Moved second reading of Bill S-209, An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material.

She said: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak at second reading of a bill I that I’ve been sponsoring in Parliament for over four and a half years: An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material, whose current number is S-209. This initiative, designed to protect children, has died on the Order Paper twice already. At the time of prorogation last January, my bill had almost reached the finish line, at report stage, just before its third reading in the House of Commons. It had support from the Conservative Party, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and this chamber twice in a row, including once without opposition.

Many parents, groups and pediatricians were bitterly disappointed.

A year ago, 77% of Canadians surveyed by Leger supported the idea of an age-verification method to block access by children to online pornographic material. They are the reason why I keep going, to make their voices heard in Parliament.

I’m back at it again because the status quo is untenable: eight- and twelve-year-old children have unrestricted access to millions of hardcore porn videos, many of them violent and traumatizing.

The average age of first exposure is 11. The reality of online porn changed around 15 years ago, when platforms changed their business model to enable anyone at all to upload videos to their sites and make that content free and available to everyone. All barriers to access have disappeared.

The Canadian government has allowed this to happen despite research showing worrying correlations between porn use among minors and harmful sexual beliefs and behaviours, an erroneous belief that women and girls are always sexually available, harmful attitudes and beliefs about sexual consent and normalization of violent behaviour.

What’s more, according to the renowned Canadian Centre for Child Protection, the viewing of pornography by minors normalizes these images in their eyes, making children more likely to fall victim to online predators. Here is a disturbing example. Half the girls and boys aged 16 to 21 surveyed by the Children’s Commissioner for England say that girls expect sex to include physical aggression such as choking or slapping.

In a French documentary on problematic pornography use, a young woman recounts the following:

When I was nine years old, I could definitively say that I watched porn every day. . . . Since my father didn’t love me . . . I came to the point where I realized that I felt loved when I watched pornographic videos.

One young man added that, from the age of 14, he took pleasure in watching things that disgusted him.

In a shocking interview in 2021, American singer Billie Eilish recounted how she started watching porn at age 11, and it disturbed her so much that she didn’t dare say no to certain sexual practices in her first romantic relationships. “Porn really destroyed my brain,” she concluded.

Perhaps this is the saddest part: Young people are being robbed of discovering their sexuality because they’re being inundated with unrealistic and often unhealthy displays that they perceive as normal. Frequent viewing of pornography can generate fear and anxiety in young people, damage their self-esteem by distorting their perception of their own bodies and lead to symptoms of depression.

Quebec sexologist Marie-Christine Pinel also made troubling observations about young people in her practice. She said:

I am facing emerging and disastrous phenomena: a resurgence of domination, performance anxiety that generates pain on penetration and erectile dysfunction, an explosion of requests for cosmetic genital surgery; all linked to the influence of pornography.

This is a real public health issue that is not discussed enough because of the taboos surrounding pornography. The idea that only parents can control their children’s screens is completely outdated since the advent of smart phones. On this point, I would like to quote the recent comprehensive report by the Select Committee on the Impacts of Screens and Social Media on Young People’s Health and Development. This Quebec committee unreservedly recommends that pornographic websites be required to implement reliable age verification measures that respect privacy and cannot be circumvented.

Over the past four years, there has been progress on this issue almost everywhere except Canada. Technological advances have lowered the risks to clients’ privacy. The harms of pornography on children have been well documented. Many governments, including those of Great Britain, France, the European Union and 20 or so U.S. states, have taken action. I have taken note of the suggestions and criticisms made during the lengthy legislative process for Bill S-210.

On that, I want to thank Law Clerk Marc-André Roy for helping me to rework and clarify the wording and for taking the time to talk it over. I’ve been benefiting from his invaluable help for four and a half years now.

In politics, perceptions often trump reality. Although I am a feminist, a progressive and an advocate for solid sex education, I was accused of trying to censor scenes of nudity in shows streamed on platforms like Netflix or HBO. This criticism arose because I was introducing a criminal offence that mirrored the Criminal Code’s definition of sexually explicit material.

