Bill eases legal recourse for revenge porn victims
REGINA A new law is being introduced to support people who have unwillingly had intimate images of themselves shared online.
It intends to create new legal options for people whose intimate images have been shared without consent, by making it easier to sue whoever is responsible for sharing the images.
Once passed, people can go to small claims court — where a lawyer isn’t needed — to seek compensation up to $30,000 as well as get an order to have the images removed. If they want to hire a lawyer and seek more than $30,000 in damages, the matter can be taken to provincial court.
In a Canadian first, the new law will require whoever posted the image to prove they had consent before posting it. Justice Minister Don Morgan said it creates a “reverse onus” for the poster, and that alone can deter people from posting intimate images.
“My advice to somebody would be don’t post something unless you’re absolutely certain you’ve got the consent of the person that’s in it,” he said.
Under the law, an intimate image is a visual image, including photos or videos, in which a person is nude, partially nude or engaged in explicit sexual activity, made in circumstances that implied a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Morgan said people’s privacy should be protected and “in the age of the internet it’s too easy to have those things posted and not taken down, so hopefully people have some sober second thought before doing something like that.”
Across the country, people with intimate images unwillingly shared online have been able to seek action in the court. In what was likely the first time such a matter had been brought forward in a civil suit, a judge awarded an individual more than $140,000 after an intimate video was shared online without the person’s consent. That was in Ontario, where no law like the one introduced in Saskatchewan on Tuesday exists.
But if passed, the law in Saskatchewan would allow someone in a similar situation to seek compensation without needing a lawyer. It would also clarify what is and is not allowed when it comes to posting intimate images.
“We wanted to bring a message that these types of conduct and postings were absolutely unacceptable ... and we wanted to send a strong message, so I lobbied for it,” Morgan said.
NDP interim leader Nicole Sarauer, having just seen the proposed legislation, said she would review it but that “we need to modernize the legislation that we have now.”
In November 2015, Manitoba enacted legislation allowing issues of “non-consensual distribution of intimate images” to be heard in civil cases. That law has been in force since the start of 2016. Nova Scotia introduced a law in October similar to this model. According to the Saskatchewan government, Alberta has a law to permit a person whose intimate image was distributed without consent to sue the person who distributed them for damages.