moved for leave to introduce Bill C-302, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (pornographic material).
Mr. Speaker, on December 4, 2020, a New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof, entitled “The Children of Pornhub”, shook the world.
This bill hopes to address that issue by requiring that the age and consent of the individuals depicted in videos be verified before these videos are put up. At the ethics committee, we heard from Serena Fleites, a 14-year-old girl who had her image shared on Pornhub. She has spent years trying to get that image taken down.
This bill, the stop Internet sexual exploitation bill, the SISE act as I call it, would hope to address that by introducing two pieces to the Criminal Code: first, that the creation of pornographic material for a commercial purpose be required to prove that the age and the consent of the individuals depicted in it would be verified; second, that the distribution of pornographic material for commercial purposes would have the age and consent verified; and, if the consent had been revoked, it would no longer be shared.
We hope the situation faced by Serena Fleites will never again happen in Canada. As we see, some of these platforms are based in Canada.
It is my privilege to introduce the SISE act today.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)