Thank you, Madam Chair.

I would like to begin by greeting all the members of the committee and thanking them for giving me the opportunity to speak to them here today.

My name is Marc‑Antoine Vachon. I have been in charge of the Internet child sexual exploitation investigation division at the Sûreté du Québec since 2020. I have spent most of my career working on and fighting crimes of a sexual nature. I have been mainly involved in this fight since 2006.

Sexual violence, especially when the crime is against a minor, remains a concern for the public, police organizations and government authorities.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the number of reports of child pornography is constantly on the rise. Since 2019, at the Sûreté du Québec, we have noted a 295% increase in the number of reports received and processed, from 1,137 to 4,493. Police organizations need to adapt to changing behaviours of child pornography users, as well as constantly evolving technologies.

As a provincial police force, the Sûreté du Québec is responsible for coordinating investigations of sexual crimes against children committed over the Internet or using electronic equipment, including child pornography, sextortion and luring.

The fight against sexual violence has been at the heart of our priorities for many years. In this regard, since 2012, the Sûreté du Québec has been pursuing its provincial strategy against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet, which focuses on prevention, technology, training, coordination and repression.

Over the past five years, we have been able to improve this structure thanks to additional funding from the federal and provincial governments. The results clearly show the usefulness of this funding.

In concrete terms, three specialized investigative teams and a coordination team are dedicated specifically to countering this phenomenon by ensuring that reports are processed; conducting and coordinating investigations involving sexual predators and consumers of child pornography at the provincial level; partnering with various reporting agencies such as Cybertip and the National Child Exploitation Crime Centre, located here in Ottawa and managed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police; providing operational expertise to various internal and external requesters, including municipal police forces and the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions; identifying and stopping predator networks distributing child pornography; identifying, through various means of investigation, individuals who produce and make available child pornography on the territory.

The implementation of the integrated child pornography enforcement team in October 2021 has contributed to a more effective fight against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. This team, made up of members from the Sûreté du Québec, as well as from municipal police forces in Montreal, Quebec City, Laval, Longueuil and Gatineau, conducts joint operations mainly aimed at producers and distributors of child pornography.

In the fall of 2023, this team coordinated an interprovincial operation with our colleagues in Ontario and New Brunswick as part of the “Respecter” project.

Completing the project's various investigations, mainly aimed at identifying the distributors of child pornography in these areas, required the participation of 470 police officers and 31 police organizations. The coordination done by the Sûreté du Québec now makes it possible to strengthen our capacity to take action against the sexual exploitation of children; synergize law enforcement efforts against a global problem; optimize case management when there is a potential situation of child exploitation; identify more sexual predators on the Internet; increase the number of arrests; and, of course, prevent potential minor victims.

The Sûreté du Québec is actively working to combat the access to, and the production, possession and distribution of child pornography in order to protect the most vulnerable and bring sexual predators to justice. Since 2019, efforts have made it possible to arrest more than 1,100 individuals and identify more than 230 real victims on our territory, the province of Quebec.

I want to emphasize that the fight against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet is possible thanks to the participation and collaboration of all actors and partners who care about the well-being of victims and who take relevant action, both police officers and citizens—