Earlier today, KINSA saw one its initiatives recognized in the Ontario Legislature when Bob Runciman, the MPP for Leeds Grenville, and a long-time advocate for victims rights and law-and-order, introduced a resolution in the Ontario Legislature to have February 7, 2007 declared "Safer Internet Day" in Ontario.

Mr. Runciman expects that he will receive unanimous support from the other parties in the Legislative Assembly and the resolution could pass before they recess for the Christmas break. 

Here is a transcript of Mr. Runciman's statement in the Ontario Legislature earlier today:


MEMBERS' STATEMENTS

INTERNET SAFETY

Mr. Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville):
Today I tabled a resolution calling on the government to declare
February 7, 2007, as Safer Internet Day in the province of Ontario. The
resolution was inspired by the good work of the Kids' Internet Safety
Association, KINSA, a group founded to bring together people with
expertise in business, law enforcement, education and public policy to
address this issue.

At a media conference this morning, Paul
Gillespie, the vice-chair of KINSA and a former head of the Toronto
Police Service's child exploitation unit, pointed out that there are
approximately 560,000 different images of children being sexually
abused to be found on the Internet. The anonymity of the Internet is
used to lure kids to meet these pedophiles, and it gets even scarier:
According to an Industry Canada survey, 50% of kids between nine and 16
have an e-mail account their parents don't know about and 33% of
children in that same age group go into adult chat rooms.

I encourage parents and grandparents to go to
www.kinsa.net to learn more about this serious and growing problem. I
also encourage the government to quickly adopt this resolution to
assist the important work of this outstanding organization, Kids'
Internet Safety Association.

Perhaps even more exciting - and important - was the media attention KINSA and the issue of child exploitation received today.  Paul Gillespie and Bob Runciman did a news conference this morning and follow-up interviews were done by CityTV and Broadcast News.  CTV, Global and a few print publications also followed up ... we'll do a full media scan in the next 24 hours to see who picked it up.

In this pre-Christmas season when so many parents are buying computers for their kids, we hope that at least some of them have heard our message and are taking appropriate precautions to keep their kids safe as they launch them into the wonderful world of the internet.

A copy of our News Release and Media Backgrounder is attached here, in case you're interested ...

Download news_release.doc

Download Backgrounder.doc

Coming soon, watch this blog for news of the Federal Government moving on this initiative as well.