard to child sexual abuse material online, luring children exploited through prostitution, travelling sex offenders, child trafficking, and cyberbullying. It's a start, and that's why we're here, to build on it.
Since its inception, believe it or not, Cybertip has received over 53,000 reports from the Canadian public with regard to their concern of a child being victimized on the Internet, resulting in at least 70 arrests and numerous children being removed from abusive environments. It's only a start, obviously. That's why we're all here, and that's why you're here, courageously testifying of the horrors that you've lived.
Mr. Canning, do you think that cyberbullying and the tools provided to the police to find the perpetrators of crime are two distinct issues, or do you think they're one interrelated issue? In other words, do you think the law has to be modernized to adjust to the new technology of crimes, IP addresses, luring on the Internet, etc.? We're talking about the ability to act rapidly, the minimal infringement on the perpetrator's privacy, in order to protect lives.
What are your thoughts on that, sir?
As an Individual
My thoughts on this bill are that it is a law enforcement bill. This bill is going to be used by police officers, law enforcement agencies, to go after cyberbullies, people who harass, intimidate, and threaten, online.
I know that police officers can go into your home if they have reasonable grounds that there's a crime being committed, but you don't see police officers walking into every house in Canada for no reason whatsoever. We can't afford that. We expect more than that from our law enforcement. We expect that they're going to use the tools they have in the appropriate manner. I believe this is going to present them with another tool, a valuable tool.
I don't believe there's going to be all this massive abuse. There's a lot that they're going to have to deal with. Nova Scotia has new cyberbullying things, and they're just backlogged.