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Results: 1 - 15 of 19
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-06-07 11:14
Do you also believe that companies must be more responsible for ensuring that the content they are publishing does not contain minors and has the express and explicit consent of the individuals depicted?
View Steven Guilbeault Profile
Lib. (QC)
Companies should abide by Canadian laws. Whether they're online companies or physical companies, there should be no distinction. As I said earlier, the challenge we face now is that the tools we have to deal with these online harms just aren't adapted to the virtual world.
Melissa Lukings
View Melissa Lukings Profile
Melissa Lukings
2021-06-07 12:25
No worries.
The committee is dealing with a Canadian-controlled private corporation, a CCPC, which is a private commercial organization based in and operating with headquarters located in Canada. It is a Canadian company. We know this, and that's fine. Commercial organizations in Canada are bound by the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. PIPEDA outlines the rules and remedies, including the fines and other penalties, for corporations that fail to abide by the provisions specified in the act.
Beyond the corporate level, we also have the Criminal Code of Canada, which outlines the criminal offences and punishments for committing such offences. We have these. We need to apply them. Everyone is bound by the Criminal Code of Canada.
Why, then, do we need additional regulations? Why do we need more oversight when we have not yet tried to simply apply the law we already have? We have these laws. We can use them, so let's use them. That's what they're for. What's the point in even having these statutes if you're not going to apply them when they're needed? What are we doing here?
We're here because a portion of those involved have decided to conflate the issue of corporate negligence with highly sexualized and emotive criminal activity—read again, child rape porn testimony. It elicits an emotional response—the sympathetic nervous system and all of that. It doesn't matter. This is about a corporation and user-generated content. It does not matter what is depicted in the content as much as it matters that the content, whatever it may be, should not have gotten past the corporation's screening system before being made live on the site. When the issue was brought to its attention, the corporation responded inadequately at first, so we need corporate law. We need to look at liability and feasibility standards.
Why has this become a forum for grandstanding religious ideologies? I'm sure you've all heard about Exodus Cry in the news, if you've been following it. Exodus Cry is a fundamental Christian organization founded on religious ideologies stemming from the United States. Why is it relevant to a question of corporate liability in Canada? It isn't. It doesn't make any sense.
Why are we arguing about exploitation? Why are we discussing mass censorship? Is that not a massive overreaction to a simple corporate negligence question? It seems glaringly obvious to me, so why are we not discussing reasonable options for encouraging corporations to better serve their users?
Also, I have some opinions about the genderedness of this. You can read about it in my notes.
When it comes down to it, you can't eliminate sex. We're humans, and there is always going to be a demand for sex. You can't eliminate sex work because the demand exists. You can't eliminate extramarital sex or porn or masturbation or demand for sexual services, but sexual assault is illegal, even when that person is your spouse. We need it to be that way. We want to protect people. If you're saying you can do certain things only within the context of marriage, you're setting yourself up for failure. It's true.
Yes, I said “masturbation” in a hearing. Oh my God.
You cannot eliminate base human desires, so you can't eliminate sex. That would be silly. It's okay to not like these things, and just because you don't like a thing or you feel that a thing is not for you, it doesn't mean it's inherently evil and should be eliminated. It doesn't work that way. It's not about and should not be about pornography or the actual content of online material here. This is about creating reasonable laws that work for Canada, Canadian corporations and everyone residing within Canada. We don't need new regulations; we don't need a new regulator, and we don't need online censorship. We need to use the tools we already have, which were designed for a reason. Why be redundant?
That is my diatribe.
Thank you for having me. I will take any questions you throw at me.
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-06-07 12:30
Thanks, Chair.
Melissa, thanks for your testimony and for being here today.
I share your perspective that it is crucial to distinguish between the hosting and distribution of child sexual abuse material and of material and images that don't have the explicit consent of the people depicted in them.
I think you'd agree—or let me know if you do—that people have a right to own their own images and content that include them, and also the right to withdraw that if they so choose. This is the thing that I think all of us are grappling with—your very strong point about the Criminal Code already being in place and the laws and the regulations that already exist to provide these protections for children and for others who do not give their consent.
What do you make of what the actual problem is, then? What is the enforcement issue, the lack of enforcement and the lack of application of the existing law?
Melissa Lukings
View Melissa Lukings Profile
Melissa Lukings
2021-06-07 12:31
I think the current issue is that perhaps the penalties that currently exist in PIPEDA are not strong enough to deter corporations. I'm not saying to put in new regulations—I'm not saying that—but when you're going to do the digital charter implementation act and you're discussing things like Bill C-10 and Bill C-11, it's important to remember that.
I think there is room for improvement. Because we've found that financial penalties don't really seem to impact companies that make a lot of money, fines could instead be based on percentages. The key here is that we need to not have increased regulation. If what we're trying to do is in fact what we say we're trying to do, which is to reduce human trafficking and harm to young people, additional regulations are not going to help that.
Did I answer your question?
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-06-07 12:32
Yes.
On April 19 you mentioned a couple of possibilities related to the digital charter implementation act. You touched on the possibility of fines for companies that host and distribute already illegal content. The Minister of Heritage was just here, as you know, so I just wonder if there is.... I understand that you got cut off in your testimony last time, so I just want to see if there are any other details or recommendations you wanted to add in terms of that work.
Melissa Lukings
View Melissa Lukings Profile
Melissa Lukings
2021-06-07 12:33
In terms of the digital charter implementation act?
Melissa Lukings
View Melissa Lukings Profile
Melissa Lukings
2021-06-07 12:33
For corporations the question here is, how much responsibility do they have to have in order to cover their own selves from liability for negligence? That needs to be specified. It needs to be put in words.
Other than that, we really need to work on applying the laws that we have, so if there's something standing in the way of that and that can be remedied through the new digital charter implementation act, that should be discussed, absolutely. That is my recommendation.
View Brenda Shanahan Profile
Lib. (QC)
You do mention the requirements and the difference between corporations and organizations. I believe that is in your recommendation 3, and that's what my colleague, Ms. Lattanzio, was curious about.
Can you talk about what your thinking is there?
Nancy Bélanger
View Nancy Bélanger Profile
Nancy Bélanger
2021-05-14 14:58
Recommendation 3 is making the requirements the same, I believe.
Nancy Bélanger
View Nancy Bélanger Profile
Nancy Bélanger
2021-05-14 14:58
I don't always have the order of them perfectly in my mind, but yes.
The problem right now with the registry is that corporations do not have to list employees who lobby less than 20%. In other words, in the registry, an organization has to list everybody who lobbies, but a corporation does not have to list those who lobby less than 20%. What that means, the impact of that, is that those individuals who are not in the registry are not subject to the code of conduct of lobbyists, and that's a problem.
It's not difficult. It's just this: List all of the names of those who lobby on behalf of the corporation and organization. The organizations have to do that. I don't know why corporations don't. That's not a very difficult change to make.
Feras Antoon
View Feras Antoon Profile
Feras Antoon
2021-02-05 14:20
I don't know off the top of my head, because we restructure once in a while. We use third party companies that give us advice. The structure is not complex, to be honest. It's just that we have many products, and the structure is built on the advice of third party professionals.
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