Bill C-22 (Historical)

An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service

This enactment imposes reporting duties on persons who provide an Internet service to the public if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence. This enactment makes it an offence to fail to comply with the reporting duties.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be here today speaking on Bill C-22 and also to be here with my colleagues.

My hope is that we have support in this House from every party. I know that Conservative members of Parliament strongly support this legislation. It is the right thing to do for the protection of our children. It is a new and important piece of legislation.

I do not think there is anyone in this House who would disagree with me that the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been incredibly positive for Canadians. It is a wonderful tool. However, as with most things that are good for us, there is a potential for abuse, and this is also true with these new and evolving technologies.

While the Internet has provided us with new and easier ways of doing many things, it has also provided new and easier means for offenders to make, view, and distribute child pornography. This has resulted in a significant increase in the availability and volume of child pornography.

The Internet has contributed to the massive growth of the child pornography industry, which is deemed to be worth more than $1 billion worldwide. It is estimated that there are over five million different child sexual abuse images on the Internet.

According to the recent report called, “Every image, every child” released by the federal ombudsman for victims of crime, there are over 750,000 pedophiles online at any given time. Tens of thousands of new images or videos are put on the Internet every week, and hundreds of thousands of searches for child sexual abuse images are performed daily.

The continued advancement of Internet technologies makes these crimes not only easier to commit, but also harder to investigate. There is an increasing burden on law enforcement to stay abreast of the changing technologies in order to to effectively investigate the crimes.

Child pornography is a particularly serious form of child victimization. Not only are the children abused and exploited through the making of child pornography; they are further exploited each time these images are shared or viewed.

To refer again to the “Every image, every child” report, I was shocked to learn that between 2003 and 2007 the number of online images of serious child abuse increased fourfold, and that these images became more violent and featured younger and younger children. It is disgusting.

According to the federal ombudsman's special report, 39% of individuals who accessed child pornography were viewing images of children between the ages of three and five, and 19% were viewing images of infants under the age of three. These statistics are nothing short of tragic. I am confident that most Canadians are just as appalled as I am, as each of us are, at this information.

Our government is committed to ending the growing problem of sexual exploitation of children. As part of these efforts the Minister of Justice, of whom I am so proud, reintroduced Bill C-22 in this House. Today we also have the chair of the justice committee in the House, the member for Abbotsford. I want to thank him for being here.

The main goal of this legislation is to help Canadian law enforcement officials detect potential child pornography offences on the Internet. Bill C-22 proposes, in precisely the same manner as Bill C-58 did in the last session of Parliament, that the law require those who provide Internet services to the public to do two things.

First, it will require them to report any information or tips they receive regarding websites where child pornography may be available to the public. They will be required to make this report to a designated agency. Second, it will require them to notify the police and safeguard any evidence, if they believe that a child pornography offence has been committed on their Internet service.

Failure to comply with these reporting duties would, in the case of an individual, a sole proprietorship, constitute an offence punishable by graduated fines up to $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for the second offence, and $10,000, six months in prison, or both, for the third offence and subsequent offences. In the case of a corporation, the graduated fine would start at $10,000 maximum, increase to $50,000 on the second conviction, and to $100,000 on third and subsequent convictions.

The duties imposed by this bill, in addition to helping reduce the availability of online child pornography, would facilitate the identification and rescue of victims of child pornography and assist law enforcement in identifying the offenders who create, possess, and distribute child pornography.

I would like to make it clear that this legislation was carefully tailored so as to achieve its objectives while minimizing the impact on the privacy of Canadians. Suppliers of Internet services would not be required to send personal subscriber information under this statute. The legislation is also tailored to limit access to child pornography and avoid creating new consumers of this material. Hence, nothing in this legislation would require or authorize a person to seek out child pornography.

Before I proceed further, I would like to explain to the House who is covered by this legislation. I am sure most members are familiar with the term “Internet service provider”, or ISP. An ISP provides access to the Internet. In essence, it acts as an on-ramp to the Internet. That is the service it provides. An ISP is one example of a provider of Internet services, but the term is broader than that. A provider of Internet services refers to all those who provide an Internet service to the public, including things like electronic mail services such as webmail, Internet content hosting services, and social network sites.

This bill is an example of Canada's commitment to fighting the scourge of child pornography and protecting children from online sexual exploitation. However, the Internet is a complex instrument. We all know that. Our knowledge and understanding of the full impact of the Internet in facilitating the demand for, and distribution of, child pornography is still evolving. The Internet presents a real challenge to the prevention and policing of this material due in part to the relative anonymity of the parties and instant worldwide access by millions of people.

I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to recognize the great efforts already made by Canada's major ISPs to address the challenge of online child sexual exploitation. Most ISPs have adopted acceptable use policies, which outline the rules for using an Internet account, the conditions of access privileges, and the consequences of violating these rules and conditions. These polices allow the ISP to terminate accounts in the event of unacceptable online behaviour, and we thank them for that.

I would also like to mention that the Canadian Association of Internet Providers has helped to develop standards for the industry, including an ISP code of conduct, to which many Canadian ISPs adhere. We thank the association for that.

A further initiative that bears mentioning is the Canadian Coalition Against Internet Child Exploitation, which was created in 2003 by some Canadian ISPs and police agencies. The main objective of this body is to assist law enforcement officials in their efforts to address online child pornography.

I would like to speak specifically about one important initiative that has developed from this collaboration between the ISPs and the police. It is called Project Cleanfeed Canada and it aims to reduce accidental access to child sexual abuse images, as well as to discourage those trying to access or distribute child pornography.

To achieve this goal, Cybertip.ca, which is the national tip line for reporting online child sexual exploitation, creates and maintains a regularly updated list of foreign-hosted Internet service providers associated with images of child sex abuse and provides that list to the participating ISPs. The ISP's filters automatically prevent access to addresses on the list by blocking these addresses.

