“I want to send this bill to a committee for study. It protects children by stopping them from seeing pornography online, which causes real harm to their mental health. It fits well with other government plans to make social media safer for young people.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill S-209 on an issue that affects us all: our children’s safety online. A week ago, I welcomed my 17-year-old nephew, Charles André, to the Hill. He wanted to deliver a message to the Minister of Health and the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture. He came to talk about how he became addicted to porn at the age of 10 and suffered psychological and physical harm as a result. Fortunately, my nephew has a strong support network and managed to break free from this vicious cycle. However, he wanted to make sure that our government puts measures in place to protect children. I want to commend him for his leadership and courage in speaking out publicly about his experience. The post about his meeting with the ministers went viral, and he had to deal with a lot of hateful and violent comments, which is another problem that comes with social media. However, he also received a lot of kind comments. Young people, mothers and fathers expressed their support for Charles André’s call for action, which strikes me as a clear message that people want to see the government take the necessary measures to protect our young people. Children across Canada use online services every day to learn, to express themselves and to connect with their friends, their family and their community. However, these services can also expose children to inappropriate and harmful content and interactions. These harms are very real. They can harm young people’s mental health, their development and their understanding of what healthy, respectful relationships look like. Too many children are exposed to measurable and preventable harms online, and our laws have not kept pace. Pornography is a big part of that challenge. Children are exposed to it, whether they are looking for it or not, including on services that many of them use every day, such as social media. All too often, it only takes a few clicks, without any verifications, for a child to access such content. Parliament is right to examine how we can reduce that exposure. Protecting children from such harm is a responsibility we all share, across party lines. I would like to acknowledge the work of Senator Julie Miville‑Dechêne, who brought this issue to Parliament’s attention through Bill S‑209, as well as the member for Battlefords—Lloydminster—Meadow Lake, who is sponsoring it in the House. This bill reflects a legitimate and widely shared concern that children should not have unrestricted access to online pornography. Let me be clear. Our government fully supports the principle underlying this bill, which is the protection of children. That is why I am pleased to confirm today that the government will support sending Bill S‑209 to committee for study. This bill is closely aligned with the work we are undertaking through Bill C-34, the safe social media act, but that alignment is not an obstacle. On the contrary, it is exactly why we should move forward with Bill S-209. Bill C-34 is based on a simple premise: A child’s online experience is shaped by the content they see, by the way these platforms are designed and by the interactions these platforms enable. These risks rarely exist in isolation. The content, the design and the interactions can combine to amplify the effects on children. That is why Bill C-34 proposes comprehensive measures to make online services safer from the design stage onwards. Furthermore, together with Bill C-36, it establishes a new framework to better protect Canadians online. Rather than relying on voluntary commitments from platforms, our government is proposing to enshrine clear legal responsibilities for operators of regulated social media services and AI chatbot services. Their duties would be brought together under a single framework based on transparency, accountability and independent regulatory oversight. Operators would have a duty to act responsibly by assessing and mitigating risks associated with harmful content. They would have a duty to protect children by incorporating age restrictions into the design of their services. They would have a duty to make content that sexually victimizes a child as well as intimate content communicated without consent, including deepfake sexual images, inaccessible within 24 hours. The bill would also prevent children under the age of 16 from opening accounts on regulated social media platforms unless those services can demonstrate that they are safe for them. As for chatbots, they will be required to direct users to support services when users express thoughts of suicide or self-harm. One important point is that Bill C-34 directly addresses children’s exposure to pornographic content. Under this bill, if the operator of a regulated service has reasonable grounds to suspect that its service is making pornographic content accessible, it would be required to implement age verification or age estimation measures. These measures should be sufficient to mitigate the risk that children will be exposed to pornographic content on the service in question. This requirement is also part of the broader duty to protect children set forth in the bill. The bill also provides clear safeguards by establishing a framework for these measures. Among other requirements, the regulator would be required to ensure that the measures are effective. Personal information could be collected or used only for age verification or age estimation purposes. It would have to be protected while it is being retained and then destroyed once the verification or estimation is completed. These requirements are set forth directly in Bill C-34. They are intended to ensure that the measures designed to protect children also respect privacy. To ensure that these protections are effective, the bill also provides for ongoing independent oversight. It recognizes that protecting young people online requires binding rules and a regulator capable of enforcing them. Bill C‑36 would create the digital safety and data protection commission of Canada, an independent, permanent regulatory body made up of members with proven expertise. For the first time, the major online platforms would be accountable to a Canadian regulator with real power. The commission would be able to conduct audits and inspections, issue compliance orders and impose administrative monetary penalties of up to $10 million or 3% of an operator’s gross global revenue, whichever is higher. It would review the digital safety plans that operators would be required to publish to explain how they are identifying and mitigating risks on their services. It could also make regulations to issue guidelines. The commission would offer support to victims of online harm. It would also serve as a recourse for users who are dissatisfied with a platform’s response to more serious content. It would operate independently. Platforms would no longer be able to get by on mere promises. They would have to demonstrate convincing results. Bill S‑209 and Bill C-34 are both grounded in a well-established principle: Children deserve to be protected, including online. Both bills recognize the importance of protecting children from being exposed to online pornography. This common objective presents an opportunity for us to consider how these two approaches can complement one another and strengthen our efforts to protect children online. That is why our government supports sending Bill S-209 to committee for study. Our commitment to protecting children is clear. The committee is the appropriate forum to examine Bill S-209 alongside the new framework proposed in Bills C-34 and C-36 and to ensure that these initiatives work together toward the shared goal of creating a safer online environment for children and families across Canada. By protecting our children, we are protecting Canada’s future. The experiences young people have online today will help shape the citizens, workers, innovators and leaders they become tomorrow. We have a responsibility toward them and toward Canada’s future.”

