DON’T GIVE LIBERALS BLANK SLATE ON ONLINE PORN RESTRICTIONS
BILL S-210 GIVES CABINET TOO MUCH POWER TO CONTROL INTERNET ACCESS
There are ways to tackle the porn issue that don’t involve handing the Liberals the keys to internet censorship. Conservatives should find one.
Until now, perhaps out of carelessness or naiveté, the Tories — along with the Bloc Québécois, the NDP and the Green party — are supporting a bill that would give federal cabinet the power to mandate the use of its preferred age-verification technology for use on the Canadian internet. This is the working mechanism of Bill S-210, which is geared at restricting online porn access for minors.
The broad goal of the bill isn’t radical at all. Full-on sex and video of full-on sex is something that should be kept out of the public square, in part because children simply shouldn’t see it. The law already reflects these basic principles. Provincial laws restrict the display of sexually explicit media to children (that’s why in some places, kids can’t buy R-rated games or enter theatres showing R-rated films). We also manage to do this with smoking, which is banned in advertising but perfectly acceptable in film.
It’s also a crime to have sex in public around others; similarly, it’s a crime to physically make “sexually explicit material” (i.e. porn and graphically-written smut) available to children — doing so is punishable by up to 14 years in prison. Opponents of porn restrictions will argue that it’s impossible to draw a line between artistic depictions of sex and full-on pornography, but the presence of a grey in-between hasn’t stopped us before.
What Bill S-210 would do is extend that line-drawing exercise and the restrictions that come with to the internet. Specifically, it would make organizations liable for a fine of up to $500,000 if they make porn available to children “for commercial purposes.” We can debate whether the maximum fine is appropriate, but overall, the concept is fair and entirely consistent with the rest of Canadian law.
But good ideas can easily fall victim to terrible execution, and that’s the problem here. Bill S-210 only offers one defence that will guarantee a website won’t be fined into oblivion for showing sex, and that is the use of a government-approved age-verification method. What those methods will be, we don’t know. That is being left entirely up to cabinet and the minister to decide, and that’s why it’s so incredibly foolish for any Conservative to vote “yes” on this mess.
There’s nothing wrong about restricting the display of graphic sex to children, but the “how” question should be left up to Parliament to ensure that we know what terms are being agreed to.
The most extreme options are comically terrible. There’s the government digital ID method, which both the Conservatives and the Liberals say they don’t support (though you may remember this differently, as a report from The Canadian Press inaccurately stated that Conservatives would make porn Id-restricted ... sigh). There’s the supposed facial scanning method, which would be both invasive and inaccurate. Still, the Liberals would be free to choose them.
But, there are also more reasonable options. It could be the law in Canada that porn sites must be paywalled, necessitating a credit card for access. This wouldn’t stop all minors from accessing the stuff (prepaid credit cards do exist), but it would still pose a significant barrier that would stop many. Alternatively, Canada could require ISPS to make available to households easy ways to block adult-only websites, putting more control in the hands of (sometimes technologically-disabled) parents.
Porn advocates will point out at this point that some kids will always find a way to access the stuff, which makes any restriction a futile exercise that will only infringe on the freedom of adults to surf the internet. It’s a faulty line of reasoning, similar to the “harm reduction” case for decriminalizing drugs: “Kids will do X anyway, so why bother?” The expectation is not to ban all instances of children watching porn, just like the prohibition on murder isn’t expected to end all murder.
The idea is to put up barriers that make a good number of people avoid doing the thing they are supposed to not do. Why do this? For the same reason a property that’s fenced in can expect to see fewer trespassers than its fenceless counterparts.
Regardless, there are pros and cons to any method, and they should be weighed before Parliament before we settle on one. A little bit of that debate has been had in the House of Commons, but unfortunately, it doesn’t matter as long as the legislation leaves the final call up to cabinet.
S-210 is a messy would-be law, and the Conservatives at very least shouldn’t rubber-stamp it. And while Liberals in the House of Commons have mostly voted “no” to this thing, they’re also on a clumsy path to bungling porn regulation, which is coming in the draft Online Harms Act this week.
It’s too bad; we could probably benefit from having responsible limits on porn access online — but the route we’re taking isn’t responsible at all.
GOOD IDEAS CAN EASILY FALL VICTIM TO TERRIBLE EXECUTION.