Hon. Paula Simons: When I had the privilege of sitting in on the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee during the evolution of this bill, I raised concerns about the use of facial recognition software as a method of age verification. Could you tell me what the bill lays out as possible ways to verify age that might be less intrusive?

[Translation]

Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you for your question, Senator Simons.

To be extremely clear, the bill does not include any solutions or age verification options. All of that will be in the regulations. Why did we decide to do it that way? The reason is that the technology is changing very quickly, and we could not include specific solutions, such as using a certain card or form of identification, in the bill because it would become outdated very quickly. Instead, what we did was to establish safeguards to protect the privacy of individuals and customers. Everything else will be set out in the regulations.

However, please know that the strictest regulations in this area require third-party companies to conduct that verification. We are talking about companies that will be approved by the government. We will have companies that will follow the privacy rules, companies that are not the pornography platforms themselves because there is no way that those platforms should be entrusted with the age verification. They already have so much information about what customers are doing, even more than banks have. We do not want to give them even more power.

The issue that you raise about the use of facial recognition is indeed very controversial. It would be quite possible to list in the regulations the approved methods and those methods that are not approved. That is already being done in Germany and will soon be implemented in France and Great Britain. Thank you.