• Echo ×4

  A repeated line

  “Our laws have not kept pace.”

  Said 4 times by 4 members since October 28.

  Every time it was said →

“I want the House to pass this bill and send it to committee for study. Children can easily see pornography online, and our laws have not kept up. This bill makes websites check users' ages to keep kids safe, which fits well with the government's other online safety bills.”

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill S-209, the protecting young persons from exposure to pornography act. I want to begin not only as a member of Parliament in the chamber but also from the perspective of a former educator and as a mom. Before I entered politics, I spent almost two decades working with young people. I saw their potential, their curiosity and their struggles. Every day, I was reminded that the adults in a child’s life have a responsibility to create conditions where they can learn, grow and thrive safely. Today that responsibility extends far beyond the classroom. It extends into a digital world that is available to our children 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That reality should concern us all. In rising here today as a mom, like parents across the country, I have watched technology transform childhood. Many of us remember growing up in a world where childhood had limits, where certain materials were difficult to access and where adults acted as gatekeepers. Today a child can stumble across explicit and violent sexual content in a matter of seconds, and not because they were looking for it, not because parents have failed and not because teachers have failed but because the online world has been built in a way that makes that exposure possible, and where, instead, they are learning from an industry designed to generate profits. That should alarm every one of us. As an educator, one of the most important lessons I tried to teach my students was the difference between reality and performance, yet when children encounter pornography at a young age, often before they are emotionally prepared to understand what they are seeing, that distinction becomes very blurred, as their expectations are shaped, their perceptions are shaped and their ideas about relationships are shaped. In some cases, those consequences can be quite profound. Our laws have not kept pace. Our Parliament is right to examine ways to reduce that exposure, because protecting kids from these harms is a responsibility we all share, regardless of party. I want to take a moment to also thank Senator Miville-Dechêne for her work and service by keeping this issue before us here in Parliament, as well as my colleague from Saskatchewan, with whom I sat on HUMA, for her undying support in protecting children. I am happy to also be a seconder to the bill. Our government is committed to keeping Canadians, especially children, safe, including online. We agree on the objective of preventing children from accessing online pornography. Bill S-209 shares this objective very closely and aligns with Bill C-34, the safe social media act. Let me be clear. Our government fully supports the principle behind the bill. Its alignment with Bill C-34 is not an obstacle. It is precisely why we support sending Bill S-209 to committee for study, as the bill asks the right questions and demands action to prevent children from accessing online pornography. At its core, the bill would require commercial providers of online pornography to take concrete steps to restrict access by people under 18 years of age The status quo is not acceptable. Online services must take greater responsibility to protect children from being exposed to harmful content on their platforms. The remaining question is not whether action is needed but how to build a framework that works in practice, protects privacy, can be enforced effectively and remains responsive as technology changes. Bill S-209 closely aligns with the work of our government that we are advancing through our safe social media act, Bill C-34, which would place an affirmative obligation on operators of regulated services. This would ensure that safeguards are put in place to mitigate the risk before children are exposed to