Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime
Heard. Respected. Victims First.
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Special Report:
Progress to Date
“Sometimes, you can hear the children cry.”
–Paul Gillespie, retired Detective Sergeant, Toronto Police Sex Crime Unit
Canada’s current child pornography legislation was passed in 1993 and then updated in 2002 to respond to the new reality of the Internet. The update included the creation of the new offence of using the Internet to communicate with a young person for the purpose of facilitating the commission of a sexual offence against that child—commonly known as “child luring.”
Two years later, the federal government launched the National Strategy to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet. The strategy included the creation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, a clearing house and coordination centre for international requests to conduct investigations in Canada related to child sexual exploitation on the Internet. On February 10, 2009, the Minister of Public Safety announced the renewal of this strategy.
In 2005, Parliament expanded the definition of child pornography, increased the maximum penalty for all child pornography offences and introduced mandatory minimum penalties. That same year, the Manitoba-based organization Cybertip.ca became Canada’s national tipline for reporting the online sexual exploitation of children.40
During this period, Canada took action not just at home, but in the international community, leading our counterparts in learning how to better respond to the abuse of children.
Canada sponsored the United Nations Guidelines on Justice Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime.41 Canada was also a signatory to the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution, and child pornography (2000), which requires state parties to protect children from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse and to take appropriate measures to prevent the exploitative use of children in pornographic performances and materials.
In 2007, Canada’s Ministers of Justice and Public Safety joined other G8 Ministers and agreed to accelerate efforts “to ensuring the implementation and effectiveness of our own laws relating to child pornography, and to taking steps to update and improve those laws when necessary and where appropriate.”
42 That same year, the Federal-Provincial-Territorial (FPT) Ministers responsible for Justice “expressed serious concern about child pornography on the Internet and asked officials, on a priority basis, to complete their work in examining measures, including legislation, to increase cooperation of Internet Service Providers in assisting law enforcement officials to identify criminals and rescue child victims.”
43
In 2007, the federal government also took further steps to protect children by raising the age of consent from 14 to 16, enhancing the dangerous offender provisions of the Criminal Code and dedicating an additional $6 million to the RCMP to protect children “from online sexual exploitation…”
44
In January 2008, former Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day gave $2 million to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which operates Cybertip.ca, declaring it as “another concrete action that our government is taking to protect children from online adult sexual predators, and to prevent them from being sexually abused.”
45
In September 2008, the FPT Ministers responsible for Justice agreed that “Canada’s response to child pornography could be enhanced by federal legislation requiring any agency whose services could be used to facilitate the commission of online child pornography offences to report suspected material.”
46 This would bring Canada in line with other countries, like the United States and Australia which, under federal law, require Electronic Service Providers (ESPs) to report the discovery of child sexual abuse images. Some provinces, like Manitoba and Ontario, have passed legislation regarding mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse images.
We encourage the Government to proceed with legislation that would require not only ISPs, but social networking sites, computer repair shops and Internet content hosts to report suspected child pornography. However, this must be part of an overall government strategy to combat this problem. Mandatory reporting on its own is not likely to make a significant difference in the fight against online child sexual exploitation. Law enforcement agencies report now that they are struggling to keep up with the number of cases they have. The most serious problem is not lack of reports, but about accessing information about suspects, identifying children and preventing future abuse. The federal government must avoid acting on mandatory reporting just to be seen to be doing something without addressing the priority issues identified in this report.
