Trudeau takes a swipe at Poilievre over his stance on age verification for porn
Poilievre supports a law that would require age verification before accessing pornography online
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Thursday that adults shouldn't have to share their personal information to access pornography online.
Speaking at a housing announcement in Cape Breton, Trudeau said Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's endorsement of some sort of age-verification system for porn sites is something his party opposes.
"He's proposing that adults should have to give their ID and personal information to sketchy websites, or create a digital ID for adults to be able to browse the web where they want," Trudeau said of Poilievre.
"That's something we stand against."
Trudeau said Poilievre is "playing politics" by opposing the government's forthcoming online harms bill — which is meant to combat hate speech, terrorist content and some violent material on the internet — while also endorsing a crackdown on some other online content.
When asked Wednesday whether a Poilievre-led government would require that porn websites verify the age of users, Poilievre gave a one-word answer: "Yes."
A spokesperson for Poilievre later told CBC News the party does not support requiring users to verify their age through a digital ID.
It isn't clear how a government led by Poilievre would enforce the age verification process he says he supports.
In a media statement issued Thursday, Poilievre's spokesperson said Conservatives believe adults should be "free to view what they like assuming the content itself is legal."
"But children cannot legally purchase pornography in person, and most Canadians have accepted that fact for many decades. If Justin Trudeau believes that those same children should be able to freely access pornography online, he is free to say so," said Sebastian Skamski.
The dispute over porn stems from the ongoing debate over S-210, a Senate bill that would make porn sites like the Canadian-owned PornHub — a video sharing site that hosts adult content — criminally liable for failing to check a user's age before they browse.
The legislation doesn't stipulate how exactly ages should be verified — but one option is a government-backed digital ID.
The bill demands that the federal government set up some sort of "prescribed age-verification method" to limit porn or "sexually explicit material" to people aged 18 and over.
Some U.S. states also have tried to implement age verification laws.
Those efforts have had a mixed track record in the courts. Some U.S. judges have struck them down as a violation of free speech, while others have allowed verification to proceed.
The Senate bill was introduced by Independent Quebec Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, a Trudeau appointee.
In a media statement issued after Trudeau's Thursday remarks, Miville-Dechêne said "age verification to access online porn is not a partisan issue."
She pointed out that, in addition to U.S. states run by Republicans, Germany, France and the U.K. have also drafted verification laws.
Miville-Dechêne has championed her legislation as a way to protect children and teenagers from graphic sexual material.
The senator contends porn sometimes distorts the meaning of sex for its consumers, depicts women as objects to be used and abused by their partners, and promotes physical aggression through the depiction of slapping, choking, gagging and hair-pulling.
"If you're a minor, you can't see a movie if it's classified 18 years and over. If you're a minor, you can't buy a Playboy. But if you're a minor, you have complete, unfettered access without barriers of any kind to 4.5 million porn sites around the world," Miville-Dechêne told CBC News in a previous interview.
"I'm not on a crusade against porn. I just want to protect kids from porn that is shown widely on these websites that is not at all the soft kind of stuff. It's hardcore, it's tough and it's violent."
Miville-Dechêne's arguments swayed some senators — it passed the upper house last year and is now being ushered through the Commons by Conservative MP Karen Vecchio.
A multi-partisan group of Bloc Quebecois, Conservative, Liberal and NDP MPs endorsed the bill at second reading late last year and sent it to committee for further study before a final vote.
Trudeau and his cabinet ministers and the vast majority of Liberal MPs voted against the legislation in December.
Some observers maintain a formal age verification process would be a gross violation of privacy (there's a risk private information gathered to verify someone's age could be leaked or hacked) and an unfair suppression of legitimate sexual activity.
Other scholars maintain this is the latest development in a long-running, mostly conservative campaign to purge porn.
"Here we are again, singling out sex. We have this idea that somehow sex is uniquely damaging in a way that watching unbelievably violent, gory, horror stuff, and all the video games kids play, is not. But, oh yeah, sex, now there's the problem," said Brenda Cossman, a professor of law and sexuality at the University of Toronto.
"I don't think looking at sexually explicit material is any better or worse than looking at a whole range of things. Reviving this debate, that somehow accessing pornography is detrimental to women and children, just seems like something from a bygone era."
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