The owners of Pornhub say blocking access to Canadians is among options they’re considering as they try to persuade parliamentarians to reject an approach for age verification outlined in a controversial Senate bill.
“We’ve taken different options in different jurisdictions,” said Solomon Friedman, a partner and vice-president of compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, which owns Pornhub’s parent company, Aylo.
“I don’t want to speculate on (the bill) in its current state. We’re going to committee to ensure that the wrong legislation doesn’t get passed.”
A House of Commons committee is set to study legislation proposed by Independent Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne that would require Canadians to verify their age to access porn online.
The bill outlines a range of concerns about minors having access to sexually explicit material, including the potential to develop a pornography addiction and the reinforcement of harmful gender stereotypes.
It proposes companies that host such material ensure young people cannot access it, under threat of fines between $250,000 and $500,000.
The legislation doesn’t specify how sites should verify a user’s age, but options include the establishment of a digital ID system or services that can estimate an individual’s age based on a visual scan of their face.
Such suggestions have prompted widespread concern from privacy experts about the overarching impacts, from the risks associated with asking Canadians to share personal information with an external provider to the use of measures such as facial recognition technology.
Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne sponsored the Senate bill that is now set to be examined by a House of Commons committee. (Jacques Corriveau/CBC)
Others have warned age verification could lead to a stifling of free expression, as some companies would likely rather block access to their sites.
Others, they warn, could simply find ways to skirt the rules.
Examples of laws abroad
Sitting at a cafe in downtown Ottawa last week, Friedman said his company shares concerns about minors accessing Pornhub, one of the largest porn sites on the internet.
“We want no children on our platform whatsoever.”
Not only is that from a moral standpoint, he says, but also a commercial one.
In 2023, his firm acquired ownership of Pornhub’s parent company as it was reeling from reports that exploded in late 2020 about the site being home to countless examples of child sexual abuse material and other images and videos uploaded without an individual’s consent.
The reports led payment companies such as Visa and MasterCard to pull their services from the site.
Pornhub scrubbed millions of unverified videos from its platform and put in new safety protocols.
Similar laws requiring internet porn sites to verify a user’s age have been passed in several U.S. states, including Louisiana. After it required that a government ID be used to access Pornhub, traffic took a nosedive.
After Utah passed a bill that Friedman said did not include an option to use a government ID, Pornhub blocked access altogether to residents of that state.
LISTEN | Federal government grappling with online harms bill:
The House10:36Urgency grows for Liberals to introduce online harms legislation
Between the rise in online antisemitism and Islamophobia and horrific recent cases of sextortion involving young people, there are many pressing issues that could be addressed by the Liberals’ long-promised online harms legislation. Host Catherine Cullen speaks to Canada Research Chair in Cybersecurity Law Emily Laidlaw and OpenMedia’s Matt Hatfield about what a new law might look like — and why it’s taking so long to come to light.
Friedman argued such laws will not achieve the desired effect of shielding children from sexually graphic material, but will only push them to even darker corners of the internet to sites that may not comply with the law.
What the company is pushing for instead is for the onus to be put on manufacturers of devices being used to access sites, rather than on the sites themselves.
“We will never ever take the private identifying information of our users,” he said.
“(We) will always comply with the law,” he said.
“That’s either by imposing the solution, not operating … or in addition to all those, challenging these in law, if we think that they violate some higher legal principle like the Constitution.”
So far, Liberal MPs have been the only ones to vote against the proposed law.
New Democrats, Bloc Quebecois and Conservatives voted in favour of sending the bill to committee.
NDP House Leader Peter Julian said in a statement that New Democrats supported the bill because of its intent to protect minors.
Federal Justice Minister Arif Virani says upcoming legislation to protect against online harms will look carefully at those that most affect children. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
“We look forward to examining the bill at the committee, including through the testimony of community, health and public safety experts, to understand the full impact of the proposed legislation.”
Tories have routinely raised concerns about children’s access to sexually explicit material, while also decrying government efforts to regulate social media companies as censorship.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s office did not respond to a request for comment by publication deadline.
Ontario MP Karen Vecchio, who sponsored the bill in the House, told MPs back in December that she agreed personal information shouldn’t be collected by individual sites.
However, she expressed hope that a solution can be found as technology advances.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has long promised to legislate new protections against online harms, including those that most affect children.
Justice Minister Arif Virani has signalled the upcoming bill will put a major focus on children’s safety while also respecting freedom of expression.
When asked about it directly, his office declined to say whether age verification would be a part of the measures it’s considering.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
