Actions to Combat Online Child Sexual Exploitation

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Canada’s National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet

Public Safety Canada leads the National Strategy for the Protection of Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet (National Strategy), which was created in 2004. Efforts under the National Strategy can be categorized under four broad pillars:

Prevention and Awareness

  • Increasing awareness among children and youth, parents, teachers, health professionals, and others of the risks of online child sexual exploitation (OCSE)
  • Reducing stigma around disclosure
  • Supporting initiatives that help prevent child sexual exploitation on the Internet

Pursuit, Disruption and Prosecution

  • Identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting offenders

Protection

  • Protecting victims from further abuse through victim identification
  • Accelerated detection and removal of publicly available images
  • Providing support services for victims and survivors

Partnerships, Research and Strategic Support

  • Strategic policy development
  • Research to advance knowledge of OCSE
  • Support to National Strategy partners
  • Ongoing engagement with domestic and international stakeholders

The National Strategy's goals are to:

National Strategy Partners

Public Safety Canada coordinates and oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and leads the development of policy and research on online child sexual exploitation.

National Child Exploitation Crime Centre

The RCMP's National Child Exploitation Crime Centre (NCECC) is the national law enforcement arm of the National Strategy and serves as the central point of contact for investigations related to the sexual exploitation of children online across the country and internationally, when the victim or offender is Canadian.

Justice Canada

The Department of Justice Canada reviews and develops legislation, and provides training, advice and support to federal partners and others.

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P)

The Canadian Centre for Child Protection (C3P) is a key partner under the National Strategy. C3P is a charitable organization dedicated to reducing child victimization by providing national programs and services to the public. They are responsible for the operation of Cybertip.ca, where Canadians can report suspected cases of online sexual exploitation of children.

C3P also manages Project Arachnid, an automated web crawler that detects and processes tens of thousands of images per second and sends take down notices to online service providers to remove child sexual abuse material globally.

Public Safety Canada provides $2.95 million per year to C3P to support Cybertip.ca, Project Arachnid and public awareness efforts.

Federal Investments

Current funding

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