Most of Canada's major ISPs participate in Cleanfeed Canada, which results in 90% of Canadian Internet subscribers being protected. There are continuing efforts to reach the remaining 10% of Canadians.

I am confident that Bill C-22 will be a complement to these existing efforts, especially Cleanfeed Canada, by requiring that all providers of Internet services report child pornography websites, which can then be added to the Cleanfeed Canada list.

Bill C-22 will also ensure that all providers of Internet services to the public will be held to the same standard of reporting when it comes to online Internet child sexual exploitation. Some may criticize this initiative as having a limited impact on the business practices of providers of Internet services, who already voluntarily report cases of online child pornography, and in fact, it is true that Bill C-22 was drafted in a way that closely mirrors the current practices of Canada's ISPs. However, I would like to reiterate that this legislation applies more broadly and covers more than just the typical ISP. It applies to all providers of Internet services and its impact will be much broader.

I recognize, and I am sure our colleagues do too, that more is needed to combat this disgusting social ill than just strong criminal laws. The government is committed to a broader approach that is effected to protect our children. That is why, in 2008, our government announced a renewed commitment to work with our partners through the national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. This is a successful initiative that has played a very big role over the last few years in helping to make sure that the growing number of young people online stay safe and that we take action to crack down on the sexual predators.

The Government of Canada is investing $71 million over five years to help ensure that the national strategy remains the success that it is today. With these great investments, our government is further strengthening our ability to combat child sexual exploitation over the Internet through the work of the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, which works to reduce the vulnerability of children to Internet-facilitated sexual exploitation by identifying victimized children, by investigating and assisting with the prosecution of sexual offenders, and by strengthening the capacity of municipal, territorial, provincial, federal and international police agencies.

We are also further strengthening the ability of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to help young people stay safe online through initiatives such as Cybertip.ca, which, as I mentioned earlier, allows the public to report suspected cases of child sexual exploitation they may find online.

Currently, most reporting of child pornography across Canada is done voluntarily. The vast majority of tips come through Cybertip.ca, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week anonymous tip line for reporting of child sexual exploitation on the Internet. Cybertip.ca provides a valuable function for law enforcement across Canada by screening, prioritizing, and analyzing each and every one of the 700 reports it receives every month. The skilled analysts collect supporting information using various Internet tools and techniques, and if the material is assessed to be potentially illegal, a report is made to the appropriate police services.

By providing this service of reports and forwarding only the most relevant information to the police agencies, Cybertip.ca saves valuable police time and resources. This allows police to devote their time and efforts to actual investigations rather than to the time-consuming tasks of analyzing all the incoming reports of child pornography.

Cybertip.ca collaborates closely with many of the Canadian ISPs and international partners and it has a memorandum of understanding with most Canadian law enforcement agencies.

As part of the mandate of Cybertip.ca, it also collects statistics regarding online child pornography in Canada. Each month, Cybertip.ca receives 800,000 hits on its website and 700 reports of suspected child abuse images. Between 2002 and 2009, Cybertip.ca had triaged over 33,000 reports, and approximately 45% of those reports were forwarded to law enforcement. It is very effective.

The material that is deemed not to be illegal is often followed up with educational information. Ninety per cent of the reports received by Cybertip.ca relate to child pornography.

As a result of these efforts, at least 30 arrests have been made, approximately 3,000 websites have been shut down, and most important, several children have been removed from abusive environments.

The work of Cybertip.ca is being bolstered by recent efforts of some provincial and territorial governments. We are thankful for that. The Province of Manitoba enacted legislation on mandatory reporting of child pornography in April 2009. Under this law, all members of the public are required to report suspected cases of child pornography to Cybertip.ca. Ontario has enacted similar legislation, but it is not yet in force. Nova Scotia's mandatory reporting legislation came into force just a few months ago, on April 13 of this year. I would like to extend my congratulations to them and to Cybertip.ca for their efforts in this regard.

This government is committed to protecting our children. I hope my fellow members in the House understand just how important this legislation is. I urge every member to support this legislation as we work together to protect our future, which is our children.

The House resumed from September 24 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you that when the leader of the Liberal Party named the member for Ottawa South as the House leader of the Liberal Party I was asked many times, “How do you feel about this? Are you looking forward to working with him?” I said to each and every one of them that I was every bit as looking forward to working with the member for Ottawa South as I am sure he was looking forward to working with me.

In all seriousness I can report that the Liberal House leader and I are working well together. I am even working well with the Bloc House leader and with the House leader of the New Democratic Party.

We are all working hard to make Parliament work.

Today I can tell the House that we will be continuing debate on Bill C-46, the Canada-Panama free trade agreement, another key economic initiative as part of Canada's economic action plan, a plan to create jobs, build growth and opportunity for all Canadians across the country.

It is, though, with deep regret that yesterday I learned the NDP moved a six-month hoist motion on the Canada-Panama free trade agreement. As the House knows, the only purpose of moving such an amendment is to obstruct and delay the progress of important legislation.

On Friday, my good friends in the NDP moved a concurrence motion obstructing and delaying the passage of Bill C-22, protecting children from online sexual exploitation, another key part of our government's tough on crime agenda.

I say to my NDP friends, let us work together and make Parliament work. I hope we will not see any more of this.

Tomorrow, as the member opposite has said, we will be having question period and leaving early for the installation of the new Governor General in the Senate chamber.

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, the government will call the following bills for debate: Bill C-22, protecting children from online sexual exploitation; Bill C-21, standing up for victims of white-collar crime; Bill C-30, the response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Shoker; Bill C-39, ending early release for criminals and increasing offender accountability; Bill S-6, serious time for the most serious crime; and Bill S-9, tackling auto theft and property crime.