harmful content, rather than after the situation has occurred. If an operator has reasonable grounds to suspect that its service makes pornographic content accessible, it would have to implement age verification or age estimation measures to mitigate the risk of children’s being exposed to this content. Adequate protection is the first consideration. The digital safety and data protection commission of Canada, an independent, permanent regulator that would be created through the safe social media act together with Bill C-36, would have to be satisfied that the measures implemented by an operator will meet that requirement. This is so essential, as the objective is not merely to demonstrate that an age assurance measure has been implemented. Its objective is to mitigate the risk that children will be exposed to pornographic content. This approach recognizes that regulated services do not all operate in the same way, as their designs, users and methods of providing access to content might differ. Bill C-34 would establish the required outcome and assign responsibility for assessing the adequacy of the measure to the regulator with the necessary technical expertise to do so. Second, Bill C-34 would also set clear limits on the collection and use of personal information for age assurance so that personal information could only be used to verify or estimate a person’s age, and it would have to be protected and destroyed as soon as the process is complete. These safeguards are built directly into the safe social media act because protecting children should not create new privacy risks. The digital safety and data protection commission of Canada would provide the continuing institutional capacity needed to apply this framework. As the body responsible for administering and enforcing that legislation, the commission would also assess the measures used by regulated operators and determine whether they satisfy the applicable requirements. This commission could establish guidelines concerning the protection of children in relation to regulated services. It could also make regulations specify design features that operators must integrate into regulated services as part of their duty to protect children. While this authority also extends beyond age assurances, it demonstrates the central role that the commission would play in giving practical effect to the duty to protect our kids, much like our senator’s bill. That continuing role is particularly important because age assurance technologies and industry practices will evolve. Different services might require different measures, and new evidence might identify more effective, privacy-protective approaches. The framework would therefore permit this flexibility and innovation without leaving adequacy entirely to the discretion of its regulators. As we know, the Internet has created some extraordinary opportunities, but it has also created unprecedented access to harmful content. The question before us is whether we are willing to acknowledge that reality and then take action. As a former educator, I want young people to learn about relationships through respect, empathy and healthy human connection. As a mother, I want children protected during the years when they are most vulnerable. As a woman, I want girls growing up in a society that values their dignity, equality and humanity. Those goals should be uniting all of us. This debate is not about politics. It is about children, families, the kind of culture that we are going to build for this next generation, and whether we are willing to say that the safety and well-being of our children matter more than a convenience of an online industry. I believe they do. For those reasons, I am pleased to support Bill S-209 and these objectives of protecting young persons from exposure to pornography online.”

• Echo ×4

  A repeated line

  “Our laws have not kept pace.”

  Said 4 times by 4 members since October 28.

  Every time it was said →

“I want everyone to agree to end this debate now so we can move on to government business.”

“Mr. Speaker, I suspect that if you were to check, you would find unanimous consent to call it 6:30 p.m. so we can get on with government business.”