Adopt Bill S-210
Petitioners ask the House to adopt Bill S-210 to require online age verification blocking youth access to sexually explicit material. The government responds that it is reviewing related proposals to find the best child‑protection approach.
Why we would sign this petition
- It would require commercial sites to block youth access, directly reducing exposure petitioners link to harms among young people.
- It mandates age verification using technologies petitioners say can operate without violating privacy and assigns clear responsibility to content providers.
- Stakeholders’ testimony to a 2017 Standing Committee study singled out online age verification, so the bill reflects an existing expert recommendation.
Why we wouldn’t sign this petition
- Age‑verification systems can create privacy and data‑security risks in practice, despite claims they can be privacy‑preserving.
- Enforcing age checks across the global internet is technically and legally difficult and may be easily circumvented or unevenly applied.
- Mandatory verification could impose costs and compliance burdens on small commercial publishers and risk overblocking lawful content.
The summary and both sets of reasons are AI-generated from the petition and given equal weight. Claims are the petitioners’ own; consult the official record for the full text.
Official petition
Petition to the House of Commons in Parliament Assembled WE, THE UNDERSIGNED RESIDENTS OF CANADA, draw the attention of the House to the following: Whereas sexually explicit material - including demeaning material and material depicting sexual violence - can be easily accessed on the Internet by young persons; Whereas a significant proportion of the sexually explicit material accessed online is made available on the Internet for commercial purposes and is not protected by any effective age-verification method; Whereas the consumption of sexually explicit material by young persons is associated with a range of serious harms, including the development of pornography addiction, the reinforcement of gender stereotypes and the development of attitudes favourable to harassment and violence - including sexual harassment and sexual violence - particularly against women; Whereas Parliament recognizes that the harmful effect of the increasing accessibility of sexually explicit material online for young persons is an important public health and public safety concern; Whereas online age-verification technology is increasingly sophisticated and can now effectively ascertain the age of users without breaching their privacy rights; Whereas anyone making sexually explicit material available on the Internet for commercial purposes has a responsibility to ensure that it is not accessed by young persons; and Whereas online age-verification was the primary recommendation made by stakeholders during a 2017 study by the Standing Committee on Health. THEREFORE your petitioners call upon the House of Commons to adopt Bill S-210, Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act.
Government response
Response by the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages Signed by The Honourable Steven Guilbeault The Government would like to thank the petitioners for expressing their concerns regarding the important issue of protection of young people online, especially regarding the exposure to pornographic material. The Government is carefully examining Bill S-209 in relation to its proposed objectives and comparing it against similar international legislations. The Government agrees that children should be protected against exposure to pornographic material and wants to ensure the best solution is put forward to keep all Canadians safe online. Previously, the Government introduced online harms legislation, which, among other things, recognized the need to better protect children online. Although the proposed legislation died on the Order Paper in January 2025, the Government’s commitments to protect children and address online harms remain. This government legislation proposed to create the Online Harms Act, which aimed to promote online safety by reducing exposure to harmful content on social media services, with a special emphasis on protecting children. The Online Harms Act would have imposed three statutory duties that establish minimum standards that services must meet to ensure the safety of Canadians online: Duty to Act Responsibly Duty to Protect Children Duty to Make Certain Content Inaccessible The Duty to Act Responsibly would have established a standard of conduct that social media services must follow to ensure the safety of users on their platforms and to create more transparency and accountability about how they deal with harmful content. The Duty to Protect Children would have required social media services to provide special protections for children online, such as the integration of age-appropriate design features on their platforms. The Duty to Make Certain Content Inaccessible would have required social media services to expeditiously remove two categories of content from their services: Content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, and Intimate content communicated without consent. The Act also would have created a new Digital Safety Commission to oversee and enforce the Act; a Digital Safety Ombudsperson to advocate for and support victims and a Digital Safety Office to support both administratively. Part of the Commission’s mandate would have been to: Enforce the removal of content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent; Enforce the removal of content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and intimate content communicated without consent; Promote societal resilience to harms online and set new standards for online safety; and Promote societal resilience to harms online and set new standards for online safety; and Develop educational resources for the public, including children and parents. Develop educational resources for the public, including children and parents. Overall, the Commission would have been able to enact guidelines and regulations under the three duties, which would allow the legislation to be adaptable and to grow over time as the landscape of harmful content affecting children changes. In addition to Bill S-209, the Government is currently examining Private Member’s Bill C-216 (Protection of Minors in the Digital Age Act), which also aims to protect children online. Among other things, the Bill proposes to impose a Duty of Care on online platforms and require them to implement certain safeguards on their services. The Government is committed to analyze these proposals, and work with Parliament, stakeholders and Canadians to develop the best possible solution to protect Canadians – especially children – from harm online.