On Thursday, it is the government's intention to begin debate on the second budget bill, sustaining Canada's economic recovery act, just one more key economic action plan legislative initiative.

Canadians have told us they want us to focus on creating jobs, building growth and opportunity. They have told us that they want their government to have a robust legislative agenda, to get tough on crime, and that is exactly what we are delivering.

Motion to concur in seventh report of industry, science and technology committee

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order to bring to your attention the motion on the order paper to concur in the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology, which is essentially the same as the supply motion that was adopted yesterday.

On page 560 of O'Brien and Bosc, it refers to the rule of anticipation. It states:

The rule is dependent on the principle which forbids the same question from being decided twice within the same session.

On that same page it states:

The rule of anticipation becomes operative only when one of two similar motions on the order paper is actually proceeded with.

That is what happened yesterday with the Liberal supply motion.

I would add that the concurrence motion was moved last Friday by the NDP with the full knowledge that the subject matter of the concurrence motion was the same as that of the Liberal supply day motion which was scheduled for debate the following Tuesday.

Surely the NDP was aware that the continuation of the debate on the concurrence motion at the later date and the subsequent vote would be redundant. More important and unfortunate is that the debate on the concurrence motion interrupted the debate on Bill C-22, the protecting children from online sexual exploitation bill, which was scheduled to conclude on Friday. As a result of the concurrence motion, Bill C-22 was not sent to committee.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, there is one hour and 36 minutes remaining in the debate on the concurrence motion, and the government is bound by the rules to schedule a continuation of this debate within 10 sitting days, which will conclude in a division on the same question twice.

Mr. Speaker, in order to prevent this unnecessary debate and vote from taking place, I would ask that you strike the motion to concur in the seventh report of the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology from the order paper.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-22 about online child pornography.

It is hard to imagine a more despicable, disgusting and appalling crime than the abuse of a child.

It is impossible for any of us to imagine that such a thing is possible, but we all know that today it is far too common. Unfortunately, the victims who bear the brunt of this abuse lay all too silent.

Most child victims of abuse are never found or are found far later in their lives. Their lives unravel at inexplicable times, and when we scratch the surface and go back into what started this, we often find episodes of child abuse.

Those who commit the abuse are often not found. Once individuals are found, it is discovered that not only have they had a few victims, but generally there has been a long-standing pattern of victimization. Many have abused dozens and dozens of children over a prolonged period of time. It is a psychiatric sickness, but it is also a cancer in our society that is absolutely intolerable.

The bill goes some way toward dealing with that and specifically with dealing with online child pornography. It was introduced on May 6 in the last Parliament and is being resurrected again in this Parliament.

The bill basically obligates people to report all website addresses they are aware of that may contain pornography. There is an obligation to report them to police if it is believed that a child pornography offence has or will be committed, based on the services one has. The provider must also preserve the relevant computer data for 21 days after notifying the police.

Failure of sole providers to report such a thing will result in fines of between $1,000 and $10,000, and failure of corporations to do this will result in fines of between $10,000 and $100,000. It is important to note that the bill does not require online providers to proactively seek out child pornography.

Therefore, the Liberal Party of Canada, given its long-standing history of addressing this issue, will be supporting the bill to go on to committee stage.

Legislative initiatives to deal with this go as far back as 2002, when the Liberal government of the day, for the first time, introduced legislation to deal with and criminalize online pornography and those people who contribute to it.

It would be worthwhile to talk a bit about facts and to discuss the depth and scope of this terrible problem.

The Internet is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides great opportunities to learn and disseminate information. The dark side of this, of course, is the issue we are talking about today, which is child pornography. It is important for us to understand what this actually means. No one thinks it is innocuous, but it certainly has to be dealt with in terms of how serious it is, as I mentioned, because of the long-standing trauma it inflicts on children. Children are not only being exposed to child pornography on sites but are also being victimized by it, as individuals try to lure children through the Internet capabilities they have.

Here is a little bit of information. Seventy-six per cent of offenders convicted of Internet-related crimes against children admitted to sex crimes against children that were previously unknown to law enforcement. Each offender admitted to 30.5 victims; so every person picked up as an offender has, on average, abused 30 children. That is an absolutely staggering number of children per abuser.

Of the 1,400 cases of reported child molestation, child pornography was used in the majority of cases by those who were the molesters. Child molesters almost always collect child pornography, and 80% of purchasers of child pornography who have been charged have actually been active abusers. We can see the strong connection between those who are actually engaging in and looking at child pornography and the fact that those individuals are also abusing children. There is a direct correlation.

The absence of contact with a child is probably the most significant factor in limiting the production of child pornography and the opportunity to access to children, which is an essential factor in the production of child pornography and child abuse.

The RCMP stands out as a shining example of a Canadian police force that has done an extraordinary amount of work in this area. The RCMP is known worldwide as being a leader in the area of combatting child pornography. All of us in the House should commend the RCMP for the excellent work it has done and the men and women who have to endure looking at these sites and horrible images. This cannot be an easy thing for them to do. For those men and women who work within the RCMP and who have to look at these sites, witness this horrible abuse and try to identify those individuals who do this, we thank them for their service to Canada and particularly for their service to the children of Canada and the world.

The RCMP has a site called cybertip.ca. This site has received over 35,000 reports, 90% of which were considered to be child pornography. If people who are watching this debate today are aware of or know of individuals who are engaged in child pornography or child abuse, I ask them to please contact 911 or cybertip.ca.

Only 30% of children who disclose that they have been sexually abused do so during childhood. As I said before in my opening comments, as a physician I have seen a lot of patients who have been abused sexually and oftentimes they have different problems. When their lives start to unravel and an indepth history is done, too often it is found that they have a history of sexual abuse.

