The Saskatchewan Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit is seeing a record number of cases involving babies, children, and teenagers being sexually exploited online.
The ICE Unit – consisting of RCMP and municipal police services – said investigators are on pace to reach more than 1,300 new files this fiscal year. That’s up by 300 files from last year.
Staff Sgt. Tim Failler, ICE Unit coordinator, said with more people having access to the internet, youth are at a greater risk than ever.
“Kids nowadays are getting phones and electronics a lot younger than they used to,” Failler said in an interview with CTV News.
Failler said common trends in crime involve luring, possession of child pornography, and sextortion – where nude images are used for blackmail. He said conversations with youth around online safety can help prevent these types of incidents.
“The biggest thing we recommend is just to never take any photos or videos of yourself in the nude,” he said.
Failler said it’s important to let your children know not to share personal information with strangers online.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection says tech companies and social media platforms also need to take responsibility. It said right now companies are legally required to report child exploitation to police when they become aware of it, but said a more preventative approach needs to be taken.
“The goal for online safety for kids can’t be that we only react when a harm has occurred. The goal has to be that we anticipate the harms and that we design our systems to account for that, so we can prevent them from happening in the first place,” Jacques Marcoux with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection said in an interview with CTV News.
The federal government introduced the ‘Online Harms’ bill last February, which would obligate social media platforms to the duty to protect children, but it was terminated when parliament was prorogued.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection said it hopes the bill will be introduced again to help keep children across the country safe.
