Question Period Note: Online Child Sexual Exploitation on Project Shadow

FINTRAC, Canada’s anti-money laundering agency, is flagging telltale signs that a financial transaction could be linked to online child sexual exploitation and released an operational alert that the COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to an increase in the consumption and production of digital material related to sexual abuse of children.

• It is imperative that we keep children safe from online sexual exploitation and abuse. The Government of Canada is staunchly committed to protecting children from these crimes.

• We continue to work closely with key partners, including the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) and the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Crime Centre (NCECC), to combat these heinous offences.

• The Government of Canada is proud to support, Project Shadow, a public-private partnership co-led by Scotiabank and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P), supported by Canadian law enforcement agencies and FINTRAC.

• This initiative address the need to include financial intelligence in efforts to identify and prioritize suspects involved in online child sexual exploitation.

• This new public-private partnership will enhance the public’s awareness of these despicable activities, leading to increased action in Canada and around the world to prevent and prosecute them.

• Project Shadow complements our Government’s National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet, and it demonstrates our unwavering determination to target the perpetrators and protect the victims of these unspeakable crimes.

Project Shadow is a public-private partnership initiative co-led by Scotiabank and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, supported by Canadian law enforcement agencies and FINTRAC to combat online child sexual exploitation. The objective of the project is to improve the collective understanding of the threat, and to improve the detection of the facilitation and laundering of the proceeds from online child sexual exploitation.
The ease of Internet accessibility as a result of a growing number of affordable Internet-enabled devices, along with a growing number of children using the Internet at a younger age have given perpetrators increased access to children for sexual purposes. Further, technological advancements have increased the production and consumption of child sexual exploitation material for a very low cost. Perpetrators have also increased their use of encryption services, anonymization technologies, the dark web, online file hosting and file sharing to avoid detection. They also solicit children online for sexual purposes on many online platforms children use, and distribute child sexual exploitation material mostly through online peer-to-peer sharing platforms and increasingly through social media. As well, the COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020 has served as an accelerator of and has contributed to an increase in the consumption and production of child sexual exploitation material, while also pushing offenders to adapt their online environment to avoid detection.

The financial dimension of online child sexual exploitation includes payments, purchases and proceeds associated to the access, consumption, production, and distribution of the illicit material. There is also increased risk of virtual currencies being used as payment for online child sexual exploitation material. Furthermore, some perpetrators coerce or groom children between 8 and 12 years old and teen victims to share sexual images or videos of themselves then threaten and extort their victims for money or additional sexual material. This is known as “sextortion”. However, most perpetrators commit child sexual exploitation offences for sexual gratification and not for financial gain.

In 2011, Canada introduced An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. The Act imposes reporting duties on Internet service providers when they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence.

Since 2015, in order to better protect victims and respond to emerging trends, the Criminal Code also prohibits the non-consensual distribution of intimate images (section 162.1) and empowers the courts to order the removal of intimate images from the Internet (section 164). These changes were made to the law by former Bill C-13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, which was referred to in the letter. Courts are also authorized to order the disposal or deletion of child pornography, and advertisements of sexual services from print materials or made available through computer systems in Canada, which includes the Internet.

Online Child Sexual Exploitation
The National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet was launched in April 2004 and renewed on an ongoing basis in 2009. Recent investments of $22.24 million over three years, starting in 2019–20, support Public Safety Canada’s enhanced efforts to:
• Provide coordination and oversight of federal efforts to combat child sexual exploitation online;
• Support law enforcement capacity to combat online child sexual exploitation;
• Enable the reporting of online child sexual exploitation to proper authorities;
• Support victims of online child sexual exploitation online by facilitating the removal of imagery/videos;
• Facilitate research on online child sexual exploitation to increase understanding of the scale/scope of the issue and inform action;
• Increase public awareness and reduce the stigma associated with reporting; and
• Work together with digital industry to find new ways of combating this crime.

Public Safety Canada is the lead for the National Strategy and partners with the RCMP, Justice Canada and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P), a not-for-profit organization responsible for operating Cybertip.ca, the national tip-line. Public Safety also works with international partners, such as the Five Eyes, to better understand the threat of online child sexual exploitation and to find solutions to better protect children and youth.

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