I used to be a correctional officer. I also, as a physician, I worked in the jails. The number of people in jail who had been abused sexually as a child is very large. Many of them not only have psychiatric problems, but they also have substance abuse problems, a lot of which stems from early sexual abuse. Many of the pedophiles in jail were sexually abused as children. It is a vicious cycle that goes around and around.

The Liberal Party supports the bill. We also support the work that the RCMP has done.

One of the things we have to look at is the early childhood period. We need a better way to reach these children so when they are abused, they have a safe place to go to talk about it so the perpetrators can be arrested and the children can be taken out of that situation.

As I said before, only 30% of children disclose that they have been sexually abused before the age of six, which means that 70% of children who are sexually abused prior to the age of six never tell. They endure years of abuse unknown to anybody. We can deal with this by providing opportunities.

I will give the House a real life example of the impact of this.

I worked in a jail where two sisters around the age of 14 had been picked up for prostitution. Their mother, who I knew because I had treated in the detox unit and in emergency, had a substance abuse problem. She was prostituting her two little girls to raise money to pay for her drug abuse problem.

I told the two young women that they would wind up dead if they did not stop, and they laughed it off. A year and a half after that one of the girls was found dead in a ditch in northern British Columbia. After that, I was walking through the pediatric ward doing my rounds and this girl looked familiar. She was still a teenager and she had a very bad stroke affecting half of her body. Because of the environment she was in, she had been exposed to drugs. I do not know what happened to her after that, but what a profoundly tragic end to two little girls who could have had a full and complete life if it were not for the situation they had been in.

If we take a look at the broader scope, there is child sex tourism. This is a situation where we have adults from the west going to countries, generally third world countries but sometimes a lot go to eastern Europe, where laws are lax and interest is limited in terms of child abuse. Adults are going far away to Southeast Asia, eastern Europe, areas of extreme poverty, and they are using the very unstable situation to fulfill their warped and twisted sexual appetites.

The victims of this are literally millions of children. In fact, it is estimated that in India, there are 1.2 million child prostitutes. In Thailand, a favoured destination of pedophiles, 40% of the prostitutes are children. If we look at the cycle, sometimes individuals go into rural and impoverished areas that are in the grips of deep poverty. They tell parents that if they bring their sons or daughters to them, they will ensure the children get jobs and the money will go to the parents. They tell them that their children will do domestic work or some other legitimate form of activity. Instead they take the children and use them as sex slaves.

The children have no hope and no future. They are horribly abused. They suffer from malnutrition. Sometimes they get pregnant early on. They acquire HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. They die an early death. They are victims of extreme violence. They are often gang raped and no one hears about them. They are silent victims in this ever-growing epidemic.

Bill C-22 is an effort to try to deal with this.

We all see cases from time to time that come to forefront when individuals are caught. However, the number of people who are engaged in these behaviours, westerners who go abroad to engage in the sexual abuse of children, and who are actually caught is very small. Only a tiny fraction of these parasites are caught.

It speaks to the failure internationally of countries working together and collectively to address this. Too many times, domestic police forces turn a blind eye. In many of these impoverished countries, children have no rights. They are not really seen as being worthy of the protection of whatever legal rules they have. As a result, children are treated as little more than chattel. This leaves an environment that is ripe for this kind of dramatic sexual abuse and the horrible situations these children endure.

It occurs all over the world, as I said. It is very common in eastern Europe. It is very common in parts of Africa and certainly in Southeast Asia, but we are not immune from this here. Individuals acquire children and bring them to Canada and the United States. Children are abused in our country and we do not even know about it. The Internet is a route to doing that. When people are aware of the type of child pornography on the Internet, it is not a victimless crime. It is very much a crime, period, and the victims are the most underprivileged people in our society.

There are also a number of other very interesting endeavours taking place. The RCMP has, again, been at the forefront of it. It is trying to do a scan to determine the extent of the problem. It is trying to get a better handle on who does this so the people can be identified. It is trying to do a better job of understanding why people would try to go down this route in the first place and how they can be identified before they start to wrack up the number of victims.

Victim identification is also another challenge. Canada has not done a very good job on this. This is certainly something that needs to be addressed and dealt with.

All of us are very pleased that this issue has been brought forward, unlike the gun registry, which dominated the beginning of this Parliament. It is not even, by any stretch of the imagination, an issue that should be consuming Parliament in any way shape or form. There are thousands of other important issues that affect Canadians, such as jobs, money in their pockets, health care and myriad of other issues. This, at least, is an issue that is important.

It is also important to understand that the RCMP is working in an area that has received short shrift. When there is a disaster, in times of extreme insecurity, such as what occurred in the Tsunami in Southeast Asia, what is occurring in Pakistan today and what occurred in Haiti during the earthquake, children are extremely vulnerable. People lure children, taking them into sex slavery and prostitution. Like vultures they descend into these environments and try to find children who are lost, orphaned and found on the streets. At a time of insecurity, when the rule of law has been shattered, they go in and try to find children to abduct. This is a huge challenge, one on which compliment the RCMP for engaging in.

Right now the there is a strategy called “Operation Century”, which is an effort to try to prevent children, during the time of natural disaster, from being subjected to these kinds of abuses and from being abducted from their homes to be trapped. It is part of a national strategy in which the RCMP is engaged.

This all started back in 2002 when, for the first time, legislation was adopted and implemented to deal with something that was very new, which was the use of the Internet as a tool to capture children and use them for sexual abuse and to commit violent acts against them.

There is a national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. The strategy was first launched in 2004 under then Prime Minister Paul Martin, and it extends to this day. I am very happy that the House has chosen to take this.

