Senator Miville-Dechêne takes on the porn industry

KAMOURASKA, QUE.—Pornography is a dirty, but lucrative, business. Worth a trillion dollars worldwide, it generates more than $13-billion in revenues in the United States annually. In Canada, revenues are close to $1-billion. While free speech advocates have traditionally defended the right of adults to be consumers of pornography, there is enormous collateral damage in its impact on children. The fallout from pornography ranges from the psychological scars on minors, problems with intimacy in later life, the normalization of sexual violence to sexual exploitation and human trafficking. And although Canadian children are not permitted to purchase cigarettes or cannabis in stores, all they have to do to access pornographic sites is click on a button that declares they are 18 years of age. As porn has been free online for the past decade, anyone can access it. In seconds, a child of any age can watch any pornographic site of the 4.5 million available. The volume is overwhelming: one could watch Pornhub alone for 24 hours a day and it would take two centuries to finish. Into this cesspool has stepped Independent Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, a former CBC journalist and mother of two adult children. Appointed to the Upper Chamber in 2018, she was motivated to act when she read a 2020 New York Times article about Pornhub and its connection to MindGeek, a Montreal-based company. The story, “The Children of Pornhub,” outlined the purchase of films using children in porn and the connection to human trafficking and child prostitution. In the wake of the article, Miville-Dechêne said she asked herself “What can I do as a Senator to stop this?” She soon crafted a public bill, S-203, which died on the Order Paper when Parliament dissolved for the 2021 election. In the interim, she took advantage of the break to consult extensively and refine the bill. The result was S-210, the Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act. It is a few weeks away from third reading, and should then proceed to the House of Commons. It proposes to restrict access to porn sites by children by placing a proof-of-age barrier that would add 45 seconds to the process. The bill would criminalize making explicit material available to a minor, and fines for non-compliance are enormous: $250,000 for a first offence. In developing the legislation, Miville-Dechêne has had pushback from lawyers and sex workers, the latter worrying they might be targeted as individuals. For that reason, the new version of the bill targets companies alone. She has also been accused of being aligned with right-wing conservatives. She says her support is broad, but in particular “from feminists, social conservatives and Christians.” Despite her public profile, the Senator points out sardonically she has yet to be invited to visit the offices of MindGeek, which are not far from her Montreal home. When I was 11 years old, I found a magazine on the street with explicit photos. I was confused by the stark black and white images. Today, close to 50 per cent of high school boys have watched these explicit and often violent colour films and videos online. The average age for a first view is 11. Dr. Megan Harrison, a pediatrician at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, told the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee studying S-203 in April 2021 that the “developing brain is absolutely affected by the images that it sees. ... Neuroplasticity is at its highest in children and even more so in adolescents. ... The teens I see who have accessed these sites … have so much confusion about their bodies and what is expected of them sexually, what is normal, all sorts of things.” The industry itself has egregious means of getting to children. Some can be searches as innocent as “My Little Pony,” linked to porn sites. The reason, the Senator explains, is companies depend on “clicks” for advertising revenue; hence more viewers, adolescent or otherwise, enrich their coffers. This is why self-regulation by the porn industry hasn’t worked. Miville-Dechêne declared emphatically: “I am not a prude. As a feminist, intimacy affects relationships between men and women. There is a need for proper sex education in schools, but porn is not sex education. We have to be the guardians of the health of our children.” Looking at the challenge, she said, many people have told her “‘This is too difficult, Julie.’ But what is the alternative? To do nothing?” Andrew Caddell is retired from Global Affairs Canada, where he was a senior policy adviser. He previously worked as an adviser to Liberal governments. He is a town councillor in Kamouraska, Que. He can be reached at pipson52@hotmail.com. The Hill Times