Canadian Heritage committee  Even when we're talking about a digital safety commission, we're talking about raising digital awareness. It's also getting to the root causes, so yes, we need to talk about digital literacy, but we also need to talk about misogyny. We need to talk about gender equity. These are all very interconnected issues, especially when we're talking about these forms of violence that so disproportionately target women and girls.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I can, for sure. In my mind, it's around the support for survivors and how we build that in. I know there's talk of the safety commission and the ombudsperson. Unless they have a mandate to support survivors—which would be new, and they'd have to build relationships with that community—what we need is to have support for the gender-based violence sector to continue uplifting survivors and promoting healing opportunities.

Canadian Heritage committee  We've certainly seen success in the U.K. in terms of their criminalization of distribution, so that does remain important. One of the biggest websites of deepfake sexual abuse was taken down in the U.K. after that decision was made. I think the creation piece is another area where we could stop the violence early on if people realized the ramifications before they started.

Canadian Heritage committee  Yes, I think so. I think, more than anything, that it would signal this as a form of violence, given how much it is doubted. The study in 2023 that I mentioned assessed 95,000 different deepfake sexual abuse videos and also asked people, “Do you feel guilty watching these?”, and overwhelmingly people said no.

Canadian Heritage committee  Thank you for inviting me into this space. My perspective is informed by my work with survivors in the gender-based violence sector, and I will focus on the need for a gender-based analysis when we're talking about online harms and legislation. Specifically, I'm going to focus on two online harms—the non-consensual distribution of intimate images, which I refer to as NCIID, and then also deepfake sexual abuse—although I'm happy to speak more to further forms that haven't been necessarily brought forth as much, such as cyberflashing.