See Feb. 26 updates - scroll to end
A few weeks ago, Nicholas Kristoff wrote about
The Children of Pornhub in the NY Times. He told the stories of children and young teens whose lives have been devastated by having videos of them posted on Pornhub. Kristoff asks our PM and all Canadians, “Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?”
This isn’t a new issue, but it’s beginning to get the attention needed to bring about change. Canada urgently needs to hold porn sites accountable for hosting and profiting from child sexual abuse and rape videos.
MindGeek controls 10 of the most popular porn sites in the world and has offices in Montreal, which are home to about 80% of its employees. One of those sites is Pornhub, which proudly reported that in 2020 it has 42 billion visits, and 115 million visits per day.
An
all-party group of MPs and Senators has been asking the federal government to enforce Canada’s child pornography and other laws, and to pass new legislation if there are gaps in the law.
In December, Visa and MasterCard joined PayPal in suspending processing payments for Pornhub because of the site’s illegal content. The EFC was one of
40 signatories who asked the credit card companies to break their ties with the porn site.
There is momentum and a growing awareness of the problem. MPs and Cabinet Ministers are talking about how to respond.
The Heritage Minister intends to introduce a new law soon that will require online platforms to remove illegal content quickly, and subject them to steep fines if they fail to do so.
Two parliamentary committees in the House of Commons are discussing studies on this issue. The Ethics Committee plans to call Pornhub/MindGeek executives before to the committee to explain their failure to prohibit rape videos and other illegal content from their site. The Status of Women Committee is considering a motion to study the sexual violence and exploitation of women that results from online porn distributed for commercial purposes.
What you can do
- Pray for those who have been exploited and continue to suffer devastating consequences.
- Pray for increasing awareness and for this momentum to result in real change.
- Tell your friends and family who may share your concerns and ask them to engage. (Learn more at TheEFC.ca/Pornography or use the "Related Topics" links below.)
- Updates: Our new Action Kit (Feb. 2021) tells how and why now is the time to contact your MP. You can also read our nine-page submission to the Parliamentary Ethics Committee (Feb. 2021).