OTTAWA, Ontario — Philippe Dufresne, privacy commissioner of Canada, has voiced support for a bill that would impose fines of up to $500,000 on adult sites that do not implement age verification for Canadian viewers.
In 2024, Dufresne and others warned about the censorship implications of S-210, the last attempt to make age verification the law of the land in Canada.
Appearing before the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs earlier this month, however, Dufresne told legislators that Bill S-209, titled “The Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act,” addresses privacy concerns in ways that previous AV bills did not.
“In my appearance in May 2024, before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security on a previous iteration of this Bill, I provided two primary recommendations,” Dufresne told the committee. “To limit the scope of application of the Bill; and to make certain enhancements to the criteria for prescribed age-verification and age-estimation methods to ensure that privacy is protected. I am very pleased to see that they have been incorporated in S-209. The added requirement to limit the collection of personal information to that which is strictly necessary for age verification or age estimation has also enhanced the Bill from a privacy perspective.
“I believe that it is possible to implement age-assurance mechanisms in a privacy-protective manner,” Dufresne added. “My office is developing guidance on how this can be done.”
The Canadian Bar Association took an opposing stance. In a letter to committee chair David M. Arnot, CBA Privacy and Access Section chair Christiane Saad warned that S-209’s lack of specifics on how the government would balance privacy and protection leaves the door open to regulations requiring intrusive methods of age verification.
“This Bill addresses government data collection and retention only in broad, principle-based terms,” Saad wrote. “However, it lacks key specifics: no defined retention timeline, no clarity on the speed of destruction, no auditing or enforcement mechanisms, no requirements for storage location, and no remedies for users if data is mishandled. As a result, the Bill leaves many critical safeguards to future regulations, making enforcement and technical protections highly dependent on implementation rather than the statute itself.”
“An obvious by-product of such age-verification or age-estimation measures is the creation of a data set that links personal identifying data to data revealing that an individual accessed internet pornography as well as the specific sexual proclivities and interests of that individual,” the letter cautions.
The CBA letter also notes that the bill gives Canada’s Federal Court “sweeping authority” to order internet service providers to block access to noncompliant sites.
“Such measures risk over-blocking — removing lawful, non-pornographic content alongside the targeted material — and may inadvertently restrict adults’ access as well, resulting in collateral censorship, restricting freedom of expression and access to information,” the letter states.
As XBIZ reported in May, both S-210 and S-209 were introduced by Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, whose previous multiple attempts to legislate national age verification requirements have all failed.
During a 2024 interview on the “Law Bytes” podcast, when host Michael Geist asked Miville-Dechêne about the potential for blocking adults from viewing legal content, she responded, “I'm not worrying. Adults will continue to be able to watch porn.”