Thank you.
Good morning, and thank you very much for inviting me to speak here as a witness today. I wasn't given the option to do it by video conference, but I wouldn't have taken it anyway because I enjoy Ottawa and Canada. I'll tell you a little bit that's not in my prepared notes, but I first fell in love with a Canadian, and I married a Maritimer, so it didn't take long for me to also fall in love with Canada.
I'm an Internet privacy and security lawyer. I run WiredSafety, and we are the oldest and largest Internet safety organization in the world. We are one of five members of Facebook's international Safety Advisory Board. We are the only ones who are uncompensated, to my knowledge.
I also run StopCyberbullying. It's the first non-profit program devoted to cyberbullying also in the world. It's been around for eight years now formally, and much longer informally. We hold summits and bring in young people to help on these issues. Leah Parsons, Glen Canning, and Carol Todd sit on our advisory board at the StopCyberbullying Canada level, as does Sharon Rosenfeldt and Barbara Coloroso. She's been invited, even though she's not a Canadian. Only Canadians can sit on the StopCyberbullying Canada board.
I also have a youth board, and the youth are from all of the provinces in the country, and they provide very knowledgeable input as we look to find ways to improve the safety of other young people. They speak, they do research, and they work with other professionals.
We partner, and we're all unpaid volunteers at WiredSafety, and that includes me. We've been doing this for a very long time. I'm excited to see that Canada is the first country in the world to deal with sextortion, revenge porn, and unauthorized sexting issues.
You also were the first country, through a Supreme Court decision, to recognize that minors may be sharing intimate images consensually with each other. With the couple, if a boy takes it and shares it with a girl voluntarily, or the girl shares it with a boy, or whatever their sexual preferences are, they will not be prosecuted under your strong child pornography laws. It deals with once it starts disseminating.
Notwithstanding the fact that this is a wonderful bill when you're talking about cyberbullying and you're talking about abuse of young people, I think it has some problems. I was the keynote speaker in Nova Scotia when they held their cyberbullying summit, and we held a large summit in Prince Edward Island. When I misspoke before the media, promising that Prince Edward Island was going to do a bigger summit than the one that had been done in Nova Scotia, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Barbara Coloroso, Sharon Rosenfeldt, Leah and Glen, all came to little P.E.I. to meet with hundreds of young people and other experts in the room to come up with an action plan for Prince Edward Island. We've done something similar with the first nation community in New Brunswick, and our action plan on cyberbullying will be issued shortly. We're working with the premier there, as well as the premier in P.E.I. We were assisting on the action plan in Nova Scotia from the very beginning. We're working with Alberta, we've worked in Yellowknife. We are all across Canada, as my adopted nation, where I think you can solve the problems of cyberbullying better than we can anywhere else in the world. I do this all over the world.
We had one suicide in Italy because of revenge porn issues and cyberbullying. We're seeing them around the world, but nowhere are we seeing more suicides per capita connected to cyber issues than in Nova Scotia. Little Nova Scotia has had three suicides connected with digital abuse. Rehtaeh was the last, but not the first. And Jenna...Pam Murchison has been dealing with this issue for a long time. We have to focus on it here. This is an island, and this a country known for kindness.
There are old jokes on television when they talk about being kind and people who are courteous in this country, about how you care about each other more than you do in other places. Having two houses in the Maritimes, I agree. I think you do care about each other. I think this is a country of community. We can come up with solutions, a number of people on this panel with me today, and others who you've had testify. We've spoken at UN conferences, we've been on task forces together. You have the talent, you have the expertise, and you have a government that cares about our children, and that's crucial.
The one concern that I have is the voluntary disclosure. It's not that I don't trust the Canadian government with our information. I don't want Rogers, and Telus, and Bell, and all of the other telcos in this country to make a decision about my personal information and who they're going to give it to and whether or not it's authorized.
Giving that immunity to them frustrates me. I carry six cell phone numbers with Rogers. If Rogers won't promise that they're not going to turn over information voluntarily, without a court order, without a subpoena, without a warrant, I'm going to change cell phone companies. If Telus won't promise it, then I won't go to Telus, and if Bell won't promise it, whether it's Bell Canada or Bell Aliant.... Someone who is in the business of providing cell phone and wireless services is going to have to tell me as a customer that they are going to respect the privacy contract, the privacy policy that we've all agreed to. Otherwise I have lost contractual rights with a commercial company that's providing services to me, because of that little immunity clause.
Do I want somebody in a call centre or somebody who's close to someone else, who doesn't understand the standards we need, to have immunity from answering to me? No.
I understand in all likelihood that Bill C-13 will probably pass pretty much the way it is. If it does, I'm going to ask Canadians to vote with their cell phones. I'm going to ask Canadians to turn around and hold their telecom companies responsible for protecting the privacy of their users, and if they don't, then we'll find other ways of communicating with each other. But I think if somebody is going to take a lot of money from me every month for my cell phone, then they're going to have to stick with the promises they made to me.
Canada can have all of the lawful information about us—Canadians or anyone who is in Canada—that they want. I trust the government. I do not trust some low-level customer-service person at a telco to make a decision about my personal information.
I live with death threats. I received the RCMP Child Recovery Award for bringing Amber Alert to Canada on Facebook for the first time in the world. I couldn't go back to Washington for six months—nobody would talk to me—because we did it here.
I live with attacks online from cyberbullies plus. Do I want my personal information exposed in ways I can't control? No. Neither should our children have to do that. When Carol Todd said that she doesn't want anyone to give up their privacy rights in exchange for safety rights—or to do that in Amanda's name—I think that says it all.
I think if we just alter that one provision that gives immunity to the telcos, then I could support this bill. It's not perfect, but it's the best thing on cyberbullying, sexting, and revenge porn that we have seen in the world today. I say that non-stop everywhere I talk and when I reach out to Canadians for help.
You have the head of global policy from Facebook coming here Thursday. You don't have somebody from Facebook Canada; you have the head of global policy from Facebook. That's how seriously they're taking this. I know the clerk has been wonderful in trying to reach out to them, but I should tell you, knowing this from the inside, that they're taking this very seriously as well. They've been looking at it from the beginning.
You have the Internet Alliance. The Internet Alliance is everybody, not just Google or Twitter. Everybody else is in there. You can ask these questions, but don't tell me I have to trust telcos to decide what information they can give away and what they can't, not in the name of protecting our children. We can do it without that, with the help of everyone here.
So I offer my help and assistance while I try to get through all of the papers in all of the places I've lived since I was 18 in order to become a permanent resident of Canada. It takes a while when you're 63. I'm trying to remember. My mother doesn't remember them either. But until then, I am a permanent resident in my heart. I love this country, and I love what you can do, and I don't want anyone sacrificing the rights of Canadians to the benefit of a telco.
Thank you.