Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Senator, thank you for coming. I'm eager to hear you speak about Bill S-210, an important bill that aims to restrict young people's online access to sexually explicit material. We could also say that it aims to protect young people from learning about sex from online porn.
I liked the way you described the bill when you said that its purpose is to do online what we do offline. Things were much easier when children weren't allowed to go to convenience stores to buy magazines containing pornographic material. Now it's a little more complicated, with everything available online.
You will have noticed though that this bill does not meet with unanimous approval. The government voted against sending it to a parliamentary committee for study. It's thanks to the vote of the other opposition parties that the committee is able to study this bill today. I've read it and I think it's a good bill. In fact, the Bloc Québécois supports it.
Age verification is obviously not a simple matter. We have read about what's being done in other countries. You mentioned Germany, the UK, France, some US states, Spain and Australia, among others. From what I have read about the concrete measures taken by those countries, I note that the law has yet to be applied in many cases, or that it will only be applied in future pilot projects. So we don't necessarily have a clear indication of what is being done and what Canada could do, or examples from which to draw inspiration.
I'd like to hear your comments on a question you raised earlier, and I'll allow you to answer in French: Why did you choose to have the operating provisions in the regulations rather than right in the bill?
What kind of regulations would you like to see the government put in place? Aren't you worried about putting everything in the regulations, given that the government doesn't want anything to do with Bill S-210?