Status of Women Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

Every police officer, parent, and citizen across Canada has access to that website. It is publicly available.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Do you have any sense of the take-up on that, and whether municipal police forces...? Who's tapping into your network? Do you have stats on how much it is being accessed by front-line people outside your immediate service?

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

There's no way for us to distinguish inside or outside access, but I do know that, on average, the Centre for Youth Crime Prevention receives 100 unique visits each month. This does not include the number of returning visitors. During the school year we see, obviously, a higher number of visits to the website, and the resources under bullying and cyber-bullying are the most accessed.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

It's good work. I'm encouraged to know that it's there.

Ms. Dixon, can you talk a little more about who your most important partner might be to achieve some of the objectives you're hoping for, which sound like they are particularly in the areas of research and education? Do you have models in which you see particular provincial jurisdictions doing an especially good job of focusing on that, both through universities' research and through the education system, delivering really inspiring programs that we could look at?

[Shanly Dixon]

The most obvious one is probably MediaSmarts, which does great work providing digital literacy initiatives. There's an eGirls project, eGirls in democracy, I think, at the University of Ottawa. I think the people from those research groups have already spoken to you. I work with Technoculture, Art and Games, which is a research organization that looks at the gaming industry and that kind of thing, out of Concordia University—

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

If I can interrupt, what I was actually trying to get at was the level of government. As legislators, we're curious as to what falls into provincial and what falls into federal. Do you have any examples of provincial governments that are particularly supporting the kinds of programs you describe?

[Shanly Dixon]

No. Actually, I don't have the answer to that.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Are there school boards or public education systems that you would particularly hold up as doing a good job within the classroom?

[Shanly Dixon]

It's so new and it's so emerging that I feel when I go into schools—and we're working with a college right now that wants to become a thought leader in this area—it's such a struggle to just even name it, to get people to acknowledge it, to come up with definitions. I can't say that there's one that comes to mind that would be a leader in that area.

We also try to work with the video game industry. It's so new and it's so emerging and there's a lot of resistance, because it opens up a whole can of worms of actual work, putting in harassment policies and things like that. There needs to be a bit more pressure maybe from government to give people incentives to adopt policy around it and to adopt strategies around it.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Thanks.

I'm going to return to the RCMP witnesses.

Can you talk with us about conviction rates or how successful you've been at actually prosecuting cases like this?

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

You mean cases of child exploitation?

[Insp Peter Payne]

It's hard to get those numbers. At the national centre we don't get all the feedback from all of our law enforcement partners, including the RCMP, municipal police agencies, and provincial police agencies. The return rate on a lot of our statistics is generally around 25% or 30%. It's an ongoing issue with us, so I can't provide you with those concrete statistics. Your best efforts would probably be Statistics Canada. Of all the complaints we received, I think in 2014 there were 4,000 reports that went out, but I can't tell you exactly what the conviction rate was on those.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Is that something you'd be able to check and send through our clerk, to point us to do a follow-up on paper? Is that possible?

[Insp Peter Payne]

It will be extremely difficult. We've been dealing with this issue for years and the main issue is the reporting by the other police departments. Once we disseminate the material, it's out of our control what we get back. Once again, your best way forward with that is through Statistics Canada.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Thanks so much.

We'll switch over now to Ms. Vandenbeld, for seven minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank you for your very informative interventions.

I'd like to pick up on the question about the gaps in the legislation. I understand very well that you don't want to speculate on what legislation in Canada might look like, but are there examples from international jurisdictions, maybe the U.S. or in Europe or other places, of pieces of legislation or regulations, or even just ideas, that you can think of that are being used in other countries by their national police forces that might be relevant and might be something this committee might want to look at as an example?

[Insp Peter Payne]

In different countries they are able to access the information more quickly than we in Canada can, but we're bound by current legislation.

In some areas or geographic locations, some police agencies are able to get information from ISPs more quickly than in other areas, but that's more of a geographic location area issue. It's not tied to any current legislation. We have 30 days to get information back. In some areas it depends on the relationship they have with the local courts. Some law enforcement agencies will get that back within a couple of days, whereas in other areas there are stricter or tougher court commitments, so it might take 30 days to get it back.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Do you have any ideas?

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

My area is prevention and education. I'm not involved in the enforcement in my current capacity.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

You mentioned technology and how the technology is changing so quickly that the encryption and the advances are outpacing the ability to track people down.

Can anything be done in the area of technology research particularly by the federal government that would keep us a little ahead of that? Is there anything we could be doing to make it easier to keep up?

[Insp Peter Payne]

I wish there were, but the reality is that with the “dark web”, anonymization techniques, encryption, and ongoing technology changes, it's really difficult. We do conduct those investigations, but they are more complex and they take much more time. More resources would certainly help, but with the technology at this point, we do the best we can.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Obviously the Internet doesn't have geographic boundaries, so in working with other jurisdictions, I'm sure you're co-operating in terms of some of the international aspects of this.

Is there more that can be done to help facilitate working together with other jurisdictions around the world?

[Insp Peter Payne]

Right now, we have a strong partnership with all law enforcement agencies. The good thing about the centre is that we've been in existence since 2004. We've built those partnerships over the years. There's ready access. There's good collaboration on all ends.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

I'd like to move to Ms. Dixon.

Your research and the work you're doing is very admirable. I noted the discussion about the public space and how there's a normalization of things that are in the so-called “not real world”, the digital and online world, which is very real for a number of these young people.

I am interested, though. You mentioned that young people who are more vulnerable, who are at risk in their day-to-day lives in the real world, in the physical world, are also more vulnerable online. I noted also that you are doing work on national aboriginal policing.

Sorry, Kimberly, this would be a question for you. Would aboriginal youth face greater risks online because they might be more at risk in their day-to-day lives as well?

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

I'm not prepared to comment on that today.

That's certainly not an area I've examined for the purposes of this particular committee.