Justice committee  Then we report it to the RCMP's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre in Ottawa.

Justice committee  They would send it to Interpol, who will make sure it gets to the proper police agency for local investigation.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes, it does.

Justice committee  One of our limitations is we base information on reports we receive. We cannot purport to tell a global story because we're analyzing reports that have come in through the tip line. What I can say is that rightly, in reading many of your discussions, it's moving all over the place.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  In terms of my earlier answer, really I can't speak to the powers of the criminal law spectrum and what we can do there. It is important that we expedite and move quickly on this. I think this is good legislation. It is, as you've mentioned, sir, one piece of the puzzle. I do think, though, that there is a reason why in provincial jurisdictions there is the responsibility for child welfare, which is more complex than simply taking in information.

Justice committee  Just so I am clear on your question, I am understanding that you're asking if I agree that service providers should go to websites and look at the sites and then make sure that their customers are not viewing child pornography. Is this correct?

Justice committee  Yes, we do that right now in Canada—I know it is a lot of information to take in—under Cleanfeed Canada. So we would make this available to Internet service providers, ISPs, on a voluntary basis. Right now we are covering between 80% and 90% of Canadian customers; we are right now blocking known child pornography sites from their clients' ability to view them.

Justice committee  Right, and under Cleanfeed Canada.... There are two pieces to this that are very important to understand. Within Canada, when a Canadian or someone is involved in the making available of child pornography, we use the Criminal Code to take action against those people to be able to charge them and take action.

Justice committee  That's an important question. We wrestle with this in wanting to facilitate reporting. We are certainly passionate about making more people aware and reporting. The challenge we're running into, even on the provincial side and even in our relationship and partnership with Ontario and Alberta, is that the issue surrounding the identification potentially of a child and the role of child welfare within that equation presents a number of complications.

Justice committee  I'm certainly not trying to avoid the question. I can't answer legally as to the criminal law powers. I don't have that knowledge.

Justice committee  One of the things we are working on in partnership with the provinces right now is to look at similar legislation that can properly apply within the provincial jurisdiction. We support provincial legislation in addition to this. We advocate for departments of family services to be looking at this, in terms of simply extending the definition of “child abuse” to include child pornography within the definition.

Justice committee  Yes, I do. I believe it to be the RCMP. We have been in discussions with Minister Landry there. The reason we're advocating for the role we play is that, as you can see in these reports, we're able to collect important data. In our discussions right now with Nova Scotia, that is one of the things we are putting forward: needing to have consistency and continuity in the reporting structure.

Justice committee  What I can say is that in the research they did they looked at child pornography legislation in the United States. It is federal legislation that mandates that what they call ESPs or electronic service providers, to capture the broader types of people providing Internet services, all have a legal obligation to report child pornography, if they come across it in the course of providing services.