The Ontario Provincial Police announced that 64 suspects are facing 348 charges related to a series of investigations into child sexual exploitation across the province.

The arrests were announced at a press conference in Scarborough this Wednesday morning.

The police stated that the multi-jurisdictional case, dubbed Project Aquatic, began in February 2024 and involved 129 separate investigations from around the province involving online sexual abuse material.

Sergeant Tim Brown told reporters that 34 child victims have been identified as part of the investigation. The police indicated that as a result of Project Aquatic, 30 additional children were "protected," which Brown defined as moving children from a "dangerous situation" where they could be "abused."

The police reported that over 600 digital devices were seized as part of the investigation.

The police allege that in one case, an individual arranged a meeting with undercover investigators for the purpose of meeting a child for sexual purposes. They stated that another suspect was in possession of nearly 21 terabytes of data containing child sexual abuse material.

The police confirmed that the majority of the investigation was "reactive," as investigators responded to complaints from various electronic service providers.

Brown told reporters, "We are tirelessly working to keep up the pressure on those seeking to harm our children. These risks are not limited to the dark corners of the internet; predators go where children go."

Signey Arnasen, the Assistant Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, stated that Canada's hotline for reporting child sexual abuse and exploitation online, Cybertip.ca, receives about two to three thousand tips monthly.

He added, "Through our work, we have noticed growing networks of adults with problematic sexual interests in children who share online materials related to child abuse and encourage each other to exchange tactics, including how-to manuals."

“They normalize child sexual abuse and exploitation. Many within these communities are obsessed with specific victims, trying to locate them and even pursuing them into adulthood,” noting that environments like the dark web exacerbate and facilitate this behavior and that AI-generated images have tipped the scales in an already epidemic-sized issue.