Act now on online abuse

Let’s add another item to the “why haven’t you done this already?” list for the Trudeau government: stopping porn sites from exploiting vulnerable women and girls by putting material online without their consent.

Six months ago the government made that very promise. It came after the New York Times published an investigative article headlined “The Children of Pornhub,” setting out in detail how the Montreal-based company MindGeek profits from the exploitation of underage girls through its extensive online pornography empire.

Last week there was more evidence along these lines, in the form of a lawsuit launched by 34 women accusing Pornhub and MindGeek of illegally trafficking videos of them engaged in non-consensual or private sexual acts.

And yet from the government so far — nothing. The promises last December to bring in new regulations to make sure online platforms respect Canada’s laws against sexual violence and hateful content remain just that: promises.

This is disappointing, to say the least. Long before the New York Times article, there was ample evidence that Pornhub and other sites operated by MindGeek were hosting many videos featuring underage girls.

(For the record, the company’s executives say they employ moderators to keep illegal, non-consensual material off their sites. Somehow, though, it keeps showing up.)

So the issue has been on the government’s radar for many months. Indeed, Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault’s mandate letter when he was appointed in 2019 instructed him to come up with legislation to address an array of socalled “online harms,” including “exploitation of children.”

Guilbeault has promised, as recently as early June, to table a proposed law. But with the House of Commons rising for the summer on Thursday, he has just days to do that.

And any law brought in this week has about zero chance of being passed; more likely it would have to be reintroduced in the next session of Parliament, leading to more delay.

Not all of this is the government’s fault. It’s operating in a minority Parliament and the opposition parties (mainly the Conservatives) have slowed progress on government bills to a crawl. Even if a bill on online harms had been introduced weeks ago it might still be far from becoming law.

But all that is of little comfort to the women and girls fighting to stop Pornhub and others from exploiting sexual material without their consent. The lawsuit launched last week details how some have waged long fights to have such material taken down, but faced long delays or found that it pops back up on other sites.

We don’t know exactly what the government plans to include in its online-harms legislation, whenever that will appear.

But there are measures that could be taken to protect women (and men, too) from outright exploitation.

The ethics and privacy committee of the House of Commons looked into Pornhub’s activities earlier this year, and last week it proposed a series of sensible and long-overdue changes to legislation designed to curb the spread of child pornography and what amount to rape videos online.

The key recommendation is that porn platforms operating in Canada be required to verify that all participants in sexual content are adults, and that all consent to having their images distributed online.

The all-party committee also recommends that the government require porn sites to remove content immediately if someone says it has been posted without their consent, and that people “be given the benefit of the doubt with respect to the non-consensual nature of the content.”

The committee’s chairman, Conservative Chris Warkentin, says the MPs found “sobering and horrific” evidence that young people’s lives are being destroyed by having intimate videos or child sexual abuse materials circulating for millions to see.

The government needs to turn its promises in this area into action, without further delay.

MPs found ‘sobering and horrific’ evidence that young people’s lives are being destroyed by having intimate videos or child sexual abuse materials circulating for millions to see