Good morning. Thank you for inviting my husband and me to speak today.
We want to introduce our son to you today. Harry was a very outgoing and inclusive young man. He was intelligent and handsome. He was an athlete and a brother, and he was loved by his friends and his community.
Harry was a patriot. He loved his country. He joined the cadets at age 14. Then in grade 11, in fall 2022, Harry joined the Prince Edward Island Regiment. He was 16. He was doing his basic training in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, on the weekends, while going to Souris Regional School full time. He only had one weekend left to complete his basic training for the RCAC. He was so proud of Canada, and he planned to dedicate his life to serving his country.
I'm Barbie Lavers. My husband is Carl Burke. We are Harry's parents. Harry was 17 years old when we lost him to sextortion. As a family, we had many conversations with Harry and his sister Ella about safe online use and about the dangers of sharing images online. Unfortunately, our family was not aware of the word “sextortion”. We had never heard of it.
On April 24, Harry came to his dad and told him that he had screwed up. He had shared intimate pictures with a girl, supposedly his own age, from Nova Scotia. This individual was now demanding money, or they would share Harry's images with all of his contacts, and in particular with his commanding officer in the RCAC. Sadly, this individual did share some of the images with his friends in cadets, and Harry knew this. I was also contacted on Instagram by apparently the same individual, who told me they would ruin his life.
When Harry came to us that evening and told us what had happened, all four of us sat at the table, talked about it and made a plan to contact the local RCMP in the morning. We thought Harry was comfortable with this plan, but sadly, he wasn't.
On the morning of April 25, we were getting ready for our day. My husband went down to check on Harry. The sheets in his bed had been pulled back, but the bed was not slept in. He yelled to me, “Where is Harry?” I came running down the stairs. By this time, Carl was in the garage. He found Harry face down on the floor. He shot himself.
What I'm telling you here does not define or demonstrate, in any way, what we found, what we felt or how our family felt, or how our lives have been changed forever.
Just two weeks ago, two teen boys and a young man in P.E.I. were targeted for the under-reported global crime of sextortion. The boys were targeted on social media platforms, where the strangers posed as age-appropriate girls for sex photo swaps. This has to be stopped.
We as a family support Bill C-63 to protect our children. As advancements continue with technology and as access to devices continues, the risks to our children increase. We must work together as communities, as families and as governments, through user regulations and accountability, to reduce the online abuse of our children and to provide support to all of us.
Social media platforms must be held accountable. They must incorporate regulations to keep our children safe. Children like our Harry are dying. The evidence of harm to our children is abundantly apparent.
Our 17-year-old daughter Ella has a Facebook account. She is unable to access Marketplace on Facebook because she is under 18. If you or I were on Marketplace, occasionally you might get a pop-up that says a seller might not be from your country. Obviously, Facebook has the ability to review IP addresses from incoming messages to their system. Can we not use this for our children's safety?
Now is not the time to enact or to dramatize politics. Colours need not matter in this discussion. Our children are the most important issue here, not colours. This bill provides an opportunity to protect our children and to show political coalition. Our children are in crisis. Some could even say they're at war. It is not time for our children to be used as political pawns to show that one party is more correct than the other. A temporary alliance must be, and is, required to save our children.
The longer Bill C-63 remains a political issue, the more children we will lose. We beg you to please stop wasting time and do something to help save our children.