441-01609 (Justice)

There is no room in Canada for sexual exploitation. Our Government is committed to ensuring that all individuals are safe from sexual exploitation, including online. It is for this exact reason that the Minister of Canadian Heritage’s December 2021 mandate letter commits to introducing legislation to combat serious forms of harmful online content, taking into consideration the feedback received from the Canadian public in 2021.

In 2022, we took it a step further, which included an expert advisory group, a Citizens’ Assembly, Indigenous engagement, which involved a sharing circle and one-on-one interviews, and 20 Ministerial roundtables across Canada. Our Government is committed to putting in place a regulatory framework to reduce the risk of exposure to harmful content online. Online services have a role to play to make the Internet a safer place for all users in Canada.

Furthermore, the Criminal Code includes a strong and comprehensive approach that protects against sexual exploitation, including offences that prohibit non-consensual distribution of intimate images (section 162.1), as well as child-specific sexual offences, including child pornography (section 163.1), making sexually explicit material available to a child (section 171.1) and luring a child (section 172.1). Canada’s laws addressing child sexual offending also apply extra-territorially, which means that prosecutions can happen in Canada for crimes allegedly committed by Canadian citizens or permanent residents abroad.

An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide Internet service came into force on December 8, 2011. This Act requires a Canadian provider of Internet services to report to police when they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence, such as making child pornography available, or distributing child pornography. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) is responsible under the Act for another measure to protect the Canadian public. It receives, and processes, reports of child pornography and child abuse on the Internet from Canadian providers of Internet services. C3P is a registered charitable organization that operates Cybertip.ca, which receives and processes tips from the public about potentially illegal material online related to child sexual exploitation and then refers any potentially actionable reports to the appropriate authorities. C3P also provides public education and awareness materials, as well as support and referral services for those who need it. In addition, C3P operates Project Arachnid, an automated web crawler, which scans the internet and automatically detects and processes tens of thousands of images per second and sends take down notices to online service providers to remove child sexual abuse material globally. When service providers, subject to the Act, are advised of a location on the Internet where child pornography may be made available to the public, the providers are required under this Act to report to C3P. All of these efforts together make C3P an effective organization that provides tools to protect children and combat child sexual exploitation.