Madam Speaker, the second petition is on mandatory age verification. I rise to present petitions from hundreds of Canadians from across Canada. These petitioners are concerned with the accessibility and impacts of violent and degrading sexually explicit material online and the impacts on public health, especially on the well-being of women and girls. They recognize that we cannot say we believe in preventing sexual violence toward women while allowing pornography companies to freely expose children to violent, sexually explicit imagery day after day, which is a form of child abuse.
As such, they note that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child requires Canada to develop and maintain the means to protect children from forms of media that are injurious to their well-being. As such, these petitioners are calling on the House of Commons to require meaningful age verification on all adult websites.