Status of Women Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

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

Okay.

Ms. Dixon, you talked about the at-risk youth. Could you elaborate a little further? We have programs. We've heard from previous witnesses that there are programs for at-risk youth, and maybe this could be used to ameliorate some of the issues that are happening online.

[Shanly Dixon]

I think it could be a matter of levelling out their knowledge around digital literacy and digital gender issues.

Sometimes when I go into an area with at-risk youth and they have good education and are really aware, it's amazing what their perspectives are and their position is. There's no difference if you provide access to high-quality education and you have adults who can guide, help, and mentor people from any walk of life.

Sometimes I go into an at-risk situation with youth who are not in school, who have dropped out, who are not employed. I go into a community centre, and the community centre facilitator will tell me that the kids are very engaged and very savvy. They're online, and they're doing three things. They're Facebooking, playing video games, and downloading porn.

That's not savvy in the same way as when you go into a school with good, strong digital literacy education where teachers are teaching young people to access all kinds of information, to evaluate it critically, and to use all kinds of technology in different ways.

I think that's where we see a big cultural divide, and it's going to get bigger and more emerging, I would guess.

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

Where are they accessing this digital literacy? Is it in the school system, or...?

[Shanly Dixon]

Sometimes it's in the school system or sometimes it's in a really good youth centre that young people will choose to go to.

The organization I work with is approached by schools, youth centres, or community organizations, usually when they have a problem to address, and usually when they need programming. We kind of parachute in and try to embed our programming into something that young people are interested in and want to do. We'll level up their skills that way.

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

What age groups are you looking at?

I know for the RCMP advisory youth group, it's 13. It was mentioned before that some of the people accessing this information are younger than that. What are the ages you're looking at?

[Shanly Dixon]

The cyber-violence project we have funding for from Status of Women Canada is for ages 15 to 25, but the organization I work with works with people from ages six to 96.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We're going to go into a second round here, starting with Mrs. Vecchio for five minutes.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Ms. Dixon, I'm going to start with you. We've talked a lot about normalization. With this type of behaviour, is there going to be a concern for young girls and women when it comes to sexual predators? Is there going to be a concern that could lead to potential pornography? Where is that grey area? When does it turn into a hard line between just experimenting and showing one's sexuality and worrying about the sexual predators who are now luring those people and trying to get them into some trade or things of that sort? What are your thoughts on that?

[Shanly Dixon]

Just in my everyday work, this is my experience. I've noticed more schools and youth centres facing issues of young girls being groomed and lured online, young girls in vulnerable positions. I recently went to speak to a high school, and two students, young women, enrolled in the high school with the sole intention of grooming and luring other students out of the high school.

This is a middle-class community. It's important to have education and knowledge awareness around this. We have this kind of perception that there is no “stranger danger” online. We have sold the idea that you're safe and that it's exploration of sexuality; but there are predators. I think we have to make young people aware and acknowledge that it's an issue.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

On a totally different topic—more of a scientific thing—could the algorithms of Facebook and other social media sites be modified to deselect material that is hypersexual, pornographic, or violent? Would there be anything we could do on the deselection when it comes to our algorithms?

That goes to you, Ms. Dixon.

[Shanly Dixon]

I do have people who are working on that. There's a computer science professor at McGill University who has a conditional grant, and he's working on creating algorithms around hate speech. I think we have to be really careful, because sometimes algorithms and the affordances of design get us into situations that we're now trying to get out of. Putting the solutions into the hands of Facebook is problematic for me. We have to be careful where we go for our solutions. I think there is potential in that area, but I think sitting down with ICT companies and video game developers and working out some kind of standard would be a really big step forward.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's awesome. Thank you very much.

I will move to the RCMP. Bill C-22 was an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, to help stop children from being sexually exploited online. Do you know the results of that legislation? Has it had positive results? Has it had results? Can you just identify any findings on that?

[Insp Peter Payne]

The results have been positive and that fact is attributed to the increase in reports over the last couple of years. Industry is on board and we are getting a lot more reports. That's why I say the trend is upward and it's only going to continue to go upward with more industry reporting.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

That's fantastic.

To what degree do the RCMP education measures actually curb cyber-violence or bullying? If you're looking at that group of children between the ages of 13 and 18, do you actually have anything that shows any results or statistics on the positive effects? We see the increase in reporting, which is very positive, but do you see more discussion as well, among our youth saying “yes, this is an issue”?

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

We don't have any hard statistics on the impact of the education on cyber-violence. What we are finding is that these youth are talking about it; they are coming forward; and they're openly discussing it, so that's promising. They're working with us to create education and prevention initiatives that they feel will best educate similar youth of that age group.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Excellent.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

Very good. That's your time.

We're over to Ms. Damoff for five minutes.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you very much to all of you for being here today.

I think it was Mr. Fraser who asked where the cyber-violence is coming from, and I just want to follow up a bit.

I know you mentioned that when it's international, you can block the sites, but people just find other ways of coming in. When you're doing these investigations, how would it be broken down between perpetrators who are international versus those who are within the country, and within that, whether they are people who are known to the victims or whether they are strangers?

[Insp Peter Payne]

A lot of the online child exploitation is global; it's not only in Canada. A lot of times, the perpetrator could live in another country and the victim could be in Canada, or vice versa, so we do have that collaboration goal within the law enforcement agency jurisdictions. If we establish that the perpetrator is in Germany and the victims are in Canada, we work closely on those investigations.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

When you're investigating them, are the majority of them from other countries or from within Canada? Where are the majority of the files that you see coming from? Are they international or are they within the country?

[Insp Peter Payne]

There's a combination. They could be international. But quite often there's a broad reach, so you might have a situation in which it's not just in Canada; it's throughout the world. Every now and then we'll run major projects. You have a cross-section of both victims and perpetrators, not only in Canada but throughout the world.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Right. One of the things I saw was that Cypertip looked at 45,000 images and 80% of them were of children under age 12. If that's the case, that's an age demographic that we just aren't focusing on, or it seems that we're not focusing on educating them. Kids are becoming much more savvy and sharing things at a much younger age, yet we don't really start to talk to them until they're 13.

Do you see a gap there when we're dealing with these things, or are they two different types of crime?

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

The demographic of 13 to 18 is our consultation youth. Those are the youth that we reach out to, to discuss with us initiatives and what the hot items are, as far as they're concerned, with respect to policing issues.

However, our education and prevention material is not geared to just that demographic; it is actually aimed at educating a wider demographic. But for consultation purposes, that's the age group we target.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Do you find any challenges educating kids that are younger? Society and sometimes parents do not believe that their kids are doing things and do not want their children to learn more about the Internet.

[Insp Kimberly Taplin]

I have no information to suggest that's the case.