Status of Women Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The same here. Thank you so much for your time and your insight and caring to make a difference on this issue. Thank you so much.

I know we've talked a lot about education and I'm really happy that you indicated how absurd and ridiculous it is to put all this onus on parents.

I want to shift a bit to what you said earlier. I had my own ISP. I worked in the cable industry for 15 years. I want to talk a bit about Cleanfeed.

You mentioned 600 sites. You mentioned “many” providers. I would like to see all providers in Canada participate. If I'm hearing you correctly, this is voluntary. How can we make it mandatory? It is absurd that we have these content providers offshore that are doing this and we're not doing anything to stop them. What can we do?

[Lianna McDonald]

Signy can speak to that.

Here's one of the issues we see. It goes back into—and I think this is a larger conversation that we, as a global community, have not reconciled—what the public expects in terms of privacy versus this conversation about public safety.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

It's children.

[Lianna McDonald]

Our stance is the idea that all children have the right to be protected and safe. When we run into this whole conversation about encryption and who should have access to what information, it becomes a larger, very difficult conversation.

When we set this up, we knew that if it wasn't a voluntary system, we would have pushback from many civil libertarians, who would come back and say “Where's the judicial oversight in what you're doing?”, so we had to work within a place where we could start.

Cleanfeed is how we can do this in a way that would satisfy people looking at this situation, who would say, “We're good with that”, so that's what we did. To continue your point, I think there needs to be a proper dialogue about that collision between those rights. I think there also needs to be the conversation about the Internet service providers being regulated to some extent through the CRTC and other regulatory bodies, while the content providers are not.

[Signy Arnason]

To Lianna's point, Cleanfeed went under extreme scrutiny, because accessing child pornography in Canada is essentially illegal. It's like radioactive material. What we put on the list was very narrow and, as Lianna mentioned, it was voluntary. We have most of the major ISPs. I'd say we probably have 90% coverage amongst Canadians related to Cleanfeed, but certainly we'd like to see participation from the smaller providers and some of those stragglers among the larger-scale providers.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

Ms. Todd and Ms. Parsons talked about images that are online right now.

There are two things. One is that there is a law that it's illegal to share these images. I quote them as saying that many providers don't seem to know that it is illegal.

The second one is that I'd like to get your thoughts on how to remove those images. They were very concerned about the challenges in removing these images.

[Signy Arnason]

As a direct result of a number of tragedies, which would include Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, and through what we were seeing coming into the tip line, we created this offshoot called NeedHelpNow. We did that purposely because we know that when teens come in to us with their concerns, they are certainly at their wits' end, but I can promise you that their first request isn't to involve police and tell their parents. Their first request is “Oh, my God, help me get the content down and let me move on with my life.”

It doesn't justify what the acting-out youth are doing, but that is the number one request that we have when they come in.

This was a service that we established as a first entry point to try to tackle this issue, knowing that child exploitation units across the country have a huge caseload dealing with people committing hands-on offences against very young children. This is a very important issue, but if you're asking them to reprioritize teens sharing sexual images over those cases, you're asking them to do a very challenging thing, so NeedHelpNow was designed to take that first stab at it.

Then if it involved uttering threats or extortion, it hit a different level, a different threshold, in terms of the criminal activity that may be going on in that context. That's certainly where it warrants police getting involved. The impetus behind that site was really to support and assist youth who feel as though they have no way out and they want the content to come down.

[Lianna McDonald]

There are two other things.

One is notice and takedown. We trigger that with providers so that they remove content. We have about a 95% response rate in terms of getting content down when they're notified.

The other thing, which we're just beginning, is that our organization is working on a new global tool to reduce the public availability of child abuse imagery on the Internet. We hope to show what that will look like within the next six months.

[Marc Serré, Liberal, Nickel Belt, ON]

We probably don't have time now, but at a later point, can you provide the committee with your recommendations related to Facebook, Twitter, and the privacy laws that they're not following? To put it on the record, they're not following those laws. It's in advertising and it's hurting, so if you have any specific recommendations on that to bring to the committee or if it's part of your legislative package, we need to look at addressing that aspect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We'll keep the questioning going as long as we can. We'll go to Mr. Genuis for five minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you so much to both of you for your testimony.

I wanted to ask a little about international models around monitoring online and these sorts of things, because I found an article, Ms. Arnason, in which you talked about the British model—this is from 2013—and expressed some cautious optimism about that. As I understand the British model, it's proactive filtering with the option for people to opt in to a wide range of different kinds of material. It's done currently on a voluntary basis, but there has been ongoing discussion about legislating.

