Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Bill

Honourable colleagues, I rise today in support of Bill S-203, Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act, which was introduced in this chamber by Senator Miville-Dechêne. I thank her for her commitment and determination.

Since this bill was introduced on September 9, 2020, much ink has been spilled. Much has been said and announced, from an article in the New York Times entitled “The Children of Pornhub” to the bill from the Minister of Canadian Heritage to create a regulatory body to fight against the exploitation of children and hate speech online, or even the study conducted by the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics at the other place on protecting privacy and reputation on platforms such as Pornhub.

Recent testimonies at committee at the other place were beyond disturbing. To hear a young female victim of these platforms explain the nightmare she went through to get sexual images of herself removed when she was a minor was quite shocking. Hearing business leaders say that they are doing everything in their power to protect young people from sexual exploitation, when they did not report anything to the authorities before June 2020, only confirms my suspicions about certain practices in this industry.

Given the recent developments, I remain concerned about how the platform Pornhub can meet all of its new commitments regarding the protection — or, as they call it, trust and safety — of the community and how Canada can hold it accountable and impose greater transparency on its safety measures.

The Government of Canada has been urged to take real action on this issue for some time, so let’s hope that the bill to be introduced by the Minister of Canadian Heritage will answer some of these questions.

Bill S-203 addresses these recent developments because it tackles another aspect of the problem. Instead of targeting the content or the uploading of sexually explicit material, it targets access to viewing of this content.

Bill S-203 seeks to protect Canadians, especially women and youth, against the harmful effects of exposure to sexually explicit material, including demeaning material or material depicting sexual violence.

It also enables the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to require that steps be taken by internet service providers to prevent sexually explicit material from being made available to young persons on the internet.

In short, colleagues, it seeks to protect the health of our youth, and it is part of international efforts to better regulate online activities, which unfortunately have been on the rise since the start of the pandemic.

Pornographic sites have disclosed statistics about traffic on their platforms since the emergence of COVID-19. According to Pornhub data released March 25, 2020, this site registered a 21.5% increase in traffic on its platform in Canada alone, compared to an average pre-pandemic day. This increase just happened to coincide with the company’s offer to make a particular paid service available for free.

Canada is not the only country where consumption rose. In every country with data for the period from the end of February to the end of March 2020, consumption of online pornography increased by anywhere from 4% to 24%. The increase was higher in countries where content was made available for free, such as Canada.

These platforms justified temporarily making their content available for free on the grounds that it contributed to consumers’ well-being during the pandemic. Forgive my skepticism about the humanitarian nature of such a decision, esteemed colleagues. Let’s not fool ourselves. Offering free access is a way to attract new customers and, potentially, new paid subscriptions.

In addition, the data collected by these platforms can be a gold mine for some of them.

When examining Bill S-203, I focused on the impact of pornography on young people in the LGBTQ2+ community. It was not easy, I have to admit, since few studies have looked specifically at this category of young people.

In addition, we must remember that this is a diverse population. A study of porn’s effects on young gay men, for example, is not indicative of its impacts on trans people.

I was stunned to learn to what extent watching sexually explicit content can shock or even traumatize young people’s developing brains. Sometimes they cannot assimilate or understand what they’re seeing and multiple reactions can be observed. Some young people said they were frightened. Others were sad, confused or excited when seeing pornography for the first time. How they react depends in part on their state of development, their age at their first exposure to pornographic images and their individual experiences.

Equally troubling is the fact that the vast majority of the studies I consulted reported that one of the main reasons young people, especially those in the LGBTQ2+ community, access porn is to get information on sexuality.

This is partly because LGBTQ2+ youth are not getting information and do not see representations of non-heteronormative sexuality in the public sphere. Many young people are looking for different examples that reflect the sexual and gender diversity in society. They turn to porn sites because they can’t find these examples elsewhere.

Colleagues, I have gotten emails from young people asking me not to ban access to porn for minors because it is the only way they can learn about sex. I’m sure you would agree that it is incredibly sad to hear that young people are learning about sex from porn sites.

Some commercial porn sites have created what they call educational sections, supposedly to fill this educational gap. You have to wonder about the motivation behind that decision. Is it truly a good-faith attempt to educate the public, or are they simply trying to attract more consumers and generate more views? You have to wonder.

In my opinion, this kind of online learning is dangerous because minors do not necessarily have the judgment or maturity to separate fact from fiction. They can’t determine what is acceptable or unacceptable, or what constitutes a healthy relationship to sexuality.

If young people get their information from these websites, they could reproduce some of the inappropriate behaviours they see. They will compare themselves to what they see and have certain expectations for themselves and their partners, which could have an impact on their self-esteem, sex lives and interpersonal relationships.

A committee study on Bill S-203 would give the owners of these platforms an opportunity to explain the objectives of these self-appointed educational missions.

An insightful study was conducted on the use of sexually explicit media by young men aged 14 to 17 who are members of sexual minorities. Here are some of the findings.

Exposure to pornography, including risky sexual behaviour such as penetration without a condom, for example, can lead young people to engage in similar risky behaviour. When these young men have few healthy positive models of homosexual relationships, viewing pornography too early in their sexual development, even before their first experiences, can increase the chances that behaviour seen in pornography shapes their view of sexuality and relationships with their partners.

Lastly, during the study, young people reported that pornography had influenced their expectations and that it had taught them, or shaped, their sexual interests. Although the study says at the outset that more extensive analysis is needed to validate the findings, I’m sure you would agree these data are still eye-opening.

This is why positive and inclusive sex education in Canada’s schools is vital to ensure the sexual health and development of young people. While recognizing that education is under provincial and territorial jurisdiction, I believe that Bill S-203 offers an ideal opportunity to launch a national sex education and awareness campaign or at least to update the guidelines produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada, which date back almost 13 years, to 2008.

Honourable senators, as studies have shown, and as noted in the preamble of Senator Miville-Dechêne’s bill, the consumption of sexually explicit material has a harmful effect on the development of our young people. We need to take the necessary measures to reduce the availability of such content to minors.

We know that the internet is vast and unregulated. Unfortunately, right now, it is up to consumers to implement the safeguards required to filter out some of the harmful content, as the CRTC has said, and I quote:

The CRTC does not regulate internet content because consumers can already control access to unsuitable material on the internet using filtering software. Any potentially illegal content on the internet can be addressed with civil action, existing hate crime legislation, and the courts.

Is that sufficient justification when we are talking about exposing young people to sexually explicit material that could have a harmful effect on their development? Absolutely not, in my opinion. Make no mistake, honourable senators: Young people often know better than we do how to bypass parental control software, when such software is actually used.

We know that regulating online content is difficult. Indeed, Canada is not the only country that needs to address this issue. Although Bill S-203 will not solve every problem in this area, I do think it strikes a good balance by allowing access to pornographic material for adults who want it while limiting the exposure of such content to minors.

Furthermore, it will be interesting to see how this bill fits in with other government initiatives, such as Canada’s Digital Charter and Bill C-11, as well as the government’s commitment to introduce new regulations governing social media with respect to the removal of illegal content within 24 hours.

To find out, esteemed colleagues, we need to study Bill S-203, pass it and send it to the other place. I urge you to do just that as soon as possible.

In conclusion, beyond creating offences to protect young people from the negative impacts of exposure to sexually explicit images, Bill S-203 gives us a prime opportunity to launch a frank and open conversation on the protection of our young people. It challenges us to meet the urgent need for positive, inclusive, judgment-free sex education that will help our young people reach their full potential.

I look forward to voting on this bill and sending it to committee for further study. Honourable colleagues, I think it’s time for the question to be called. Thank you.