Parliamentary Committee Notes: Online Child Sexual Exploitation

Date: May 11, 2022
Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Fully releasable: Yes
Branch / Agency: CPB/LESBS/SOC

Proposed Response:

Financial Implications:

Background:

Online child sexual exploitation (OCSE) is one of the digital age’s most pressing safety issues that continues to increase in terms of scope, reach and impacts. The sexual exploitation of children is a heinous crime, and is a serious concern for the Government, 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 was renewed on an ongoing basis in 2009. Public Safety Canada (PS) is the lead for the National Strategy and partners with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Justice Canada (JUS) and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P), a not-for-profit organization responsible for operating Cybertip.ca, the national tip-line.

PS coordinates and oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and leads the development of OCSE policy. PS also provides contribution funding to C3P for the operation of Cybertip.ca. 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 OCSE across the country and internationally when the victim or offender is Canadian. JUS reviews and develops legislation, and provides training, legal advice and support to federal strategy partners and others. The Strategy aims to:

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). Key initiatives under the National Strategy are: contributing to increased public awareness of this crime, supporting C3P’s operation of Cybertip.ca and the development of Project Arachnid, a web-crawling technology solution to identify and increase the rate of removal of OCSE material. The National Strategy has also helped to expand the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Crime Centre’s investigative capacity.

Recent investments of $22.24 million over three years, starting in 2019–20, are supporting Public Safety Canada’s enhanced efforts to raise awareness of this serious issue and reduce the stigma associated with reporting, increasing Canada’s ability to pursue and prosecute offenders, and fostering work with industry to find new ways to combat OCSE. Budget 2021 proposed to provide $20.7 million over five years, starting in 2021-22, for the RCMP to enhance its ability to pursue OCSE investigations, identify victims and remove them from abusive situations, and bring offenders to justice, including those who offend abroad.

In 2019 the Ministers of Canadian Heritage, Public Safety and Justice were mandated to take action on combatting hate groups, online hate and harassment, ideologically-motivated violent extremism, and terrorist organizations, and to ensure the RCMP and CSIS are equipped to combat this growing threat. To that end, Heritage, PS and Justice developed a regulatory and legislative framework that addressed five categories of online harms: 1) child sexual exploitation content, 2) terrorist content, 3) hate speech, 4) content that incites violence, and 5) the non-consensual sharing of intimate images. Key elements of the proposed approach included: establishment of a regulator; requirement for social media platforms to remove harmful content within 24 hours; mandatory reporting to law enforcement of certain illegal content; mandatory evidence preservation for illegal and/or national security content falling within the 5 categories of harmful content; and the development of an incident response protocol to address viral online events (e.g. livestreaming of a terrorist attack). For OCSE specifically, the proposal sought to strengthen the Mandatory Reporting Act, including the requirement of basic subscriber information or transmission data in reporting.

Public consultations over the summer identified concerns from civil society, experts and industry on the proposed approach. The Minister of Canadian Heritage’s mandate letter in December 2021 directed him to continue efforts with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada to develop and introduce legislation to combat serious forms of harmful online content, while reflecting  feedback received during the consultations. In March 2022 the Ministers of Canadian Heritage and Justice announced a new expert advisory group on online safety, which is holding a series of workshops to discuss a legislative and regulatory framework for online safety.

Contacts:

Prepared by: Mark Schindel, Manager , 613-618-8657295-9606
Approved by: Talal Dakalbab, ADM Crime Prevention Branch, 613-852-1167

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