Despite Liberal opposition, a bill proposed by the Senate requiring biodigital data to access pornography online passed its second reading in the House of Commons last week. The bill was rejected by 133 Liberal MPs, while MPs from the Conservatives, NDP and Bloc Quebecois voted they would like to see it studied further by the committee of Health and Public Safety. Bill S-210, the Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act, which was first proposed in 2021, passed all three readings in the Senate as of this past spring. It has now advanced to the House of Commons, where it passed its second reading December 13. The purpose of the bill, which would require Canadians accessing internet pornography to verify their identity through biodigital means, is to “protect young persons” from seeing graphic images that studies have shown affect the brain development of a young person, especially boys. The wording of the bill does not specify how it will verify a user’s age, but it could be a digital ID system or a webcam to scan the person’s face or retina, per The Globe and Mail. The final decision would ultimately be made by the government. Websites that offer graphic sexual material and do not comply with the age verification rules will face fines up to $250,000 for their first offence and up to $500,000 for each multiple offence. Independent Senators Group member Julie Miville-Dechene, who drafted the bill, said she is baffled as to why Justin Trudeau and his Liberal government, which have their own plans for legislation geared toward protecting Canadians online, refuse to support bill S-210. The Liberals’ Online News Act does not include anything to prevent minors from accessing sexually explicit content online, Miville-Dechene said per The Globe and Mail. “Never, never have I had any indication that in the Liberal’s proposed online harms bill there will be anything to protect children against those porn platforms,” she said Thursday. Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge thinks bill S-210 is “fundamentally flawed.” “We share the goal of a safer internet experience for children and youth. However, this bill is fundamentally flawed,” St-Onge’s office said Thursday. “Experts have loudly pointed to the serious issues in this proposal around issues of privacy, security and technology.”A spokesperson from the heritage minister’s office told the Canadian Press earlier this year Bill S-210 overlaps with the Liberal’s online harms bill, which the Justice Department is now leading. Liberal MP and parliamentary secretary to the government House leader Kevin Lamoureux thinks the bill is too “narrow.” “The biggest issue we need to look at is why the bill is fairly narrow in its application with respect to harms to children,” he said Monday in the House of Commons, adding that various government departments are looking for a more “holistic approach to dealing with things that impact or harm young people.”Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa Michael Geist warns bill S-210, a piece of legislation which has thus far flown under the radar, is “the most dangerous Canadian internet bill you’ve never heard of” — including bills C-11 and C-18, he wrote on his Substack Thursday. Geist appeared before the Senate committee that studied Bill S-210 in February 2022. He acknowledged “underage access to inappropriate content is indeed a legitimate concern,” but outlined several arguments against the use of this kind of technology to surveil the internet. He argued at the time that “by bringing together website blocking, face recognition technologies and stunning overbreadth that would capture numerous mainstream services, the bill isn’t just a slippery slope, it is an avalanche.”In his recent article, Geist lamented “few Canadians will have the appetite for yet another troubling Internet bill,” asserting S-210 is another form of government-backed censorship, mandates age verification for more than just sexually explicit content but also to access social media and search engines and will set a new precedent for court-ordered website blocking. Geist noted Conservative MPs, “after months of championing Internet freedoms, raising fears of censorship and expressing concern about CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) overregulation of the internet,” were quick to criticize Liberal members who disagreed with the proposal. “The best way to deal with the issue includes education, digital skills and parental oversight of internet use, including the use of personal filters or blocking tools if desired,” he wrote and if any Canadian websites violate the law, they should be investigated. The proposed bill “goes well beyond personal choices to limit underage access to sexually explicit material on Canadian sites,” he wrote. “Instead, it envisions government-enforced global website liability for failure to block underage access, backed by website blocking and mandated age verification systems that are likely to include face recognition technologies.”
