In the course of NAFTA talks to date, while the U.S. has focused on long-standing grievances over rules of origin, supply management, dispute resolution mechanisms, and a purported trade deficit, Canada has pushed to enshrine progressive worker protections, Indigenous rights, gender equality, and climate change measures into the so-called NAFTA 2.0 trade deal. Calling ongoing contentious negotiations critically important for the Canadian economy is an understatement

The Liberal government, in placing Canadian values and social norms at the centre of its NAFTA platform, ought not lose sight of the need to protect our most vulnerable and valuable citizens — our children, primarily young girls, who are regularly targeted by sex traffickers and then sold online on websites like Backpage.com operating in cities around the globe, including Toronto.

In recent weeks, it has been reported that the U.S. delegation has attempted to insert similar immunity provision for website operators already entrenched in U.S. law into the negotiations. Such protections in place in American federal law through section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), have repeatedly served to immunize allegedly criminal enterprises actively facilitating online sex trafficking from liability for the damage done to minors sold on their websites.

Most believe that internet freedom should be protected and encouraged, yet there must be reasonable limits placed upon it that maintain our society’s core values, most importantly protecting our children. This insidious, life-altering challenge of child exploitation, including online, requires immediate and special attention.

The saga of Backpage.com provides the clearest example of why the CDA immunity protections must never be extended to Canada. Backpage.com has become the leading marketplace for child sex trafficking in the U.S. In one report, it was found that 73 per cent of child trafficking reports in the United States involve Backpage.com. To date, despite repeated attempts by child survivors to hold Backpage.com accountable for involvement in their exploitation, the website has been able to hide behind the cloak of the CDA.

Backpage.com has for years made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from its sex ads. In a recent U.S. Senate Report, it was stated that 63 per cent of children trafficked for sex were advertised and sold online. An underage minor can generate over $250,000 per year through online sales, and, unlike narcotics, a trafficker can sell a single minor thousands of times.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children recently reported that at least 71 per cent of the reports it receives relating to children sold for sex involved Backpage.com, and children who are reported missing often turn up for sale on Backpage.com within 48 hours of a missing child report being filed.

To maximize profits, allegedly Backpage.com executives engaged in a raft of nefarious conduct. For instance, instructing low-level employees to err on the side of posting ads for sexual services even if they suspected the ad features a child for sale, writes and edits ads for pimps engaged in sex trafficking minors, and assists traffickers to evade detection by law enforcement through user privacy protections.

The U.S. Senate recently subpoenaed executives of Backpage.com to testify before its permanent subcommittee on investigations. Instead of answering the Senate’s questions, Backpage.com’s in-house counsel, Liz McDougall (a Canadian citizen), along with her fellow executives each elected to exercise their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

There is, however, currently a bipartisan Congressional effort underway, led by Senators Portman, McCaskill, and McCain, to end the abuse of Section 230 immunities for sex trafficking by companies like Backpage.com. Many leading U.S. companies, including Disney, Fox, HP, IBM, and Oracle, have signed on in support of the proposed legislation, named the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act.

Backpage.com’s alleged involvement in exploitative criminal activity and the often futile efforts by victims and their lawyers to hold it accountable are now the subject of a harrowing and powerful documentary film, I am Jane Doe, which is available on Netflix.

Canada must resist any attempt to include similar protections in a renegotiated NAFTA without, at the very least, explicitly eliminating any immunity provided for websites that knowingly or recklessly facilitate sex trafficking.

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It is our enduring hope that as on so many other historic occasions, on so many other matters, from economy, culture to shared security to defence, Canada and the U.S. can again work in unison to find solutions to one of our generation’s most difficult challenges — our effort to eradicate child exploitation — while at the same securing a mutually prosperous trade relationship.

Peter Mackay is a former foreign, defence and justice minister and attorney general of Canada.