Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, there should be some things in this House that rise above politics, and protecting our children is one of them. That is why Bill S-209 has earned support from across party lines and across political traditions. Whether we sit on the government benches or the opposition benches, or whether we are Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Bloc or independent, surely we can agree on something this basic: A child should not be one click away from pornography. I am pleased to rise today in support of Bill S-209. I would like to thank Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne for bringing this bill forward once again and for the many years of work she has poured into it. This bill would require commercial pornography websites to take meaningful steps to prevent children from accessing their content. As a mother, I find it deeply troubling that it is 2026, and we still have to debate whether those safeguards should exist. We would never accept a 10-year-old walking into a liquor store and being told, “We trust you to make choices on your own because you’re old enough.” We would never accept a child walking into a casino without checking their age. However, today, a child can pick up a phone, click a link and enter a commercial pornography website. That makes no sense and parents know it. As a mother, I think about the moment when our children begin exploring the world on their own. They ask questions. They become curious. They start using a phone or a tablet to look something up, watch a video or talk to a friend. As parents, we want to give them the room to learn and grow, but we also need reasonable safeguards while they do. Right now, a child can encounter pornography without even looking for it. A link can appear in a group chat, a search can land somewhere unexpected or something can appear on the screen before a child can even understand what they are seeing. Once a child sees it, parents cannot make them unsee it. Of course, we all know that once a child has lost their innocence, it cannot be gained back. That alone is a main concern. However, this issue goes beyond accidental exposure. As children grow, they naturally begin asking questions about themselves, relationships and the world around them. That curiosity is part of growing up. The problem is that today, a commercial pornography website can only be one click away, often without a meaningful check that the person entering is actually an adult. What might a child find there? They may see violence or degradation. They may see women and girls treated as though their wishes do not matter. Without the maturity to understand what they are watching, they may begin to mistake pornography for an education in relationships. Those are lessons no child should be learning from a pornographic website. Research puts the average age of the first exposure at 12. One-third of children are exposed by the age of 10 years old. At 10, many children are still learning how to understand their own feelings, let alone how to interpret explicit material created for adults. Research has associated young people’s exposure to pornography with harmful beliefs about relationships, including beliefs concerning consent and the treatment of women and girls. The bill recognizes concerns about material depicting violence, reinforcing gender stereotypes and contributing to attitudes favourable to harassment and violence. There are legitimate concerns about children’s development and safety, because children are still developing their understanding of relationships, boundaries and behaviour. Repeated exposure to pornography can shape what a young person begins to see as normal and expected, and that has real consequences for how they understand themselves and others. What does commercial pornography teach children about consent, dignity and respect? Those are questions that matter to parents raising their children, and they matter to the society those children will inherit. Parents are already doing everything they can to help their children navigate these issues with care and with honesty, but no parent can watch every screen, every search result, every message and every link every minute of the day. Children can use the Internet at home, at school and with their friends, so yes, we should give parents the tool, but we should also expect the companies making money from this content to take responsibility. The principle behind Bill S-209 is simple: If someone makes money selling adult content, they have a responsibility to make a reasonable effort to ensure that the person accessing it is actually an adult. That should not be controversial. We already accept that principle in the physical world. We place age restrictions on alcohol, cannabis and gambling. We do not tell parents that it is entirely their responsibility; we require the business to check. Why should the online world be any different? Children deserve better, and we owe them better. They deserve the freedom to be curious and to discover the world without being confronted with explicit material they are simply too young to understand. Protecting childhood is part of our responsibility as adults, as parents and as legislators. Bill S-209 would give that responsibility practical meaning. It would make it an offence for an organization to make pornographic material available online for commercial purposes to a person under 18 years of age. A company could not simply say that it is assumed that a visitor was an adult. It would have to demonstrate it used an approved method of determining age. The bill would also establish significant fines for companies that fail to take that responsibility seriously. We know that many of these websites operate outside Canada, but the fact that a company is somewhere else in the world does not make its content any less accessible to a child sitting in a bedroom in Newmarket, Aurora or anywhere else in this country. That is why the bill would provide an enforcement process where, after notice and continued non-compliance, the enforcement authority could seek a federal court order requiring Internet service providers to prevent access to the material in Canada. Ultimately, a court would make that decision. The principle remains the same, though: Responsibility belongs to the organizations commercially distributing the pornography. If they profit from providing adult content, they must take meaningful steps to keep children from accessing it. Some people have raised legitimate concerns about privacy, and those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. Bill S-209 would take them seriously. Approved methods would have to meet privacy requirements, including limiting the collection of personal information, using information for age-assurance purposes and destroying information once the process is complete. Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Philippe Dufresne, has supported the objective of Bill S-209 and has said that privacy-protective age assurance can be an appropriate tool for creating safer online experiences for children. We do not have to choose between protecting privacy and protecting children from pornography. We can and should do both. No law can guarantee that a child will never encounter pornography online. Children are resourceful, and technology changes, but the fact that we cannot prevent every exposure is no excuse for preventing none. Age restrictions do not prevent every underage person from obtaining alcohol. We still require them, because safeguards matter, accountability matters and making it harder for children to access something intended for adults matters. For me as a mother, this is where the issue becomes very simple. We cannot keep our children little forever, nor should we. They will grow, and they will ask questions, and part of being a parent is answering those questions honestly and helping our children understand the world they are entering. However, children deserve the opportunity to learn about relationships, consent, dignity and respect from the people who love them and care about the adults they will become. Parents are doing their part every day. Let us give our children the time and space to simply be children.
