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Online child exploitation

PSEPC works with many partners to implement the National Strategy to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation on the Internet. This includes collaboration with the RCMP (through its National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre) and Industry Canada (through its SchoolNet program) to ensure a unified national approach. The Strategy is supported by some of the most comprehensive child protection legislation in the world.

About the Strategy

The Strategy includes three objectives:

• Enhance law enforcement capacity
  Provide the RCMP with the necessary resources and tools, including the G8 database project, to achieve its desired mandate and provide leadership within the Canadian policing community.
• Provide for public education and reporting
  Includes the national expansion and ongoing operations of Cybertip.ca as the national public reporting centre for complaints of child sexual exploitation on the Internet.
• Forge partnerships with industry and non-governmental organizations
  All government partners will reach out to stakeholders to develop public education and awareness initiatives, and promote crime prevention.

Cybertip.ca

Cybertip.ca is a national website and phone line that allows the public to report instances of online child exploitation such as child pornography and Internet luring. Cybertip.ca receives and analyzes the tips and refers leads to the appropriate enforcement authorities.

Launched as a pilot project in Manitoba in 2002 by Child Find Manitoba , the project was expanded into a national initiative in 2005 thanks to funding from a wide variety of partners, both public and private. After only three months of operation, Cybertip.ca had proven extremely effective in bringing leads of online child exploitation to the attention of law enforcement teams. There were:

• 2.228 million hits
• 1394 total reports
• 1148 reports of child pornography
• 67 reports of luring (children enticed to meet a stranger)