🍁 civid v1

Purpose and scope

• The bill would create an offence for organizations that commercially make defined pornographic material available online to people under 18.
• The definition covers certain visual representations of explicit sexual activity intended to cause sexual excitement. It excludes material described in a specified provision of the Criminal Code definition of child sexual abuse and exploitation material.
• Organizations that incidentally provide services used to search for, transmit, download, store or access content are clarified not to be making the material available for commercial purposes under the offence provision.

Offence and defences

• An organization convicted on summary conviction would face a fine of up to $250,000 for a first offence and $500,000 for a second or subsequent offence.
• An organization could not rely on a belief that the person was at least 18 unless it had implemented a prescribed age-verification or age-estimation method.
• The bill provides defences for acts with a legitimate purpose related to science, medicine, education or the arts, and for an organization that takes the required steps within the deadline in a non-compliance notice.

Enforcement

• A designated federal enforcement authority could issue a notice if it has reasonable grounds to believe an organization committed the offence. The organization would have 20 days to take specified compliance steps and could make representations about the notice within that period.
• If it does not comply, the authority could apply to the Federal Court within the following 20 days for an order requiring affected internet service providers to prevent young people in Canada from accessing the material.
• The court must make the order if the bill’s specified conditions are met. Affected providers and the organization must be named as respondents.

Regulations and reporting

• Regulations could prescribe age-verification or estimation methods and establish administrative monetary penalties for failure to comply with a notice. They could also specify when free material is not considered commercially available.
• Prescribed methods must meet requirements including effectiveness, operation by an arm’s-length third party, privacy protection, limited collection and use of personal information, and destruction of that information once verification or estimation is complete.
• The responsible minister must table an annual report in Parliament, including the numbers of notices and court applications and the applications’ outcomes.

Coming into force

• The operative clause says the Act would come into force on a day fixed by government order. Although its heading says “One year after royal assent,” the clause itself does not specify that timing.