To defuse controversy, in this version of Bill S-209, I chose a clearer, less ambiguous term, namely, “pornographic material” rather than “sexually explicit material.” The bill defines this new term as follows, using the most relevant portion of the current Criminal Code definition:

pornographic material means any photographic, film, video or other visual representation . . . the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a person’s genital organs or anal region or, if the person is female, her breasts, but does not include child pornography . . . .

It’s important to understand that the phrase “ . . . for a sexual purpose . . .” is key. We’re not talking about simple scenes of nudity.

It’s also essential to remember that from the outset, the bill includes an exception for pornographic materials used for legitimate purposes related to science, medicine, education or the arts, like a series on HBO, for example.

It’s not a question of censorship but of protection of children in the same way a society does for alcohol and drugs, by requiring retailers to verify the age of the purchasers.

Let’s be clear: Bill S-209 will have no impact on adults’ ability to access pornography. It is not an attack on the freedom of expression, as some have claimed. In Europe, porn sites that have challenged age verification laws have lost their cases every step of the way. In the United States, a country renowned for its strong protection of free speech, porn sites have challenged state laws and have been unsuccessful to date. We are currently awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The second major change in Bill S-209 concerns verifying a user’s age, made possible by recent technological advances. The previous version of the bill required age verification, which meant checking the customer’s identity. It did raise privacy concerns.

To address this, we followed the example set by the United Kingdom by authorizing provisions for age estimation. I say here “age estimation” and not “age verification.”

In recent years, facial age estimation, powered by artificial intelligence, has become much more accurate, with a significantly reduced margin of error. This technique doesn’t require proof of identity, meaning far less personal data is collected. Moreover, a new French technology can estimate a person’s age using only a video of a moving hand, further reducing privacy risks.

Yes, technology is evolving. It’s a bit scary sometimes.

These are just a few examples of the progress being made. To be clear, the legislation only outlines broad categories of methods of age verification and age estimation. It does not specify which exact mechanism will be authorized. We are leaving those decisions to government during the regulatory phase, which is the appropriate time to assess the technical details. Other jurisdictions take the same approach, recognizing the need to adapt to ongoing technological advancements and make necessary adjustments.

Another concern that has been raised is how this bill will ensure the personal information of pornography viewers will be well protected and destroyed as soon as possible.

We drew inspiration from the testimony of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Philippe Dufresne, before the House committee to strengthen and clarify the guiding principles, as outlined in clause 12 (2) of the bill.

Before selecting an appropriate mechanism during the regulatory phase:

. . . the Governor in Council must ensure —

— instead of “must consider,” so it is stronger language —

— that the method

(a) is highly effective —

— before it was only reliable —

— (b) is operated by a third-party organization that deals at arm’s length from any organization making pornographic material available on the Internet for commercial purposes . . . .

Further, it:

(e) limits the collection of personal information to what is strictly necessary for the age verification or age estimation . . . .

I would point out that before his testimony last spring at the House of Commons committee, Commissioner Dufresne launched a national consultation in Canada on age verification and has been participating in an international working group on this issue. He is, therefore, well informed.

Beyond those changes, the essence of the bill remains, especially the criminal offence set out in the bill in clause 5:

Any organization that, for commercial purposes, makes available pornographic material on the Internet to a young person is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and is liable, (a) for a first offence, to a fine of not more than $250,000 . . . .

In practice, however, it’s unlikely that such a fine would be imposed, as most porn sites are based outside of Canada.

For this reason, Bill S-209 also spells out an administrative process. A designated body would be able to request the federal court to order the blocking of non-compliant sites in Canada. This procedure would only be applied after a notice has been issued, and a 20-day period has passed.

This means that non-compliant pornographic sites could be blocked even if they are based abroad.

It’s important to note that the bill targets organizations only and not individuals.

The bill contains another improvement: We added two clauses to clarify its scope. Clause 6 excludes organizations that only transmit pornographic material incidentally or unintentionally. This would mean, for example, that internet service providers like Videotron or Bell would not be covered by the act.