I hope all of us can agree that this is about our most vulnerable citizens, the children of our country and children from afar. Children deserve to have a life free of these kinds of abuses and violence, sexual abuse and exploitation to which some are subjected. No children should be subjected to that.

I think all of us support the RCMP's efforts to prevent it. We must work together to implement the legal tools that it needs to deal with an every-changing complex issue, which is the use of the Internet to exploit children.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to continue debate on what is now Bill C-22. I think this may be my last speech for a while, so all members can relax.

This is also a very important bill. Once again, it has been five years plus that we have been waiting for this bill, now titled Bill C-22. It was called Bill C-58 before the government prorogued the House. It is the child protection act online sexual exploitation.

There are some important points here that the members should know about this bill even though it has been knocking around now for five years and many speeches have been made about it. It is one of these bills where there really is not a lot of disagreement on the subject.

I personally am not really sure how it is going to play out. The reality is once we send it to committee, which should be fairly soon, and once the committee hearings are proceeded with, I really do not foresee many amendments to this bill and I do not foresee a lot of controversy with this bill. If anything, we may find that this bill is, in some respects, already out of date because it has been five years since we started discussing about it.

It is an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. Basically, an ISP is now going to be required to take action on this issue.

Bill C-58 was introduced in the House of Commons on November 24, 2009 by the Minister of Justice. Bill C-58, now Bill C-22, was intended to fight Internet child pornography by requiring ISPs, or Internet service providers, and other persons providing Internet services, for example, Facebook, Google, Hotmail, to report any incident of child pornography.

This requirement included several things, but one was that if a person providing Internet services was advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available, the person must report that address to the organization designated by the regulations.

I know the member for Mississauga South is bound to ask me a question about the whole issue of the regulations. Once again, until the bill passes, the government sets up the regulations, and we actually will not know what the details will be of this particular part.

Also, if a person has reasonable grounds to believe that the Internet services operated by that person are being used to transmit child pornography, the person must notify the police, that is a logical thing, and also preserve the computer data.

In terms of provincial and international measures, in June 2008, my home province, the Manitoba Legislature passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca, which seems to be a very successful longstanding website, any material that could constitute child pornography.

Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008.

Thank goodness Ontario and Manitoba moved ahead because if they waited for the federal government, they would have been waiting an awful long time to get the job done.

The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002, eight years ago, and in 2005, Australia imposed this requirement on the ISPs.

In terms of the current legislation that affects this area, we have section 163.1 of the Criminal Code, which was passed under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien back in 1993. This was actually a very good initiative in its day, prohibiting the production, the distribution, the sale, and the possession of child pornography.

The definition under the legislation is a visual representation of explicit sexual activity with a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of 18, the visual representation for sexual purposes of persons under the age 18, or any written material advocating or counselling sexual activity with a person under the age of 18.

Internet child pornography takes the form of images, sound recordings, videos, drawings of accounts of sexual assaults on persons under the age of 18. In 2002, Bill C-15A amended subsection 163.1 of the code, which prohibited the distribution of child pornography by introducing the term “transmits” and made available to prohibit the distribution of child pornography online. The bill also added subsections 163.1 and 163.1 (4.2) to the code making it an offence to deliberately access child pornography by visiting a website, as an example.

Bill C-15A also provided for a special warrant in relation to Internet child pornography under section 164.1 of the code. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an ISP computer system, the judge may order the ISP to provide the necessary information to identify and locate the person who posted it. In addition, the judge may order the ISP to remove the Internet child pornography in question.

With regard sentencing, child pornography offences are considered hybrid offences. The prosecutor may choose whether the accused should be charged with an indictable offence and be liable to a summary conviction. The offences of producing, distributing and selling of child pornography, if treated as indictable offences, are punishable by a maximum prison term of 10 years and a minimum of one year. On summary conviction, they are punishable by a maximum prison term of 18 months and a minimum term of 90 days.

The offences of possession and viewing of child pornography on the computer are punishable for indictable offences by a maximum prison term of five years and a minimum term of 45 days and on a summary conviction by a maximum term of 18 months and a minimum of 14 days.

In terms of statistics on this issue, according to Statistics Canada, which gathers all types of information on pornography and not just Internet child pornography alone, child pornography offences have increased significantly in Canada from 55 offences in 1998 to 1,600 in 2007. I have some statistics that indicate how serious the issue is in Canada, which I will get to in a couple of minutes.

It is currently estimated that there are over five million child sexual abuse images on the Internet. According to an analysis by cybertip.ca, from 2002 to 2009 54.7% of the images on Internet sites contained pornographic images of children under the age of 8, 24.7% were of children aged 8 to 12, and 83% were girls. Over 35% of the images analyzed showed severe sexual assault. Children under the age of eight most often subjected to sexual assault was at 37.2% and extreme sexual assault was at 68.5%. Older children were usually shown naked or in an obscene pose.

The fact of the matter is that this situation is just getting worse. We are seeing this whole problem snowballing and getting bigger on a day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year basis while we sit here and do not take action.

The cybertip.ca study showed that the Internet sites containing child pornography are hosted in close to 60 countries. We know which countries are hosting these sites. For example, in the United States 49% of the sites are hosted in the United States, in Russia 20%, in Canada 9%. When we consider that we have only 30 million people in the country and 9% of the sites are hosted in Canada, that is a very large percentage. In Japan it is 4.3% and in South Korea it is 3.6%.

These sites are very difficult to track down because all of the child pornography files hosted on a web page are not necessarily hosted in the same location. For instance, image A may be hosted in Canada while image B on the same web page may be hosted in the United States. The web page itself might be hosted in yet another country such as Japan.

Similarly, an illegal site can hide the host location through an anonymous proxy server or through server rerouting. There are a lot of technical terms here that the average individual may not be familiar with. Suffice to say that whatever laws exist, the criminal elements, and we are talking about criminal elements, try to be one step ahead. When there are tough laws in one country, they simply move to another country.

