Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne's bill is the latest move in Parliament to try to ensure adult sites are not accessed by children in Canada.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
A new bid to prevent children from accessing pornography sites could bring in face or hand scans as a way to estimate a person’s age.
Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne this week introduced a bill to require age verification before accessing porn sites, the latest move in Parliament to bring in measures to ensure adult sites are not accessed by children in Canada.
A private member’s bill the senator introduced before the election to put such measures into place passed the Senate with support from the Conservatives, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP, as well as a clutch of Liberal MPs. Justin Trudeau’s government, however, did not support it.
The bill failed to progress through the required stages in the Commons before the election was called, and faced criticism in committee, including concerns that asking users for ID before accessing porn sites would breach people’s privacy.
Ms. Miville-Dechêne said her new bill seeks to address some of the concerns raised, including about privacy, and more closely mirrors rules being introduced in Britain. The bill says methods of “age estimation” and “age verification” could be used to check whether someone is an adult.
Britain’s Office of Communications (OFCOM), the regulator enforcing that country’s recent online safety act, is requiring porn sites to introduce “robust” age checks by July. That could include photo ID or credit card checks, or methods using age-estimation technology. In Britain, porn sites that fail to comply would face penalties.
Under Ms. Miville-Dechêne’s private member’s bill, adult sites that make porn available on the internet to a “young person” could face a fine up to $250,000 for the first offence, and $500,000 for a second or subsequent offence.
The bill says age estimation or verification methods must be operated by a third-party organization while protecting privacy and personal information.
It also states that “age verification and age estimation technology is increasingly sophisticated and can now effectively ascertain the age of users without breaching their privacy rights.”
The senator said ways to check a person’s age are developing quickly and can now be estimated with 99-per-cent accuracy by scanning the moving hand, according to technology in the last stage of testing.
In 2022, the Senate voted for a change in the law to require age verification before accessing adult content on sites, including Pornhub, owned by Canada-based private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners. But the Liberal government did not accept the amendment put forward by Ms. Miville-Dechêne.
Various jurisdictions around the world, including Europe and some U.S. states, have taken action to ensure that children cannot access porn online.
“It’s more than time for Canada to act to protect children from the serious harms of exposure to pornography online. The British and French laws imposing age estimation or age verification are coming into force this summer. Technology has evolved and privacy rights can be fully protected,” said Ms. Miville-Dechêne.
The European Union is investigating Pornhub and other pornography websites, suspecting they could be breaching online content laws on safeguarding children.
The EU is concerned about an apparent lack of “appropriate” age-verification methods to stop from children accessing pornography.
Alex Kekesi, Head of Community and Brand at Aylo, which runs Pornhub, said the company is aware of the European Commission’s investigation and is “fully committed to ensuring the safety of minors online.”
She said the company’s porn sites are “strictly reserved for those of legal age only.”
Asked about the new bill being introduced in Canada, she said Aylo will always comply with the law. In a statement, she said the best option is to verify users’ ages on their devices, and for websites to deny or permit access to age-restricted materials based on that verification.
Earlier this year federal Privacy Commissioner Philippe Dufresne applied for a federal court order in an effort to ensure that everyone appearing in videos on Aylo’s sites had consented to them being uploaded.
Last year, the commissioner published a report that found that Aylo had enabled some intimate images to be shared on its websites without the direct knowledge or consent of everyone appearing in them.
Aylo has said it has “comprehensive safeguards” on its sites, including “mandatory uploader verification, mandatory proof of consent and identification of all participants” in porn videos.