Madam Speaker, I will be honest that when this topic came up, I never thought it would be something I would discuss here in the House of Commons. I know that when my parents watch this debate, whom I discussed this with a last night, they too will be surprised by some of the information I am going to be sharing.
I would really like to thank the member for Peace River—Westlock for introducing such a timely motion. Currently, in the status of women committee, we are studying violence against young women and girls. Through that study, I have learned more than I ever expected to learn. I think it is really important for all Canadians to know about this important topic relating to pornography and the necessity of the health committee's studying the effects of pornography.
I will start with a little story. I am just going to go off the cuff on this. There is a member I sit with on the status of women committee who will laugh at the fact that I am telling this story. It is a little embarrassing. I will start with a commercial called The Boys. I will ask everyone in the House to go home and watch this advertisement for some underwear made by an Australia company. The underwear's name is Bonds.
I first viewed this commercial on my flight back from some work I did on the status of women file. It was one of the award-winning commercials for underwear. On Air Canada, during this nice flight, I was watching this commercial. It has two testicles, and they are talking about how comfortable, and sometimes uncomfortable, underwear is.
I found the humour absolutely hilarious, because it is the type of humour that anyone who ever watched Seinfeld would appreciate. It was a little off the cuff, a little, “Oh my goodness, I cannot believe they said that”, but at the same time extremely witty.
The first thing I did when I got home was to say to my husband, “You have to watch this commercial. It is absolutely hilarious.” The commercial has two segments, part one and part two. I believe there may be a part three, as well. I allowed my son, who is 13 years old, to watch it, because I recognize what is appropriate and inappropriate. I also think parenting is very important.
After watching part one and part two of these commercials, the next thing that came up was pornography, as we were on an automatic loop. It was of two young girls and a young man. I will let members know that we could not run faster to that channel changer so we would not show our 13-year-old son what was playing next.
It was one of those embarrassing moments when we sit and wonder how we got to this from an underwear commercial that is playing on television in Australia 24 hours a day. How could pornography follow this?
At the status of women committee, we are also studying the algorithms involved. I see the parliamentary secretary here, and she, too, would understand the things that we are studying and how algorithms are a huge part of our study of the issue of violence against women and girls. We looked at algorithms this week and how when people put certain things in a search engine, there are crumbs that will show what people have watched in the past and then send that person to something on the web.
Of course, in my home, the first thing I said was, “Who is watching pornography? How did we possibly get this coming up after watching part one and part two of the commercial?” I had to ask every single person, and everyone said they did not watch it.
The first thing I did was to go to my iPhone and do the exact same search. I can promise members that not once has the word “pornography” been put in the search engine in my iPhone. I kind of look at it as a safe place, because there should not be any crumbs leading to this. The third thing that came up after viewing part one and part two of this commercial was pornography. Somehow it is being linked.
The reason I am talking about this is that I understand, from all the studies that we have done, that a huge majority of young boys have already watched or come across pornography by the age of 11.
In this regard, I would really like to thank the member who has moved this motion for the work he has done with the Over 18 documentary, which really focuses on the pornography industry and its effects.
While we were watching this documentary in the House of Commons last month, there was a young boy from Ontario, I believe, in the documentary who talked about the fact that every single day he was watching pornography. He was not just watching one or two segments; he was watching it sometimes up to five times a day.
His parents found out about this, and the first thing they did was have a discussion with him about pornography, because they had noticed a huge change in their son's behaviour. They are stating that they watched a huge deterioration in their son's behaviour toward his sisters, the fact that he had become much more violent with them, and it became much more of a violent situation. It was quite unbelievable for these parents that they were having to discuss healthy relationships and sex with their young son. I believe he was 11 or 12 years old at the time.
In this documentary, Over 18, they also talked about the desensitization of pornography and the effects that it has on healthy relationships. The week before last I was at a breakfast with a professor who has done tons and tons of work around this country and around the world on pornography and the effects of pornography. Some of the things she talked about included a discussion she had with a 12-year-old who asked if strangling while having sex was right, because he understood that was normal. Things like violent relationship stuff at the age of 12 is now being introduced to our young children.
I am a mother of five. I have two young girls and three young boys. I am very concerned with what we are seeing. When we talk about pornography, what is happening to healthy relationships?
I think this study is very timely, especially when we see the effects of pornography on our young children, our families, and our relationships, especially since it has not been studied for over 30 years, and we have now been introduced to the Internet. Thirty years ago, pornography would have been something as simple as a Playboy. My husband shared stories of coming across Playboy magazines many years ago when he was at a friend's house or something like that. Those are the things 14- or 15-year-old boys would get their hands on.
Now the pornography is much greater and much further into the craziness, where we are seeing violent behaviour toward young girls and women and even young boys as well, and we have to recognize the effects it is having on relationships.
During the study of violence against women, we had a witness by the name of Jane Bailey. She said there is absolutely a correlation between pornography and violence against women. If we are to continue wanting to make sure that we have a world of equality, a country where there is no violence, a country where women and children are treated properly, we need to look at pornography as a huge issue.
I am a mom, and any parent in this chamber today or anyone watching would be concerned. It is really important that, as parents, we know what is on the Internet. We recognize that companies like Google, Twitter, and Facebook are doing as much as they possibly can to remove some of these horrible images off the Internet, but we need to do more. We need to do more because pornography is desensitizing normal healthy relationships.
A normal healthy relationship is something we can always discuss, and we see that it expands and changes all the time. However, when pornography is there and we know that over 80% of our young boys are watching pornography, what will it do to them when it comes to having a healthy relationship?
Those are some huge concerns I have, so I think this is most timely and that we should be studying this in the health committee. I also urge the status of women committee to make sure this is very important in the report we will be doing about violence against women, because we need to see the correlation between pornography and what it is doing to our country, to our young boys and girls, and to our families. We see that abuse occurs because of that.
I appreciate all the work that the member for Peace River—Westlock has done on this to bring it to the committee and to the House of Commons so that we can have a conversation about it and make sure that we recognize what is healthy and what is unhealthy. As a parent, whenever I come across pornography, I recognize that it is extremely unhealthy.
Once again, I thank the member for bringing this forward. I recognize that many members are nodding their heads and that they understand this really important topic.