Written by Aimee Hanson
I am a mom, and I have some concerns regarding a recent bill making it’s way through the Senate. Bill S-210 An act to restrict young persons’ online access to sexually explicit material sponsored by the Honourable Senator Julie Miville-Dechene was brought forward on December 8, 2021. It is now in the Consideration in committee stage. There was a similar bill before the election called Bill S-203, which made it as far as the committee stage. There have been changes to this new bill based on that committee. I want to present what the bill is about and some good and bad things about it to help us think critically about the situation and what God says about pornography. To give the senator the benefit of the doubt, she likely had good intentions with this bill desiring that children not be able to access explicit content. That is honourable as children should not be accessing pornography. The speeches for the bill gave a lot of detail on the harms for children accessing pornography, and the bill itself provides a statement vaguely stating these harms. In one of the question and answer periods on November 30, 2021, Honorable Senator Julie Miville-Dechene says some Christians support this bill. On December 2, 2021, the Honorable Senator Rosemary Moodie directly quoted a UN meeting promoting bills such as this one. The senator sponsoring the bill stated in her speech on November 30, 2021, that there are other similar bills in Germany, France and Australia. One has to ask, should Christians be supporting the same thing as the UN? What is this bill all about? According to the second speech by the Honorable Miville-Dechene, one of the reasons for bringing forth this bill suggests that parents are not doing their job protecting their children, so the government has to protect the children. Her direct quote is: “For years, we have left it up to parents to control minors’ access to online pornography. We know that this does not work. Many of us have experienced this with our own children. We should keep in mind that not every parent has the same level of digital literacy. If parental controls were working, we would know it, and I can assure you that we would not be here today to speak to this bill.” They are right. There is a huge epidemic of parents who have rejected God, and therefore, children have learned to do what is right in their own eyes. This is troubling for a few reasons. Yes, parents need to watch their children’s online content, but the government does not get to take over if the parents fail. This attitude from the government is problematic. This is a slippery slope for the government to have more control over the children in Canada. On December 2, 2021, Rosemary Moodie stated, “This is especially important because children do not have a federal accountability officer in Ottawa, as they do in many provinces and territories within Canada and in multiple countries around the world, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Sweden and Poland. They do not have somebody solely dedicated to considering their rights, to amplifying their voices and to advocating for their priorities. Until they do, individually and collectively, we as parliamentarians must step up and fill this gap as well as we possibly can. So in this respect, Senator Miville-Dechêne’s bill is an important act of service and care towards children and youth.” I have huge concerns about the federal accountability officer! Children should be accountable to their parents and pastors, not the government. In the current Bill S-210, it will be illegal for a website with explicit content to be accessible to those under 18. A site that allows access will be charged with a first-time offence fine of 1/4 of million dollars and subsequent offence fines of 1/2 a million dollars. Not knowing the age cannot be used as a defence. The question lies: how can the owners of these websites guarantee the ages of those that visit their website? During the question period on November 30, 2021, the senator who sponsored the bill was asked about the privacy and the technology that may be used to determine the age of those who visit these websites. This was her response: “All technologies are now possible, and a range of methods are generally included in the regulations. The use of digital identity technology is one possibility. There is a Canadian company called Bluink, whose technology allows users to input certain information on a cellphone, and these users only share the information when they want to, for example, when they must prove that they are over the age of 18. There are other methods, such as adding a token to a browser. It is obviously important for a third party to conduct the verification.” Digital identity should be a concern for all Canadians. It seems as if this bill looks good, but rather, it will have far-reaching implications. When the Honorable Senator Julie Miville-Dechene was asked which members of parliament support this bill, she mentioned the Honorable Steven Guilbeault - who was serving as Minister of Canadian Heritage and at the time of this bill was busy with Bill C-10 involvement. She summarized his concerns by saying this: “I think one of his concerns was that we shouldn’t focus only on porn sites, but that all social media and the internet had harmful material and that our view should be broader. Obviously, it makes sense, but from my point of view, with a private bill, I couldn’t just go straight to the internet as a whole. It was too complicated, so I focused on porn sites. To be frank, half of teenagers go on porn sites when they want to watch porn. It’s not something that’s not used.” Essentially, he did not think the bill would censor enough for our protection. According to Romans 13, the government has the role of punishing evil. Pornography for any age is evil. If I were to re-write the bill, I would give the same punishment for even having a pornographic website on the internet as long as the person who owns the website is Canadian. This would require demonstrably justified evidence for making pornography no longer a protected freedom of expression and would make it illegal for all ages. Currently, only if children are in the explicit content is it illegal. All ages can access it. The purpose of Bill S-210 makes it so children cannot access it. Pornography harms all people who access it, no matter their age. It ruins relationships and our brains. God has not designed us to enjoy watching anyone have sex. According to 1 Corinthians 6: 13-20, God wants us to glorify God with our bodies and flee sexual immorality. Both Psalm 101:3 and Psalm 119:37 say to not look at worthless things. Sinful things are worthless. As a mom, I want to disciple the next generation to repent of this sexual immorality and follow Jesus, who gives life. Do we as Canadians want to follow other countries or our motto “from sea to sea” (a quote from Psalm 72:8 referring to God’s dominion over our entire nation)? I have been praying for God to have dominion over Canada - from the Atlantic to the Pacific - just as our motto says.
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AuthorHello! I'm glad you found my blog. My name is David Hanson, and I am a concerned Christian who desires for the church of North America to become aware and begin to think biblically of what is happening around them in society. It's time for the church to awake and speak into the current events of the day. We alone have the truth to navigate life effectively. That truth is the Word of God. Archives
May 2022
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