The Liberal Party critic for this area has spoken several times on this bill. He has pointed out countries that have simply blocked the sites rather than put money into fighting this problem. Maybe that is the answer.

I asked the minister at the time, who is no longer even a member of the Conservative caucus, why she was announcing that she was going to spend $42 million chasing these sites. I asked her whether this was new money or old money. That was a year ago. She was still a Conservative and a minister in those days.

In Hansard she tells me that she is going to get back to me on this issue. I have yet to hear from her or anybody else in the government as to whether the $42 million to track down these sites is actually new money or just the same old money being announced over and over again.

What I suggest is that rather than spend $42 million to chase these criminals, because that is who they are, we look at those countries that have simply blocked the sites. That is the problem solved right there, it seems to me. We would not have to keep throwing endless amounts of money at the problem.

Identical sites may also be simultaneously located on different URLs. In such cases, it can be very difficult to remove the child pornography. Even if the site is closed down, the offensive material may still be accessible on the Internet. Moreover, illegal sites regularly change location so that they can avoid being shut down.

I want to deal with the penalties under this act before I run out of time. The fact is that these penalties are not tough enough. For individuals, the penalties being proposed are perhaps accurate. However, when we start dealing with companies, and if one considers that criminal groups are running these sites, these fines are simply the cost of doing business. I think the fine for a third offence is approximately $100,000. I will get to that at the end if I have time.

As I indicated, illegal sites regularly change location to avoid being shut down. In a period of 48 hours, Cybertip.ca counted 212 IP addresses in 16 countries for a single website. A website can also change location in just a few minutes by utilizing a network of personal computers as zombies. These zombies relay the content of the website hosted on another server.

Cybertip.ca recommended that when zombies are detected, ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service for those computers until the infected computers are restored.

Another reason this whole problem is snowballing day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year into a bigger and bigger problem is the fact that the computer hardware and software has gotten so much better.

I can recall, perhaps 10 years ago, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to do the very first concert on the web. Nobody had done it before. That was in the days when the cameras were operating at 15 frames per second. We all remember those images being choppy. It was certainly in its infancy. The Internet was very slow in those days. We did not have the gigabit ethernet pipes we have today.

What has happened is that today we have a much more technologically advanced system that is designed perfectly for these criminal elements to take advantage of. Taking advantage of it they are.

Governments are sitting around, basically proroguing Parliament every year. We are thrown a bill that is really non-controversial in the sense that just about everyone agrees with the bill.

We passed pardon legislation dealing with the Karla Homolka situation in June in literally a day and a half. If the government really wants to accomplish something here and get the bill through, it only has to sit down with the House leaders and make an arrangement to sit for perhaps a few hours extra in the evening, given that there is not a lot of disagreement about how important the bill is and how it should be passed and put into effect to deal with the issues.

Any person may inform an ISP or other person providing Internet services that a web page, host page, Facebook page, or e-mail appears to contain child pornography. The ISP or other person providing Internet services must then report the address of the site, page or e-mail in question as soon as possible to an organization designated by the federal government.

For example, under Manitoba law, the designated organization is the national reporting agency Cybertip.ca. I want to say that Cybertip.ca has played a very important role in this whole process so far.

After being notified by a member of the public or an agency that child pornography may appear through the Internet services it provides, the ISP or other person providing the Internet services may have reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is being transmitted through its services. It may also reach this conclusion on its own. When this is the case, the ISP or person providing the Internet services must notify the police as soon as possible.

I am running out of time, but I want to deal with a couple of other issues. There is a provision in the bill that the police must keep the computer data related to the child pornography offence for 21 days. Several people have questioned whether 21 days is appropriate. It seems not only to me but to a number of other people that 21 days may be too short a period for that to properly happen.

I also dealt with the offences. In terms of individuals, the fine is $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for a second and a maximum of $10,000 or six months for a third.

For corporations, the criminals who are running these sites, it is only $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for a second and $100,000 for a third, which is no more than the cost of doing business.

The House resumed from June 16 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Business of the House

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to officially congratulate the House leader of the official opposition on his first Thursday question and of course on his appointment as House leader. As I have already said, we want to make this Parliament work for Canadians and co-operate with all the opposition parties.

Let me also tell him, and particularly his leader, how very disappointed I am that I will not have the chance to work shoulder to shoulder with the great, wise helmsman from Wascana.

Let me take this opportunity to once again, in English, officially congratulate the House leader of the official opposition on his first Thursday question. As I have said in the past, we all want to work hard, we all want to work collaboratively to make this House work, and not just with him.

We also want to do so with our friends in the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party.

As government House leader, one of my very first acts on the day of the cabinet shuffle was to reach out to my opposition counterparts. Since then, I have had the opportunity to sit down with each of them and to hear their views about making Parliament work. I look forward to working with them over the coming days, weeks, months and years to do just that.

As for the House schedule, we will continue debate today on Bill C-5 (International Transfer of Offenders), followed by Bill C-31, Eliminating Entitlements for Prisoners, and Bill C-22, Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation.

On Monday, we will call Bill C-8, Canada-Jordan Free Trade Act, and Bill C-28, Fighting Spam, an important piece of legislation presented by the Minister of Industry.

Tuesday, September 28, will be an allotted day, and on Wednesday and Thursday, the order of business will be Bill C-8, if not already disposed of on Monday, Bill C-46, Canada-Panama Free Trade Act, and Bill C-28, Fighting Spam.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-22 for two minutes.

I have to admit that this has been a very long process. I have been reading the Hansard on this bill and previous incarnations of it. This whole process has been about five years now. The computer industry changes very dramatically, so the government and Parliament had better hurry up and get on top of this issue. We may find that by the time we get to where we want to be, a new problem will have presented itself.

