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As we’ve noted many times before, Canada has permissive pornography laws that are weakly enforced. Despite this reality, Parliament has considered several bills to protect children from being exposed to online porn and to create positive duties on pornography sites to ensure that any content they share is consensual in the last few years. None of those bills passed in the previous Parliament, but they have been re-tabled in the current Parliament. 

Meanwhile, every provincial government across the country (except Ontario) has passed laws to allow people to sue for damages when an intimate image is shared without their consent. An example might be a boyfriend saving intimate images of his girlfriend and sharing those pictures with his friends without her consent after they break up as “revenge porn.” Another example of this might be using AI to create a pornographic picture of someone and then “sextorting” or threatening to release the picture if she doesn’t meet some demand. 

Now, such sharing of intimate images without consent is already illegal at the federal level. Section 162.1 of the Criminal Code makes the sharing of such images a criminal offence punishable by time in jail. 

However, convicting someone of a crime is difficult and can take a long time. Furthermore, the Criminal Code doesn’t directly require an internet company to take down any intimate images. Even if the person distributing the intimate image gets punished, the image can remain online and the victim may go uncompensated.  

And so, provincial governments have created civil avenues to compensate victims, remove images, speed up the process, or capture conduct that does not amount to a crime. ARPA covered British Columbia’s legislation when it was first introduced in 2023. We also covered an update to Manitoba’s legislation, which reversed the burden of proof, meaning the person sharing the image must now show that he had consent to do so, rather than the victim having to establish that she did not consent. 

British Columbia and Manitoba are now updating their laws again to combat this form of pornography. British Columbia already had one of the most up-to-date laws, so its recent changes were relatively minor. Bill 17, the Intimate Images Protection Statutes Amendment Act, increased the maximum penalty for the sharing of such an image from $5,000 to $75,000, among some more administrative changes. The law was passed at the end of October.  

On the other hand, Manitoba has the oldest intimate image legislation in the country. And so, Manitoba’s new Bill 2, The Non-Consensual Distribution of Intimate Images Amendment Act, goes much further in updating the law. Among other things, the legislation  

• expands the definition of an “intimate image” to include images that are nearly nude, 

• makes it illegal to threaten to distribute an intimate image, and  

• expands the power of courts to require internet companies to remove intimate images from their online platform. 

The Heart of the Issue 

Consent is certainly important in intimate matters, but it isn’t the only important thing here. After all, there is nothing illegal about sharing photos of fully clothed people without their consent. 

Instead, the central issue is the nature of what governments call “intimate images.” On the one hand, this is a perfectly acceptable term. These images are intimate. We often use the word “intimacy” as a PG word for sex. 

But simply referring to “intimate images” masks the ugly nature of what is going on. These images are pornographic. They are saved, shared, and published to sexually arouse others (and maybe blackmail the victim to boot). Creating and sharing them is wrong in itself. It dishonours the person as an image of God. Any sexual sin – including sharing or consuming pornography like intimate images – disrespects the image of God and violates the body of the other person. Beyond sinning against another person and against God, sexual immorality is also a sin against one’s own body (1 Corinthians 6:18). 

All of this is contrary to what Reformed Christians confess in the Heidelberg Catechism as proper conduct towards our neighbour. The sixth commandment requires us to “love our neighbour as ourselves” and “protect them from harm as much as we can” (Q&A 107). The seventh commandment adjures us to “detest [unchastity] wholeheartedly and live decent and chaste lives” (Q&A 109). The eighth commandment directs us to “do whatever I can and may for my neighbour’s good, [and] that I treat others as I would like them to treat me” (Q&A 111). The ninth commandment enjoins us to “do what I can to defend and advance my neighbour’s honour and reputation” (Q&A 112). And the tenth commandment, beyond forbidding us from “coveting our neighbour’s wife,” demands that “not even the slightest desire or thought contrary to any one of God’s commandments should ever arise in our hearts. Rather, with all our hearts we should always hate sin and delight in all righteousness” (Q&A 113). 

When individuals lack the internal motivation to respect the bodily and sexual integrity of others by not creating, viewing, or sharing pornographic images, legal punishment may provide another motivation. Strengthening the penalties, scope, and enforcement of laws against the sharing of non-consensual images – as both British Columbia and Manitoba are doing – honours people as image bearers of God and helps protect them against exploitation.