A Canadian digital rights group is warning that a bill preventing children from accessing adult content online is being rushed through without the necessary scrutiny MPs need to vote on it.
Open Media, which bills itself as a grassroots digital-focused organization, raised the alarm about Bill S-210 being fast-tracked through the committee without MPs hearing from non-government witnesses or receiving any amendments.
The group said it has heard rumblings that a vote could come as early as Friday, although an MP, speaking on background, told True North that it likely won’t happen until September.
Even so, Open Media says the bill’s swift passage through committee – it passed committee without amendment last week – warns that the debate surrounding the bill was “cut short.”
The bill, originally tabled by Liberal-appointed Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne in the Senate, would force websites to verify the age of their users to block minors from being exposed to sexually explicit content online. However, some have raised privacy concerns about it.
Conservative MPs Karen Vecchio and Garnett Genuis have been its leading advocates in the House of Commons.
“Our initial set of issues was that we had serious concerns about how the current version will work in practice. At this point, though, I think it’s equally concerning how it’s been treated and shoved through,” Open Media executive director Matt Hatfield told True North.
Hatfield said his group expected the bill to undergo the same lengthy review process he’s come to expect from other legislation.
“Normally, a bill would get a couple of readings out of the House, go to committee, and committee members would hear from witnesses. The witnesses would share things that are good or bad about the bill, and the committee would use that to pick up amendments and debates and potentially pass some of those amendments,” he said. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened.”
He said the committee was “cut short,” and lacked testimony from non-government witnesses.
Over the three days it was reviewed at hearings, 15 witnesses, all of whom worked for the government in some capacity, spoke at the Public Safety Committee.
At the same time, 45 briefings were given to the committee. Hatfield said that represents 45 potential individuals or organizations that could have been called to testify.
Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, who originally introduced the bill in the Senate, said at the Senate stage the bill had 24 witnesses and 28 briefings weigh in.
Some of those witnesses included experts in child protection online, representatives from the Canadian Bar Association, lawyers, civil liberties organizations, police, and health care professionals.
“I think (the bill starting in the Senate) leads to a different level of scrutiny and participation in proceedings…than what would be seen if it started in the House,” Hatfield said. “When this bill started to get studied in the Senate, most people, us included, did not expect it to move forward or thought it would get much more thorough study in the House.”
Hatfield thinks his organization should have been asked to speak at the hearing, as it had been on other matters of internet law, including Bill C-10 and Bill C-18.
He said that over 14,000 Canadians have petitioned their MPs to reassess the bill, through Open Media’s website.
“So there’s a lot of attention. We would expect to probably be called to testify at both the House and Senate. In this case, there have been no opportunities whatsoever for anyone from our community, frankly any representative of the public to weigh in,” Hatfield said.
During the last committee hearing on the bill at the end of May, Miville-Dechêne said the bill’s privacy concerns, which are the main objection to the bill, are already enshrined into law with The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
However, Hatfield warns that third parties, that would be used to verify the ages of users, would face “no penalties” under S-210 and “very weak” penalties under PIPEDA if they were found to have violated users’ privacy.