Six Canadian mothers are sharing their children’s stories of online sexual abuse in Safe Spaces, a new campaign by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection demanding urgent action for the online harms bill.
Bill C-63 proposes to address online harms by requiring social media platforms to meet specific safety standards, remove illegal content and be more transparent about their users and data collection practices. The bill is currently at second reading in the House of Commons.
“There has to be some rules and guidelines in place to help ensure that people’s experience online is safe, particularly children,” says Monique St. Germain, general counsel for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P).
C3P saw a 27 per cent increase in online sexual exploitation reports in 2023, with nearly 6,000 reports of sextortion alone in the past 18 months.
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“By the time you involve RCMP or the police in the situation, it’s already too late. We need to stop this activity right at the source,” Jill, one of the mothers with Safe Spaces, says during her interview.
The Safe Spaces campaign aims to shift the narrative around online safety via video interviews, challenging the misconception that it’s solely a parental responsibility. While parental supervision is important, C3P argues that robust legislation is crucial to hold online platforms accountable and create a safer digital environment for all.
“A lot of these harms are not about parenting, it’s much bigger than that,” St. Germain says. “We need companies to be responsible.”
The campaign comes at a time when online harms are on the rise. While C3P says recent initiatives like Instagram’s introduction of teen accounts with parental supervision are a step in the right direction, it emphasizes that legislation is needed to ensure consistent safety measures across all platforms.
“When automakers make vehicles, they know all the safety measures that they need to put out there. Same goes for tech companies – they know it, but they’re not doing it,” says Carol Todd, the mother of Amanda Todd and one of the mothers with Safe Spaces.
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