The Ontario Province Police along with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and 27 police services from across the province conducted a series of investigations into online sexual abuse material.
The result has been “staggering,” the OPP said in a press conference held on Wednesday.
From Feb. 19 to Feb. 29, 2024, investigators identified and arrested individuals involved in making, distributing and possessing child sexual abuse material, a press release by the OPP said.
Sixty-four individuals were apprehended province-wide and are facing over 340 charges.
OPP Det. Staff Sgt. Tim Brown said Project Aquatic was an opportunity for the police to work together to investigate and stop the abuse of over 30 children.
“We completed 129 investigations. Our team also seized 607 digital devices,” Brown said.
He said analyzing each device can take up to several weeks with the advance of technology and increased storage options. This complicates the investigations and makes it harder for the police to trace these predators.
“With the advent of AI-generated images, our task to differentiate between real and synthetic victims adds yet another element to our efforts in apprehending those who make, possess, access and distribute child sexual abuse material,” Brown said.
A March 2024 Statistics Canada report said the rate of police-reported online child pornography has almost quadrupled since 2014. Online child pornography accounts for 75 per cent of all online child sexual exploitation offences, the report said.
OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique said the OPP-led Provincial Strategy to Protect Children from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation on the Internet or Provincial ICE, has apprehended more than 29,000 offenders since 2006.
“The Provincial ICE Strategy has completed more than 82,000 investigations. Nearly 4,000 children have been identified, supported and protected by this team throughout the years,” Carrique said.
Canada introduced the Online Harms Bill C-63, an amendment to the act to keep Canadians safe on online platforms, on Feb. 26, 2024, which mandates that service providers report people involved in child pornography-related activities.
Signy Aranson, associate executive director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, said artificial intelligence has worsened the problem.
“In 2022, about 2,600 images were flagged as AI-generated and 3,700 the following year. And this year, in one month alone we saw 500,” Aranson said. “We’re probably on course for 6,000 at least this year.”
The AI issue however is complex and has two sides, she said.
The first is where offenders are seeking the AI tools to take existing child sexual abuse material to create new online pornography, Aranson said.
“The second layer to this is the new AI generators that youth get their hands on and think it’s funny to produce an AI-generated image of a kid in school,” she said.
The youngest offender charged in the investigation is 16 years old and the oldest is 89, according to the addendum released by the police.