The bill’s scope is a legitimate concern considering that a growing number of social media platforms, apart from porn platforms, now allow the distribution of pornographic material on their subscribers’ accounts. This includes X, formerly known as Twitter, 13% of which is estimated to consist of pornographic content. There are many others, and the research shows that minors are consuming as much if not more porn on social networks than on giant porn platforms like Pornhub.

Technically, it’s entirely possible to estimate the age of clients on social media porn accounts without denying customers open access to other content on these platforms. Why? Because the porn content has already been identified. Social networks automatically add a home page indicating that the material in question is suitable for adults only. Age estimation would therefore be targeted.

In their online harms legislation, the British require age verification for all accounts that distribute porn, whether on social media or on porn sites, in order to protect children from online porn wherever it is distributed. That makes sense. However determining the precise scope of the bill in its actual operation is a delicate task.

We chose to give the government a lot of room to manoeuvre. Paragraph 12(1)(a) indicates that the Governor in Council has the power to specify the circumstances in which pornographic material is or is not to be regarded as made available for commercial purposes. Once again this is dealt with at the regulation stage because the internet is a space that is constantly evolving.

Senate public bills serve to lay bare the government’s blind spots, among other things. To be perfectly honest, I thought that in 2024, the last government’s broad bill on online harms, Bill C-63, would include a requirement for pornography sites to verify the age of their clients. However, it did not, which is obviously the government’s prerogative. All that is mentioned in the legislative text that died on the Order Paper, in vague terms, is that site operators must protect children with age-appropriate design features. That is vague. A commission was supposed to decide what would happen next. Having followed the debates in other countries, it seems to me that political will must be clearly expressed at the bill stage, rather than leaving difficult choices to the regulatory bodies. That is because the opponents, particularly the porn industry, hold a lot of power.

Let’s look at the European Union, for example. Its regulators have just opened an investigation into Pornhub, Stripchat, XVideos and XNXX because these sites are suspected of failing to block access to minors, despite the fact that a law banning access to porn by those under 18 has been in force for two years. Just today — because this war continues — Pornhub and other websites owned by Ethical Capital Partners, an Ottawa-based company, announced that they are ceasing operations in France precisely because they’re being forced to verify the age of their customers. According to the French minister responsible for digital technologies, Clara Chappaz, it is nothing short of a lie and an attempt at a shakedown to claim that French age verification mechanisms don’t guarantee privacy. It is true that France worked for several years on what is known as double anonymity to ensure that what it was asking porn sites to do made sense. I find this attitude — that is, pulling out of a country because of a dislike of the laws passed by a democratic government — a little difficult to accept.

It has to be said that the porn industry has never seen fit to self-regulate. According to the first in-depth investigative report, L’empire du sexe, which was published recently in Quebec, the former bosses of Pornhub stopped at nothing to attract customers. They chose catchy titles, implied that videos featured underage girls, turned a blind eye to videos depicting the sexual exploitation of underage girls, and were slow to scrub such videos from the site.

As long as there is no sexual exploitation of children, pornography is perfectly legal adult entertainment. That’s not the battle I’m fighting. However, when consumed by children, these millions of hardcore scenes can destroy their intimate lives and, by extension, their perception of equality between men and women. Of course, people have different ideas about how to protect children from these harms. School-based sex ed and parents certainly play an essential role, but they are not enough to stem the tide of pornographic images, which take up one-third of internet bandwidth.

I hope that the legislative process now under way will enable us to improve this legislation, but the real challenge, in my opinion, will be to find the political will to act, even if the law is imperfect, and to protect our children. That is what parents want us to do. Other countries like ours have done it.

As you may remember, I supported this bill in the last Parliament, and that was prior to it going over to the House of Commons — I understand that some changes were made there at committee stage. Thank you very much for giving a comprehensive speech outlining the issues that we’re looking at here. Were any of the changes you mentioned in your speech today that have been made to the new version of your bill a result of the House of Commons changes or are these additional to that?

