Bill S-209, a recent bill in the Canadian Senate, aims to restrict underage access to sexually explicit material online
Illustration by Sage Blackwell.
The Online Safety Act is a controversial U.K. law that calls for the regulation of illegal and adult content with the primary goal of protecting children. The act requires online platforms that provide adult content, such as pornography, to verify its users age prior to use.
It originally received royal assent — the final step of a bill becoming an act of law — on Oct. 26, 2023, but has recently been the subject of considerable controversy, as efforts to prevent children from accessing adult content ramped up in July 2025.
In the U.K., there have been reports of artistic platforms — such as Spotify — being subject to age verification. Some academics also have shared concerns that age verification laws pose privacy and safety risks. Dr. Eric Goldman, a professor of law at Santa Clara University, called age verification laws a “segregate-and-suppress” approach to online safety, and argues for a broader and more careful range of tools to approach online safety.
Currently, an age verification bill is being proposed in the Canadian Senate, too — Bill S-209. The bill, introduced by Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne on May 28, 2025, is formally called, “An Act to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material.” It seeks to regulate providers of pornographic material, requiring them to implement age verification or estimation processes.
The bill alleges that online age verification and age estimation technology have become sophisticated enough to attain a user’s age without violating their privacy rights, and that commercial providers of pornographic materials have an obligation to ensure it is not accessed by minors.
The bill also states that minors are at risk of enforcing gendered stereotypes, developing addiction, and becoming open to violence and harassment against women as a result of accessing pornographic content.
Bill S-209 has explicit guidelines for the age verification and estimation processes, stating that the methods must be highly effective, maintain user privacy, and protect personal information.
The bill also requires that personal data be used only for verification purposes, that collection be limited strictly to “what’s necessary,” that information is destroyed once verification or estimation is complete, that processes are handled by a third party unaffiliated with pornographic providers, and that it complies with the “best practices in the field.”
The bill defines pornographic material as “any photographic, film, video or other visual representation, whether or not it was made by electronic or mechanical means, the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a person’s genital organs or anal region or, if the person is female, her breasts.”
Bill S-209 is Miville-Dechêne’s third attempt at bringing forward an age verification law. Bill S-210, the predecessor to Bill S-209, died in the final stages of becoming an act when Parliament was prorogued in January 2025.
During Bill S-209’s second reading, on June 10, 2025, Senator Yonah Martin rose as a critic of the bill. Martin acknowledged and agreed with the sentiment behind the bill, but brought attention to concerns experts and privacy advocates had surrounding it.
Martin noted that some experts believe the bill would be hard to enforce, with minors potentially being able to bypass age checks, or move to platforms not covered by the act.
She also drew attention to concerns over the lack of a specific mandate solution, and logistical challenges, as many pornographic websites are hosted abroad, and that some privacy advocates feel it could create privacy risks.
Martin also expressed concern in the second reading that platforms could change their domains, making them “moving targets.”
The Martlet asked Miville-Dechêne if restricting access to mainstream platforms — such as Pornhub, which are generally willing to comply with Canadian law — risks pushing minors toward more harmful websites.
Although the bill has a provision that allows for the government to request the courts block non-compliant websites, blocking every platform in this category could pose a logistical challenge.
“I’m not denying this could happen, but we’re trying to protect the maximum [amount] of children…. Yes, there will be teenagers, minors, who will go around the rules, but is this a good argument for not doing anything?” Miville-Dechêne said in an interview with the Martlet. “The younger [children] will not do this long research to look for other websites.”
Miville-Dechêne also told the Martlet that forms of artistic expression and other forms of non-pornographic nudity, such as that for scientific, medical, educational, or artistic purposes, would not be regulated under the bill, citing section 7 (2), which specifically excludes such materials from its scope.
Miville-Dechêne stressed the potential dangers of mainstream platforms. “Let’s not think that those websites are innocuous. They’re not…. Pornhub in particular had some sexual exploitation of children content. They were not taking down material of young girls, who had been trapped in giving images, in sexual content, so this is a risk everywhere,” she said.
Bill S-209 states that if it should receive royal assent, it will come into force one year later.
One year later is “pretty standard,” Miville-Dechêne said. “It gives time to the government to have consultations with experts and to find ways of putting that into place. … Some could say that one year is not enough, that they would need two years, and I would remind you that we are very late in the game compared to Europe and other states. … In my opinion there is a real public health threat and we should act.”
