Winnipeg, Manitoba
10 October 2014
Over the last 12 months, our Government has introduced two comprehensive pieces of legislation to combat child sexual exploitation and protect Canadians, and in particular youth, from online exploitation: the Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act and the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act.
Provisions in Bill C–26, Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act, introduced in February 2014, include:
- Requiring those convicted of contact child sexual offences against multiple children to serve their sentences consecutively – one after another;
- Requiring those convicted of child pornography offences and contact child sexual offences to serve their sentences consecutively;
- Increasing maximum and minimum prison sentences for certain child sexual offences;
- Increasing penalties for violation of conditions of supervision orders;
- Ensuring that a crime committed while on house arrest, parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence is an aggravating factor at sentencing;
- Ensuring that spousal testimony is available in child pornography cases;
- Requiring registered sex offenders to provide more information when they travel abroad;
- Enabling information–sharing on certain registered sex offenders between officials responsible for the National Sex Offender Registry and at the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA); and,
- Establishing a publicly accessible database of high–risk child sex offenders who have been the subject of a public notification in a provincial/territorial jurisdiction to assist in ensuring the safety of our communities.
Provisions in Bill C–13, the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, introduced in November 2013, include:
- Prohibiting the non–consensual distribution of intimate images;
- Empowering a court to order the removal of non–consensual intimate images from the Internet;
- Permitting the court to order forfeiture of the computer, cell phone or other device used in the offence;
- Providing for reimbursement to victims for costs incurred in removing the intimate image from the Internet or elsewhere; and,
- Empowering the court to make an order to prevent someone from distributing intimate images.
Other concrete measures undertaken by the Government of Canada since 2006 to keep children safe in their communities include:
- Increasing penalties for sexual offences against children and creating two new offences aimed at conduct that could facilitate or enable a sexual offence against a child;
- Strengthening the sex offender registry;
- Increasing the maximum penalties for luring a child;
- Increasing the age of protection, also known as the age of consent to sexual activity, from 14 to 16 years;
- Eliminating house arrest for offenders who commit sexual offences against a child;
- Enacting legislation to make the reporting of child pornography by Internet Service Providers mandatory;
- Strengthening the sentencing and monitoring of dangerous offenders;
- Investing $14.2 million a year to protect children from predators through the National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet. Of this investment, $9.5 million over five years is provided to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which operates Cybertip.ca, Canada’s national tipline for the public to report suspected cases of online sexual exploitation of children;
- Providing, under the Strategy, a range of services to law enforcement, via the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre headed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, including investigative coordination to immediately respond to a child at risk; expertise in victim identification techniques, management of multi–jurisdictional cases, undertaking operationally–relevant research, and providing specialized training in the area of online child sexual exploitation investigations;
- Launching, in January 2014, the anti–cyberbullying national awareness campaign, Stop Hating Online. It also launched Stop Hating Online, a comprehensive resource for parents and youth that includes information, advice and tools needed to identify, prevent and stop cyberbullying;
- Announcing, in September 2014, the third phase of Stop Hating Online which focuses on the consequences of cyberbullying and how this behaviour amounts to criminal activity; and,
- Supporting the development of a number of school–based projects to prevent cyberbullying as part of $10 million in funding that was committed in 2012 towards new crime prevention projects.
Other important initiatives that the Government supports to address cyberbullying include:
- The RCMP Centre for Youth Crime Prevention, which offers resources such as fact sheets, lesson plans, and interactive learning tools, to youth, parents, police officers and educators on bullying and cyberbullying; and,
- The Canadian Centre for Child Protection's NeedHelpNow.ca website, which Canadians can use to report online sexual exploitation of children and seek help from exploitation resulting from the non–consensual sharing of sexual images.
