Question Period Note: Online Child Sexual Exploitation

Public Safety Canada’s Response to Online Child Sexual Exploitation.

• Online child sexual exploitation causes victims to suffer devastating and long-lasting consequences and it is imperative that we protect children from this heinous crime.

• Public Safety Canada has been leading the National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet since 2004, in partnership with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Justice Canada and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a not-for-profit organization.

• Budget 2019 included new investments of $22.24 million over three years to raise awareness of this crime, reduce the stigma associated with reporting, increase our ability to pursue and prosecute offenders, and work with digital industry to find new ways to protect children from sexual exploitation online.

• The new investments complement ongoing funding of over $18 million annually, which includes support for a national tip-line called Cybertip.ca where Canadians can report suspected cases of child sexual exploitation online.

• Given the borderless nature of this crime, we also work internationally. Canada recently launched with Five Country Ministerial partners the Voluntary Principles to Counter Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse, a guide for industry on how to counter child sexual exploitation on their platforms.

• We will keep doing everything we can to protect children, bring perpetrators to justice, and put a stop to these terrible crimes.

Online child sexual exploitation is one of the digital age’s most pressing safety issues and it continues to increase in terms of scope, reach and impacts. The sexual exploitation of children is a heinous crime and serious concern for the Government of Canada, law enforcement agencies, and partners in other orders of government and internationally.

The National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet (National Strategy) was launched in April 2004 and renewed on an ongoing basis in 2009. Public Safety Canada (PS) is the lead for the National Strategy and partners with the RCMP, Justice Canada (JUS) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P), a not-for-profit organization.

The Strategy aims to:
• Coordinate and oversee federal efforts to combat online child sexual exploitation;
• 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 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 with digital industry to find new ways to combat this crime.

PS coordinates and oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and leads the development of online child sexual exploitation policy, and provides contribution funding to C3P to operate Cybertip.ca, the national tip-line, and for Project Arachnid, a web-crawling technology solution to identify and increase the rate of removal of child sexual abuse material.

The RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Crime Centre is the national law enforcement arm of the National Strategy. It is the central point of contact for investigations related to the online sexual exploitation of children across the country and internationally when the victim or offender is Canadian. Justice Canada reviews and develops legislation, and provides training, advice and support to federal partners and others.

Recent investments of $22.24 million over three years, starting in 2019/20, support PS’s enhanced efforts to: raise awareness of this serious issue and reduce the stigma associated with reporting; increase Canada’s ability to pursue and prosecute offenders; and work with industry to find new ways to combat the sexual exploitation of children online.

Ongoing investments under the National Strategy total over $18 million per year. Some of PS and RCMP funding was provided through the It’s Time: Canada’s Strategy to Prevent and Address Gender-Based Violence (the GBV Strategy).

Legislative Framework

Canada’s criminal law provides comprehensive legal protections against all forms of sexual abuse and exploitation of children, and contains prohibitions against possessing, accessing, making and distributing all forms of child pornography, including where committed via the Internet, social media and/or other technology. Canada’s definition of child pornography (commonly known as child sexual abuse material) includes not only actual depictions of child sexual abuse, but also fictitious depictions, as well as written and audio forms of child pornography that may fuel the market for these materials or normalize this behavior. It also prohibits the use of the Internet to communicate with a child for the purposes of facilitating the commission of a sexual offence.

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. 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.

Voluntary Principles to Combat Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse

The Five Country Ministerial meeting in July 2019 in London included a joint session with digital industry representatives (Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Roblox, Snap, and Twitter) to discuss the role digital industry plays in combating online child sexual exploitation on their platforms. One of the outcomes of the meeting was an agreement among the Five Eyes that government officials would work with digital industry to develop a set of voluntary principles to guide private sector efforts in this regard.

The Voluntary Principles were officially announced by the Five Eyes at an event in Washington, DC on March 5, 2020. In parallel, digital industry partners involved in the development of the Voluntary Principles, as well as additional industry stakeholders, issued statements of support for the Voluntary Principles. The intent is that the principles will be adopted by a wide spectrum of companies, provide a shared framework to combat online child sexual exploitation, drive collective action, establish a baseline standard for safety, and complement initiatives specific to each partner country.

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