The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) has expressed concerns about the lack of age and consent verification by pornography platforms in an opinion submission to a parliamentary committee. The group issued a statement to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights at the House of Commons, meeting Oct. 31 at the Canadian Parliament, in support of Bill c-270, “An Act to amend the Criminal Code (pornographic material)."
The private members bill had been sponsored by Arnold Viersen, Conservative Member of Parliament for Peace River—Westlock since 2015, and a known campaigner for human trafficking victims and the rights of children.
The EFC, which represents evangelicals across Canada since 1964 and speaks to societal issues based on biblical perspectives and values, has expressed its support for the bill, highlighting the urgency to take decisive action to protect the vulnerable from exploitation.
“We believe it’s crucial for Parliament to require pornography platforms ensure child sexual abuse materials and intimate images shared without consent are not uploaded to their sites,” stated the EFC. “It is evident many of these platforms will not take such measures unless required to and held accountable for doing so.”
It described the consequences of images being posted and distributed online as “devastating” and “lifelong”.
“Children and youth face severe and extensive impacts when images of their abuse and exploitation are streamed and distributed,” the evangelical group added.
The EFC referred to the 2021 hearings by the parliamentary Ethics Committee hearing about matters of privacy and reputation related to online platforms such as Pornhub. Testimonies from survivors exploited on the platform were “harrowing” as told to the committee at the time and included abuse images posted without their knowledge or consent.
“Some of the witnesses whose images had been posted on Pornhub were as young as 13 years old at the time the images were taken,” the EFC added.
One illustration the EFC highlighted involved the testimony of a young woman pressured to send a boy an intimate video of herself when she was in Grade 7 [13 or 14 years old]. The EFC said the video had been uploaded to porn sites and viewed “millions of times.”
“This young woman dropped out of school and her social circle, became homeless, fearful, anxious and suicidal,” said the EFC.
Another witness in the 2021 hearings said her partner took videos and photos of her without consent and posted the material on Pornhub. “She described the destructive impact on her life, emotional trauma, suicidality and the toll on her health and employment,” stated the EFC.
The EFC also expressed concern about sexual assault becoming a porn genre on websites.
For example, a witness told the Ethics Committee about a video of her on Pornhub showing herself unconscious, tagged “sleeping pills.”
“In all that time, the video did not get flagged or removed,” this witness told the committee in 2021. “The viewers, rather than being turned away by sexual assault videos, were actively searching out that content. The tags made this possible, and they knew what they were watching before they clicked. It is a profound betrayal to know that thousands of men saw your assault and not only did nothing to flag it but actively sought it out and enjoyed it.”
When a person’s intimate images, or images of their abuse or exploitation are uploaded, what happens next is “beyond their control,” according to the EFC, also expressing concern about predators using artificial intelligence to manipulate images of both adults and children. The photos and videos can be downloaded, shared or reposted countless times.
The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada disclosed in February (2024) that 700 copies of a certain person’s intimate images were found on at least 80 websites–affecting their employment, social networks and mental health.
“These are real people in vulnerable moments who shared with parliamentarians the devastating impacts of their abuse and intimate images being shared online,” stated the EFC. “In each of these cases, the victims found the platform either unresponsive or slow to respond to their requests to have their images taken down.
“Once these images are online it is nearly impossible to have them permanently removed.”
More than 20 million suspected images of child sexual abuse were being investigated by the Canadian Centre for Children Protection (CCCP), the EFC said.
The CCCP reported that child sexual abuse survivors felt “impacted” by the imagery itself, in a different way to the initial abuse: “The information shared by the respondents to this survey makes it clear that the recording of abuse and its distribution adds an extraordinary layer of trauma for a victim.”
The EFC stated that commercial porn sites must be held accountable to ensure exploitative and non consensual images are not uploaded “in the first place.”
“The onus must not be on children and youth to monitor commercial pornography sites to ensure that depictions of their abuse and exploitation are not posted or, if discovered, to ensure they are swiftly removed,” the EFC added.
“The onus must not be on victims of non-consensual uploads to watch for the content and ensure it is removed.
“Companies must be responsible for ensuring that the content they host and profit from is not child sexual abuse material, that the people depicted in images or videos are not minors, and that they consent to their image being posted.”
In summary, the EFC called on the parliamentary committee to support Bill C-270, saying the legislation if approved “puts the responsibility where it belongs.”
“We urge the committee to support Bill C-270’s measures to ensure illegal content is not uploaded in the first place.”
