Q&A: Miville-Dechêne talks about changing her bill on protecting children from online pornography

Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne is hoping third time’s the charm for her bill that attempts to restrict children’s access to online pornography. Her two previous efforts seemingly had the necessary support from the Senate and House of Commons, but failed to become law before a federal election was called. In an interview with The Wire Report, Miville-Dechêne spoke about her commitment to the idea of the bill, changes she made in response to privacy concerns, as well as her belief that Bill S-209 will cross the finish line before another election is triggered. For people who aren’t familiar with this bill, what are you trying to accomplish? Bill S-209 is the third rewriting of this bill. The idea is that pornography has never been intended for kids or minors. With the displacement from real life, magazines and movies to the internet, there has been no control on who can access porn sites. So, the idea of this bill is to adjust the internet offers to what happens in the real world and ask for age verification, so only adults can access pornographic material. When I started this quest, I was interested in what was happening on these porn platforms. There were a lot of younger people and women without consent. I asked, who’s watching this? And, I realized there were no barriers at all for kids. Statistics show that kids between 11-13 watch it, so it’s not theoretical. Now, I have nothing against nudity. I’m all for sexual education and I’m a feminist, but the difficulty here is that pornography is performance, often violent, and has an impact on children whose brains are not prepared for those kinds of images. It can have an impact on their future sexual life and the way they treat girls because there’s more suffocating and strangling appearing in pornography, and that has come into real life. So, it’s impossible for me to accept that we subject children to that. As you mentioned, this is your third time bringing this bill forwards. Can you speak to the changes that have been made in this version? There’s quite a few. In S-209, we have a lot of flexibility for the government to decide what sites are going to be included and excluded from regulations. We’ve heard the criticisms, so we’re giving more flexibility for regulations to decide what’s in and what’s out, when referring to affected platforms. I would say the main change is that we’ve said that, before prescribing any age verification or age estimation method, the government must ensure the method is ‘highly effective,’ whereas it used to be ‘highly reliable.’ I’m not naming a method in my bill because the technology is changing too fast. So, I’m outlining principles the government will have to follow. So, it’s stronger. So, these changes do not necessarily prescribe age verification? It appears to put an emphasis on age verification, but only if it’s effective and meets certain conditions? Yes, but it’s not only age verification. I’ve added throughout the bill that it can be age verification or age estimation, and that’s an important change. It’s been five years since I first brought forward this bill, at which time age estimation was not really precise. It has become more and more precise. So, whenever it can be used, it’s a better means than age verification because you don’t need to say who you are. Age estimation has been added to age verification to lessen the data collected as much as possible, and the language has been made stronger to make sure that privacy is respected. I took advice from many people to rewrite that. So, these changes were partly the product of changing technology and partly a response to privacy criticisms? Exactly. That’s what parliamentarians do. There were criticisms, but, on the other side, who wanted this bill. I had a poll made that said 77 per cent of Canadians were for age verification, so this is not an issue that doesn’t resonate among Canadians. Now, the sponsor of the previous version of this bill was Karen Vecchio, who is no longer an MP. Do you have someone lined up to take S-209 through the House? Not yet because my bill still needs to go through clause-by-clause at the Senate committee. We’ll see if it is passed through committee and then it goes to a vote in the full chamber. So, at that time, I will reach out to some MPs and see who is best. Editor’s note: Clause-by-clause consideration of Bill S-209 began on Thursday, Feb. 5, during a meeting of the Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee. The previous version of this bill also had the votes to become law, but died on the Order Paper when Justin Trudeau prorogued Parliament. At the time, the Liberals were the only party that didn’t support your bill. Have you spoken to anyone in the government about the changes you’ve made? Do you know whether they will come on board? I’ve tried to contact the justice minister, but his department said they were not in charge of this particular bill. I was told that the Heritage Department was in charge, but I’ve learned recently that the file has been given to Evan Solomon. So, I’m waiting for the bill to go through committee and then I will speak to his office. Finally, are you concerned at all that this bill might not make it to the finish line before another federal election is called? I don’t think so. I’m a former journalist, so I analyze what’s happening. I hope we will not have an election soon, though it’s not my say. I hope this bill will go through, but it also doesn’t have to be this bill. The government is now thinking of a second version of the online harms bill. Now, there was nothing in the last online harms bill on my concerns, but I would be more than happy for this idea to be included. The idea is to protect children, but I’m continuing because, if I don’t, the issue will disappear. I think the idea that parents can take care of their kids and protect them from watching this content on the web is just not true anymore. So, the only choice is to intervene, and they have all over the world. We’re extremely late to the game, so I think we should go forward. My bill is only a small part of the bigger equation to protect children online, but it’s important. dlegree@thewirereport.ca Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Q&A: Miville-Dechêne talks about changing her bill on protecting children from online pornography

Regulatory | By Davis Legree |February 6, 2026

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By Davis Legree
|February 6, 2026