If I may, I will answer in French because it’s a bit technical.

We didn’t reach the amendment stage at the House of Commons committee. In fact, the debate was very short and objections were raised. You know, the House of Commons has a 90-day time limit; its timelines are very prescriptive. When these timelines are exceeded, bills immediately proceed to report stage and third reading. Unfortunately, that is what happened to mine.

Nevertheless, the changes I made took account of the brief speeches given in the House of Commons as well as certain suggestions made by the various political parties. In this new version, I really tried to take concerns into account.

The privacy issue, for example, is a legitimate concern and I understand that. However, look at what’s going on right now in France. The Pornhub company said that no solution is acceptable as far as it’s concerned because of the privacy problem. This attitude only amplifies the distrust of different systems. Technology is advancing and these kinds of checks are increasingly possible with the least amount of information possible. I’m not saying that it’s fail-safe.

No technology is 100% safe, but I would say that we have to consider the gap between protecting children and the idea that anyone can enter a porn site without taking 10 or 20 seconds to identify themselves. To me this is not a matter of freedom of expression and I think that we have a choice to make as a society.

The previous federal government was against this bill. I am calling for this particularly serious issue to be addressed and for something to be done about it. Whether through a private bill, a government bill or something else, I think we need to move forward on this.

I have one further question. I agree with you, yes, we need to make sure there is considerable action taken on such a serious issue. In that respect, I also appreciated the part of your speech when you were speaking about the government’s previous Bill C-63 — the online harms act I think they called it. That bill never did come to the Senate, it died in the House of Commons with prorogation and then dissolution.

I’m wondering, in the recent election campaign, did the Liberal Party — which is now in government — make any promises about anything to do with this or was this the subject of any part of their election campaign platform?

I’m sorry to say no, but I realize the government was extremely busy with other crises — economic crises and the relationship with our neighbour. I just hope that, even if we have a lot of priorities, that this one — which is really one that is for the protection of our children — is seen and considered, and if another bill on online harms is introduced, that this particular issue is included there. Thank you.

Thank you, Senator McPhedran.

Pornography is obviously a controversial subject. I’ve been criticized by many on the internet. Many of my critics were not particularly polite or cordial. I’ve often been described as a prude, and people have tried to link me to American evangelical Christians who, for all kinds of reasons, don’t like pornography. It has also been suggested that I was being manipulated by other people.

I believe that the quality of this bill will enable it to win the support of people in both conservative and more progressive camps, but it won’t ever have unanimous support. I’ve noticed that those in political circles consider any move to prevent children from watching porn to be an attack on sexual freedom. I find that deeply offensive, because the two are not the same. I often respond to such parliamentarians by asking them if they’ve looked at these porn platforms. I’m not talking about magazines like Playboy or Penthouse. I’m talking about material that’s hard to watch. Having drafted this bill and watched a ton of material, I still have images stuck in my head, and I’m an adult, so imagine what it does to kids. One woman actually wrote to me today to tell me that her child became totally aggressive after watching porn and attacked his brothers and sisters.

So we shouldn’t pretend that it never happens, that it’s all just anecdotal. I know that more research needs to be done on this issue. It’s not like we can sit children down, expose them to pornographic images and then measure its impact on them. All we can do is draw correlations. At this point, there are so many indicators connecting harm and addiction to the consumption of pornography in childhood that we have no choice but to take action. Naturally, we don’t hear about it every day because a lot of us are grandparents. For parents, however, the internet as a whole is a problem, and what I’m talking to you about today is an even bigger problem.

So, yes, I have had to deal with arguments and criticism that have left me completely flabbergasted, but that is par for the course when introducing many kinds of bills, so I’m not complaining and my work for and on behalf of children carries on.

I just want to say, as the friendly critic, I support this bill. You gave a very good speech today, and our colleagues have asked good questions, so I hope that the chamber will be willing to — in whatever way — expedite the process because this is a very important and serious issue. I promise to speak quickly on this.