Five Guelph people are among the 120-plus people facing charges following a province-wide operation into online child sexual abuse.

At a news conference Wednesday morning in Vaughan, OPP announced that 551 charges had been filed against 122 people. In a news release, the OPP’s Child Sexual Exploitation Unit called it “a snapshot of one month's worth of work by internet child exploitation investigators that make up the Provincial Strategy to Protect Children from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation on the Internet.”

Established in 2006, the Provincial Strategy has resulted in 20,901 charges laid against 5,686 people and 2,009 child victims identified in and outside of Ontario.

The investigation also identified 55 victims, who have been referred to community-based resources for assistance.

"It is our fundamental and moral responsibility to ensure every child grows up safe,” Deputy Commissioner Rick Barnum of the OPP Investigation and Support Bureau states in a news release.

“On behalf of the OPP, I want to make this message very clear: We will not stand for anyone hurting our kids. We will do everything we can to reduce the threat child predators pose to our children."

Police also seized 17 firearms, including three loaded handguns.

At the news conference, police also played a video showing 834 unique IP addresses, marked on a map, which are associated with either possessing or making child pornography available, or were present on a suspected child pornography website. These 834 IP addresses, the OPP says, are from just November alone.

"Perpetrators of online sexual exploitation often minimize their actions by saying they were 'just looking,'” Staff Sgt. Sharon Hanlon, the coordinator of the Provincial Strategy to Protect Children from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation on the Internet, states in a news release

"Let me be clear: Anyone who possesses, distributes, accesses or otherwise supports the supply and demand chain for child sexual abuse images are complicit in the sexual exploitation of children."