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Yesterday, I got a letter from a young boy 10 years of age telling me he was addicted to porn. It just brought me to tears

The regulation of pornography is “going to happen all over the world,” she said. (Two of Mrs. Smith’s private member’s bills related to human trafficking have been adopted since being elected in 2004.)

“Yesterday, I got a letter from a young boy 10 years of age telling me he was addicted to porn,” she said. “It just brought me to tears.”

The ISP-based opt-in model sought by Mrs. Smith is based on a controversial U.K. plan in which Internet companies will be required to block access to pornography unless customers opt in. The U.K. plan will be in place by early 2014.

Anti-Internet-censorship activist Bennett Haselton, founder of peacefire.org, a website that creates portals to get around blocked sites, said the burden of proof should be on anti-porn activists ‘‘to show that what they are blocking is harmful somehow.”

“In the United States and Canada and most other developed countries, an entire generation now has grown up that, for the most part, actually did have unrestricted Internet access, and they’re not mentally warped by it. There’s no evidence that they’ve been harmed by it,” said Mr. Haselton.

In the United States and Canada and most other developed countries, an entire generation now has grown up that, for the most part, actually did have unrestricted Internet access, and they’re not mentally warped by it. There’s no evidence that they’ve been harmed by it

Ms. Dines said the U.K. opt-in proposal is the best porn regulation model that exists at the moment, because “kids can’t get around it.”

Mr. Haselton, however, said filters may not pose accessibility issues for internet-savvy individuals. “No filter blocks new proxy sites after they’re released, so if people can get access to proxy sites, then, yes, they can get around the filters,” he said.

Ms. Beazley said the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada is “supportive of the idea … we will certainly be supportive of any initiatives that come forward, whether it’s from the government itself or from Mrs. Smith.”

“You can’t have the big picture conversation of ending sexual exploitation without talking about the role pornography plays in this,” said Ms. Beazley.

“We are certainly very supportive of the idea of requiring Internet service providers to block pornographic content … It’s not about censorship,” she said.

National Post