Moms share harrowing stories of online child sexual abuse to push for Bill C-63

Six Canadian mothers are sharing their children’s stories of online intersexual maltreatment successful Safe Spaces, a caller run by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection demanding urgent enactment for the online harms bill.

Bill C-63 proposes to code online harms by requiring societal media platforms to conscionable circumstantial information standards, region amerciable contented and beryllium much transparent astir their users and information postulation practices. The measure is presently astatine 2nd speechmaking successful the House of Commons.

“There has to beryllium immoderate rules and guidelines successful spot to assistance guarantee that people’s acquisition online is safe, peculiarly children,” says Monique St. Germain, wide counsel for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P).

C3P saw a 27 per cent summation successful online intersexual exploitation reports successful 2023, with astir 6,000 reports of sextortion unsocial successful the past 18 months.

“By the clip you impact RCMP oregon the constabulary successful the situation, it’s already excessively late. We request to halt this enactment close astatine the source,” Jill, 1 of the mothers with Safe Spaces, says during her interview.

The Safe Spaces run aims to displacement the communicative astir online information via video interviews, challenging the misconception that it’s solely a parental responsibility. While parental supervision is important, C3P argues that robust authorities is important to clasp online platforms accountable and make a safer integer situation for all.

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“A batch of these harms are not astir parenting, it’s overmuch bigger than that,” St. Germain says. “We request companies to beryllium responsible.”

The run comes astatine a clip erstwhile online harms are connected the rise. While C3P says caller initiatives similar Instagram’s instauration of teen accounts with parental supervision are a measurement successful the close direction, it emphasizes that authorities is needed to guarantee accordant information measures crossed each platforms.

“When automakers marque vehicles, they cognize each the information measures that they request to enactment retired there. Same goes for tech companies – they cognize it, but they’re not doing it,” says Carol Todd, the parent of Amanda Todd and 1 of the mothers with Safe Spaces.