People could have a better chance of getting images taken down or destroyed if there was a law
The B.C. government is going to pass a law that it says will make it easier to take action against “revenge porn,” which is when intimate images are posted without a person’s permission.
Attorney General Niki Sharma will talk on Monday about the new law, which has been in the works for several years.
A statement from the province during early consultations said that the law could give people a new way to have the images taken down and destroyed more quickly. It could also give victims a way to sue people who shared their photos without permission and get money from them.
The province said at the time that the possible law could also deal with the threat of distributing images and prevent such harm from happening in the first place.
The government said that a national hotline found that non-consensual sharing of intimate images would rise by 58% by the beginning of 2021 compared to the nine months before April 1 of the previous year.
Sharma will be joined by Carol Todd, whose daughter Amanda killed herself after being harassed and extorted sexually for years, and Kelli Paddon, who is the Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity.
Under Canada’s Criminal Code, it is already against the law to publish intimate photos without permission.
The new law in B.C. will help deal with the problem in a civil way.
“[Revenge porn] is definitely a problem,” said Signy Arnason, associate executive director at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. “Yes, we can deal with it at the criminal level, but it’s also important that provinces and territories pass laws that give victims some civil recourse when this happens.”
“It’s another tool that can be used to deal with people sharing things without permission, which we know happens a lot, especially with young people and teens.”
As part of the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, the charge became a crime in March 2015. The law was made because people were angry about the suicides of Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons. Her family says that she killed herself after a photo of her alleged sexual assault went viral.
Nova Scotia, where Parsons lives, passed a law in 2018 to stop cyberbullying and the sharing of intimate images.
Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island also have laws that add to the criminal law, but Ontario, Québec, New Brunswick, Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut do not.