Children being exposed to online pornography is a “significant health concern” in Canada that has triggered renewed debate before the Senate over stricter government oversight.
Dozens of panellists — ranging from executives from some of the world’s largest porn websites, to child protection advocates and legal academics — are speaking before the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee throughout October.
At the heart of the discussion is a proposal for new legislation that would force website content providers to impose age controls blocking children from viewing porn and other adult content online.
“I urge Canada to act now. Delay only prolongs the harm to children,” James Bethell, a member of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom (where online age controls have been in place since 2023), told the Senate.
“Doing nothing is no longer defensible. The evidence of harm is overwhelming,” Bethell added.
Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, Australia and 21 U.S. states have also adopted age verification technology.
In Canada, Bill S-209 – an Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material – has been revised and brought back to the Senate for a second time after debate on a predecessor bill died when the federal election was called in March 2025 and the government was dissolved.
Sponsored by Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, the bill would make it an offence for an organization to make pornographic material available to a minor on the Internet for commercial purposes.
Fines would range from $250,000 to $500,000.
The scope of websites that are included in the age-verification requirements would be determined by the government at a later date.
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An Investigative Journalism Bureau probe into online child exploitation and pornography has uncovered devastating examples of how regulatory gaps have profoundly impacted — and even contributed to ending – young lives.
Little data exists in Canada on the number of children accessing or exposed to pornography each year. But several international studies show trends that may also be happening here.
The U.K. found eight per cent of children aged 8-14 years old are accessing porn. In Australia, the figure jumps to 30 per cent of children who have viewed pornography by the age of 13.
Australia passed groundbreaking legislation to go into effect in December that will make social media platforms responsible for not allowing children under 16 to create accounts.
Europe also tracks the issue carefully.
“One-third of minors in France visit porn sites at least once per month,” Laurence Pécaut-Rivolier, member of the board of the country’s Audiovisual and Digital Communication Regulatory Authority (Arcom), told the Senate.
In response to a 2024 study that found minors starting to visit porn sites at 11 years old, France began using new age-verification technology in January 2025, said Pécaut-Rivolier. In response, most porn sites complied and implemented stronger age safeguard, he said.
But Aylo, the Canadian-headquartered parent company of Pornhub (the world’s most visited porn site), instead pulled its website down in France citing privacy infringements for its users.
“[Age verification] introduces significant risks,” said Solomon Friedman, partner and vice-president for compliance at Ethical Capital Partners, the owner of Aylo. “It is unenforceable, and it will ultimately fail to achieve its intended goal of protecting Canadian children.”
Mainstream social media sites and search engines are the biggest threat to child exposure to pornography, he said.
Instead of putting the onus on websites to implement age controls, pressure should be applied to Apple, Google and Microsoft to put age-verification restrictions on their devices, Friedman told the committee.
This, he says, would achieve the same protections for minors, but with much less room for circumvention by either children going onto the dark web or websites that refuse to comply.
“That’s extraordinary…a company that is responsible for broadcasting pornographic material is asking another company to ensure that children don’t have access to it,” replied Miville-Dechêne.
“That buck stops with you that kids don’t look at your platforms. You are, in fact, absolving yourselves of responsibility and that’s remarkable.”
The Senate will continue its hearings on Bill S-209.
The reporting was supported in part by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection
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