In June 2008 the legislative assembly of Manitoba passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca any material that could constitute child pornography. Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008. The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002 and 2005 respectively, imposing this requirement on ISPs.

I will point out some of the benefits of dealing with cybertip.ca. It is currently estimated that over 5 million child sexual abuse images are on the Internet. An analysis of over 12,000 website incidents was done by cybertip.ca. It was looking into the countries that hosted these sites. The United States was number one at 49%. Russia was second at 20%. Canada had a surprising 9% of all the sites. Japan was at 4.4%. South Korea was at 3.6%.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about the offences in Bill C-22. It seems to me that as an individual the offences are $1,000 for a first offence, $5,000 for a second offence, and evidently $10,000 for a third offence or possibly six months in jail. On the corporate side for companies it is $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for a second offence, and $100,000 for three or more offences.

It seems to me that most of the child porn sites would be run by corporations and probably underworld figures. That would be my guess. It seems to me that these amounts of money are not going to deter organized crime. The $10,000 for an offence is just nothing more than the cost of doing business.

I would ask the member whether he has the same sort of concerns about the offences in the bill and whether or not, at committee, we might look at perhaps increasing those penalties?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, or the protecting children from online sexual exploitation act, brings back to life a bill that was killed in the last session when the government prorogued Parliament. It may be a tired line to hear from me or from members over here but the fact is that the former bill, Bill C-58, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, received first reading on May 6.

In short, the bill would make reporting child sexual abuse images mandatory for all Canadians, including Internet service providers, or ISPs. The tragedy here, of course, is that every day that goes by, more of these offences take place. It is a scourge on our society and we probably could have done something earlier but the P word stood in front of that. There was prorogation and the bill was not passed.

As the parliamentary secretary noted yesterday, government has an obligation to protect the weak and vulnerable in society, particularly our children. Debate on this bill is long overdue and I am honoured to speak in support of legislation that seeks to defend the rights of children in Canada and around the world.

While this bill is technical in nature, its purpose is a moral and praiseworthy one that ought to have been adopted long ago. At committee, I know this bill will be examined closely before any final decisions are made, such that this House can ensure Canada no longer lags in its responsibilities to protect our children from sexual exploitation.

I have a number of statistics that I will get into at the finish of my speech but the preface for them is this. Canada does not lead in the prevention of child Internet pornography or sexual exploitation.

I would like to express, though, how troubled I am that it has taken the government so long to do something about this important topic. It has been almost four and a half years that it has been the government and legislation to update criminal laws so that they better reflect the modern technologies and modern conveyance of information, as bad as this is, has not been brought forward by the government in a timely fashion.

The victims of these crimes cannot wait and the government's tactics have deprived many children the free and happy lives they deserve. Many of us have children and many of us provide the best we can for them and think that we are providing for them a free and happy life. Sometimes I say to my children that they have too free and happy a life, but let us be clear. There are many children who are in captivity. Their freedom has been taken away and they do not live free and happy lives whatsoever. They are children who have been exploited and continue to be exploited every day.

To begin, I want to discuss the current legislation governing child pornography. There are sections in the Criminal Code that exist, particularly in 1993 when the Liberal government introduced section 163.1 of the Criminal Code which prohibited the production, distribution, sale and possession of child pornography.

Let us all think back to 1993 when we did not have Blackberrys, our portable computers were probably the size of this podium and technology was certainly not as advanced as it is today. Therefore, the act, while it was good at the time, is woefully inadequate. It described child pornography as:

the visual representation of explicit sexual activity with a person who is or who is depicted as being under the age of 18;

the visual representation, for sexual purposes, of persons under the age of 18; or

any written material advocating or counselling sexual activity with a person under the age of 18.

That was all very good to have been introduced in 1993.

Canadians have a clear understanding of the illegality that is child pornography. At present, it is a criminal offence if one makes available distribution of child pornography, as I just defined, online. This is very straightforward and Canada continues to condemn the production and accessibility of online material depicting the sexual exploitation of children.

If society stopped there, if modern technology stopped there, if it were just a matter of stopping the production of child pornography and distribution of it online, I suppose we would be doing our job. Maybe there are some members who have been here since 1993 and remember, probably with some pride, that that was adequate at the time.

Under our present laws, if there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an Internet service provider, a judge may order the provider to supply the information to aid in locating and identifying the person who posted it. Judges may also order the removal of the child pornography if its source can be identified.

These laws are both valuable and necessary, though, as I will highlight later, further action is needed on the part of the government. Right now, in cases involving the online sexual exploitation of children, a prosecutor may choose whether the accused should be charged with a serious indictable offence or be liable for the less serious summary conviction offence. Cases of this nature ending in indictable offences are punishable for up to 10 years in prison. They are very serious. Summary convictions are currently punishable up to 18 months.

Let us be clear that viewing or possessing child pornography is punishable as well. Distributing child pornography online is as illegal as viewing it and this is a punishable offence. A maximum five-year sentence exists for indictable offences, while a maximum of 18 months remains for summary convictions.

Needless to say, Canadians are well aware of the horrible continuation of child pornography around the world and they want to bring it to an end. They do not want Canada to be laggards. They do not want Canada to be behind. They want Canada to be ahead on this issue but we are not. Canada's current legislation clearly hands down harsh consequences for those who break the law regarding the online sexual exploitation of children but more must be done to prevent these awful crimes.

As I briefly mentioned, Bill C-22 would implement rules that would require Internet service providers to report images of child sexual abuse. This measure is a welcome change if Canada is to directly combat the rise in Internet pornography exploiting children. The legislation reads:

This enactment imposes reporting duties on persons who provide an Internet service to the public if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence.