I wonder if you kept up with the detail on the British model and can comment on how applicable some of those lessons might be to us here.

[Signy Arnason]

I don't know where that British model is at and whether that even went through, but it was an interesting concept about putting the filters on at the front end and then deciding to opt out of that, which, in terms of exposure and what we're seeing going on within some of the households, was an interesting thing to be considering.

My commentary really pertained to the fact that when you're looking at other models around the world, certainly there are things that are worth consideration. I can't comment on where that is at, unless you can provide me insight on it.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

No, I know that's—

[Signy Arnason]

Maybe you can give me an update on what's going on in that space.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

I'm sorry to ask a very specific question. I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm just curious if there are international models used in other countries that are doing something that we're not doing here and that we should learn from.

[Lianna McDonald]

I think what you'll see is one of the things that we talk about in the federal action plan. We pulled out 10 points in that document and highlight some of them.

In a nutshell, as I had said to one of your colleagues here, we are figuring out some ways we can use technology in Canada that we believe will be leading the globe in starting to remedy some of these problems. At the same time, we're paying attention to some very interesting legislative things right now, and there are gaps that need to be fixed.

In this larger debate and conversation, thosse will give some of the teeth that we need to take action against those who misuse and abuse technology and abuse children and also allow us to stop the abuse of children. We're happy to share some of those things that are percolating for us. As an organization we are also watching very closely what is going on around the world. We will be presenting on some of these innovative things at Interpol in November. We're happy if those recommendations come forward to share with this group.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

That's excellent.

I appreciated the comment about not putting all the weight on the shoulders of parents. I'm a young parent. I have kids one and three. I'm listening very nervously to all this discussion about where we're going.

Could you share some advice for me and for parents in general about strategies we should be following to be more effective in reducing the risk to our kids, given all the information we're hearing?

[Signy Arnason]

I'll do little ones, because I have a six-year-old.

First, you don't begin this discussion once they're a tween. As soon as they're picking up technology—a three-year-old picks up an iPad—you're beginning to enter into that discussion and that dialogue. I think it's really important that children are accustomed to hearing from you about what they're doing online. It isn't a foreign thing for you to be invested and interested in what they're doing.

I think where some of the defensiveness comes is that all of a sudden parents enter into it. They're terrified, they're aggressive, and kids tell them to back off; it's none of their business. Then they're a teenager and they want to tell you nothing about what's going on. I'm not saying you won't get pushback, but it won't be strange for them to hear you talk about those concerns.

As we mentioned, our material walks through the different ages, recognizing that you can be very rule-based with an eight-year-old; good luck on trying that with a 13-year-old. It doesn't work. You have to evolve your messaging as your children age. If you miss that piece, you will have some problems.

You also can't bury your head in the sand. This is not an issue that happens to marginalized children; it happens to every child, whether they're exploited by someone online, whether they're being sexually abused. This is not a problem that happens to a certain segment of our population or somewhere else in the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Marilyn Gladu]

We are now going to go to the last five minutes, with Ms. Damoff.

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

First I want to thank you both for all the work you've done for as long as you've done it. Quite honestly, I can't imagine being faced with the types of things you have been faced with for so long. I commend you both for your efforts.

While we were here, I went to NeedHelpNow. It is an outstanding resource. It's amazing. How many people know about it?

[Lianna McDonald]

Not enough.

[Signy Arnason]

We need your help.

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

Yes. It's just outstanding.

That leads to one of my questions, actually. Do you think you have enough resources to do the work you are doing, making sure kids know that there is a website like this, where they can go to get the resources they need?

[Lianna McDonald]

No.

We manage very well. Our slogan is “You get more than you paid for.” We are happy. Our mission drives what we do. We receive funding from the federal government, for which we are very grateful. We have asked for increased funding, but we also have to be wise. You can't just pour endless amounts into this effort. We have to be very smart.

One of the things we are really pleased with is that our relationship with the policing community is very strong. All school resource officers—back to your point—use NeedHelpNow because they are getting the calls. They are funnelling all that material out.

We are giving out, free, millions and millions of pieces every year to educators, which is huge. We are trying to figure out how to manage this, knowing that there is never going to be enough. We need to work smart and hard, not necessarily in that order.

Right now we are looking at some of the solutions I talked about. We have been doing this a long time. We have recently taken stock, and we are starting to look at the rates of return, in terms of where we need to be putting those resources. Yes, we have requested some increased funding, but we also recognize that it can't be endless. We have to figure this out. We are working on that.

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

When we had the RCMP here, they were really hesitant to provide us with any information on where the gaps were in the legislation. Will the material you are providing to us give us that?