moved that Bill S-209, An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material, be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Madam Speaker, we know that the Internet gives us access to almost anything. With just a few clicks, we can watch a movie, learn a new skill on YouTube, find a new recipe, research any topic or talk to a friend down the street or even on the other side of the world. Within my own lifetime, the Internet has gone from something new to something that is fully integrated into our everyday lives.
The Internet is without a doubt a big part of everyday life for every generation, including our children. They use it to do their homework. They play games. They watch videos. They connect with their friends. However, the Internet also gives children access to things that they are not ready to see, understand or even process.
One thing that is readily available to kids is pornography. Research shows that children can be exposed to pornography online without ever even intending to look for it. They can come across it in an unintended search result. They can click on the wrong link. It can be shared by another child, or it can appear through an advertisement. Once a child sees it, we cannot assume they understand what they are seeing. They do not have the experience or maturity to understand what they are looking at, or what it means for a healthy relationship. Parents may not even know that this has happened.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection says children as young as eight and nine can easily come across sexually graphic material online. An Alberta study found that one-third of adolescents in this study had first been exposed to pornography by the age of 10. Other research has reported exposure at even younger ages, including children as young as five.
Let us just sit with that for a moment and think about that. At five years old, a child is just beginning school. They are learning to read. They are learning how to make friends. They are learning about the world around them. They should not be exposed to pornography, and they certainly do not have the capacity to understand it.
Children are being exposed to pornography online, sometimes at a very young age. The graphic and often violent content is not appropriate for a child. Their brains are still developing, and they are learning how to understand relationships, emotions, boundaries and the world around them. When a child is exposed to pornography, they do not have the maturity to understand what they are seeing. They may start to believe that what they are watching is healthy, and it can shape their ideas about sex, relationships and how people should treat one another.
There is another concern. What might start as accidental exposure or curiosity can become a habit. A child may return to that content again and again. Over time, repeated use can become compulsive, and for some young people it can develop into an addiction. There is certainly evidence that compulsive consumption is a widespread and growing public health issue. One Canadian survey examined students from grade 7 to 11. Among the grade 8 students surveyed, 88% of boys and 72% of girls reported seeing sexually explicit content, and 35% of boys said they had seen pornography too many times to count.
To be clear, these are children. They are still developing their understanding of sex, relationships and what is healthy, yet some are already being exposed to pornography on a regular basis. This is not something we should ignore, because that repeated exposure is rewiring the brains of the kids who are consuming it. Over time, repeated exposure can shape what a young person comes to see as healthy. It can shape their expectations about sex and relationships, and those ideas do not simply disappear once a child turns 18.
What a young person sees while they are still developing can influence how they understand relationships later in life. We can see examples of this in the way that some harmful sexual behaviours have become normalized among young people. A recent article by sex neuroscientist Debra Soh examined the growing normalization of sexual choking among young people. She makes the case that pornography has played a role in making behaviour that was once clearly understood as dangerous seem normal or even expected in some relationships.
These harms can affect how young people understand sex, relationships and consent, and the consequences can extend beyond a child who is viewing the content. When harmful behaviours are normalized, there can be victims on the other side of those behaviours. Young women and girls can be affected by expectations placed on them by partners who have learned distorted ideas about sex and relationships. We need to think about the young people who may be pressured to accept behaviour because they have been told it is normal. We also need to think about those who may experience sexual violence or abuse as a result.
Protecting children from harmful content is not just about what they see on a screen. It is also about the kinds of relationships and expectations we want them to carry into adulthood, yet there are currently no safeguards in place to make sure children cannot easily access this content online. That is a disservice to our children.
Bill S-209 is a response to that lack of a safeguard. I am grateful to Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne for her persistence and dedication in addressing this issue and for her commitment to protecting children online. I share that commitment.
To be clear, the bill is very targeted. It would not ban pornography. What it would do is require commercial pornography websites to take responsible steps to make sure their content is not being viewed by children. If a website makes money by providing pornography, it should have a responsibility to help keep that content away from children. Bill S-209 would require these websites to use effective age verification or age estimation measures. In other words, if the content is intended for adults, there should be a reasonable way to make sure that the person accessing it is actually an adult.
This is about putting in age restrictions where ones should already exist. We have age restrictions for many things in the real world. One has to be a certain age to buy alcohol. One has to be a certain age to gamble. One has to be a certain age to purchase pornography. We expect businesses to follow these rules. Frankly, we should expect the same online. Children deserve that protection. That is what the bill would do, while also taking into account the privacy of Canadians. It is not a matter of protecting children or protecting privacy. We can and we should do both.
Bill S-209 includes safeguards to protect the personal information of Canadians while making sure that children cannot easily access pornography. The bill would put clear requirements in place for any age verification or age estimation method that is prescribed. The method must be highly effective. It must be operated by an independent third party. It must protect the privacy of users and their personal information. It can only collect and use information that is necessary to verify or estimate a person's age. Once the process is complete, that information must be destroyed.
The goal is to confirm that someone is old enough to access adult content. It is not to create a record of what Canadians are looking at online. It is certainly worth noting that Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Philippe Dufresne, has expressed support for Bill S-209 and welcomed the privacy protections included in the legislation.
When we are talking about children, there is another important part of this conversation that we cannot overlook, and that is parents. Parents have the primary responsibility for raising their children. They teach their children right from wrong. They set boundaries. They talk to their children about what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Parents do everything they can to keep their children safe.
This legislation in no way undermines the authority of parents. It does not replace the role of parents. It does not tell parents how to raise their children. Instead, it gives parents another tool to help protect their children online, because the reality is that no matter how hard parents try, they cannot monitor everything their children see online. They cannot be there for every search, every click, every message and every video. Parents can use parental controls and other safeguards on their children's devices, and those tools can certainly help, but they cannot protect every child from coming across inappropriate content.
That is where this legislation can help. It would add another layer of protection. It would put responsibility on the companies that profit from providing pornography to make sure that children cannot easily access it. Parents should not have to carry that responsibility alone. They are already doing everything they can. This bill would simply give them another tool to help keep their children safe online.
When I was home in my riding over the summer, I spoke with many parents about this issue. The message I heard was very clear: Parents want to protect their children. They know they cannot monitor everything their children do online, and they see this legislation as a reasonable step that can help them do that.
It is widely understood that early exposure to pornography is harmful to children. After decades of widespread access to online pornography, we have research showing the negative impact that early and repeated exposure can have on young people, and we as legislators have a responsibility to act on what we know. That means putting reasonable safeguards in place, supporting parents and making sure commercial pornography companies have effective age restrictions in place to keep their content away from children.
Bill S-209 would do exactly that. It would create a barrier between children and pornography that does not currently exist. It would help prevent unintended exposure and make it more difficult for children to access this content. It would give parents another tool while recognizing that parents cannot do this alone, and it would do so while respecting the privacy of Canadians. This bill would not ban pornography. It would not replace parents. It would simply recognize that protecting children online is a shared responsibility.
Children deserve reasonable safeguards and guardrails to protect them from online pornography. Parents deserve the tools to help protect them, and Canadians deserve privacy protections. Bill S-209 would bring these priorities together. I hope that all members of this House recognize the urgency of this issue and support the protections that our children deserve.
