Thank you.
Mr. Chairperson and distinguished members of this committee, I thank you very much for giving our agency the opportunity to provide a presentation on Bill C-13.
My name is Lianna McDonald, and I am the executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a registered charity providing national programs and services related to the personal safety of all children.
Joining me today are my two colleagues: Ms. Signy Arnason, director of Cybertip.ca; and Monique St. Germain, our general counsel.
Our goal today is to provide insight and support for Bill C-13, legislation that will assist in addressing the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. We will offer some testimony based on our role in operating Cybertip.ca, Canada's national tip line to report the online sexual exploitation of children.
What we have witnessed first-hand and all too often is really the collision between sexual exploitation, technology, and bullying. For almost 30 years our agency has worked closely with families, police, educators, child welfare, industry, and others in child protection. Through operating Cybertip.ca, we have received more than 110,000 reports regarding sexual abuse and exploitation of children. These reports have resulted in police executing more than 550 arrests and removing numerous children from abusive environments.
It has been through this work that we see the most brutal behaviours towards children, everything from the recording of graphic sexual or physical assaults against very young children by predatory adults to teens trying to navigate a social media fallout from a sexual picture or even trying to cope with the aftermath of a sexual crime that has been recorded. These are not easy times to be a young person.
Several years ago we started to see a shift in reports to the tip line. We began to see young people coming in as both the victim and the reporting person. We recognized quickly the need to respond and as a result created a number of prevention resources. We have made these all available, and with a couple of samples that are very relevant to this particular issue.
While these and other resources are important, what we know is that they are not enough. Technology has become a powerful weapon and the ammunition of choice for those who wish to hide behind the protected cloak of anonymity. New technologies make it much easier to harass and to participate in a toxic digital frontier wherein ongoing biases about sexual misconduct collide with unrealistic expectations of adolescent behaviour, all fueled by the misuse of technology.
While certainly we are sophisticated enough not to place the blame solely on technology, we should be rightly committed to understanding its role in the commission of offences and to deciding how we as a nation choose to respond and modernize laws to adequately address new types of criminal behaviour.
The question we raise today is from a child protection point of view. How are we addressing the privacy rights of children? More to the point, how are we addressing the invasion of privacy of those young people who are currently being harmed? When young people are victimized and technology has been used to memorialize the sexual harm, there is often an additional layer of trauma. The past is their present.
For these reasons, we are supporting Bill C-13, and I want to highlight three key points.
First, we firmly believe that the intimate image offence is much more appropriate than a child pornography offence in circumstances in which both the individual depicted in the image and the individual distributing the image are under the age of 18. The child pornography offences were designed and intended to address behaviour and images that are qualitatively different from what we are discussing today.
Second, we support having the offence cover victims of all ages. Our agency receives reports and communications from numerous young adults impacted by this issue. The reputational and sexual harm that results from the non-consensual distribution of an intimate image is significant, regardless of age.
Third, it is important that such images be removed and deleted quickly to minimize the damage to the individual depicted.
We welcome the provisions in the bill that facilitate these actions. We also see tremendous value in enabling potential victims to apply for court-ordered recognizance against a potential distributor in advance of any distribution.
At this time, Signy Arnason, my colleague, will speak quickly to a few stats and facts, and then Monique St. Germain will speak to some criticisms of the bill.