This is calling on the public, third parties and people on the outside to notify the ISP that they have knowledge of child pornography on sites. Think of the ISP as the carriage or the distribution conduit for child Internet pornography. This is a good thing because I do not know if there is any one agency or one government in the whole world that can adequately survey, police, patrol or keep watch on everything that is happening on the Internet with respect to child Internet pornography or sexual exploitation.

Members of the public, third parties and the many interested groups across the country that are mobilized on this issue will be given the opportunity to report them to the ISPs, and now, because of this legislation, the ISP would have the duty to report.

I also want to highlight a couple of the clauses that are interesting and important in this bill. Clause 3 reads:

If a person is advised, in the course of providing an Internet service to the public, of an Internet Protocol address or a Uniform Resource Locator where child pornography may be available to the public, the person must report that address or Uniform Resource Locator to the organization designated by the regulations, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

Clause 4 reads:

If a person who provides an Internet service to the public has reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence, the person must notify an officer, constable or other person employed—

This is the addition. One would think that the notice would be given to a police officer. That is how the Criminal Code has been written for centuries. However, this act, written by the Department of Justice, continues on to read:

—for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace of that fact, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

It widens the scope to whom the reporting can be done. In a clever way, it widens the scope of who can report and it narrows the scope of who is responsible, that is the ISP, and broadens the scope as to who should be informed.

We expect that persons employed for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace could include people under the municipalities act for bylaw enforcement. This could, under the person power of the municipalities act across this country, perhaps in an uninvaded territory and constitutional talk, give municipalities or regents the power to be firmer on issues of Internet child pornography distribution.

Clause 5 talks about a person who makes a notification under the previous clause must preserve all the data. Everybody knows that in a court of law we need to have the evidence. It is not good enough just to have a whole bunch of people watching or make the ISP basically liable to report and having the report done to a wider audience or a wider array of public police officers. The person reporting must also preserve the evidence, the electronic data, because without that there cannot be any convictions.

Clause 7 reads:

Nothing in this Act requires or authorizes a person to seek out child pornography.

In other words, the act stops in making ISPs or anybody under this act a peace officer for the purpose of investigating or going further than what is on the ISP or the URL.

Clauses 8 and 10 talk about some civil liability and some limits of liability that a civil proceeding cannot be commenced against a person for making a report in good faith, under clause 3. This goes to libel, defamation and slander.

We can see a good-natured citizen making a report of a site that is questionable. It is reported by the ISP to a peace officer but there is no conviction. However, during the course of this, maybe it leaks to the public that this is being done and it might harm someone's reputation. So, we can see a litigation chill effect that if this clause, the whole harmless clause, were not in this act maybe it would clamp down on the reporting, which would be against the purpose of the act.

In September 2008, federal and provincial ministers of justice and attorneys general, those responsible for justice in Canada, agreed that the federal legislation to establish mandatory reporting of online child pornography by Internet service providers was necessary. So, this has come from a long line of meetings with comparable justice ministers and attorneys general. It is a good step but one wonders why it was not done earlier.

We now have this legislation before the House that would apply to suppliers of the Internet to the public, those that provide electronic mail services, Internet hosting services and operators of social networking sites. There may be some concerns that the net is too wide but let us take it to committee and examine that and call in the Privacy Commissioner. Let us bring the major Internet service providers into the House of Commons committees and explain why it is not their job to report incidents of the production or the distribution of child Internet pornography. Why do we not do that? Why have we not done it sooner?

As I have demonstrated in the duties implied in Bill C-22, the legislation would require groups to report tips they receive regarding where child pornography may be available and notify police and safeguard evidence that is involved with the offence itself.

Those providers who do not comply, this is the penalty aspect, would be faced with offences of graduated fines. For individuals, the maximum first fine would be $1,000; for the second offence it would be $5,000; and for subsequent offences it would be $10,000. We must remember that these are for the reporting agencies. They are quasi-criminal, they are fines, they are structured very much like environmental offences and they are a good start.

I think at committee I might push for some criminal negligence provisions that might strengthen this act to make it even more deleterious for companies and their directors who knowingly and repeatedly fail to comply with the law, which I think is fairly reasonable.

As I stated when I first stood on this issue, child exploitation is a scourge on our community and action is long overdue. The delays because of prorogation and the delays because of other quasi-justice issues being put in the storefront first are inexcusable.

I will say, however, that all the proposed changes that I have just covered in detail, while unexamined yet by the committee, certainly appear to ensure the future safety of children and aim to eliminate the online sexual exploitation of minors. Evidence is clear that action on the part of the federal government is essential to address growing sexual exploitation of children.

The government has touted its whole law and order agenda, but it has taken four and a half years to get to this most egregious part of criminal activity, and one area of criminal activity that has seen an exponential growth and therefore an exponential increase in the harm to the community. The time to act is now.

In June 2008, waiting for federal direction and leadership, provinces took the lead. Manitoba, for instance, passed a law requiring all persons to report to Cybertip.ca any material that could constitute child pornography. Ontario has now followed Manitoba, waiting for the federal government to catch up by passing a similar law. In 2002 the United States adopted laws imposing reporting requirements on ISPs. In 2005 Australia passed laws for the same element. So, 2002, 2005, Manitoba and Ontario; we are not leading here in Parliament. The government is not leading on this issue; we are following. Taking action is evidently the right thing to do.

I would like to share some statistics with the House that convey the utter urgency with which we must protect our children from online sexual exploitation. Statistics Canada in reporting on child pornography said that clearly it is an increasing problem. There were 55 offences in 1998 and 10 years later, the number is 1,408; 55 offences as compared to 1,408.

Estimates from the federal ombudsman for the victims of crime, when we had one, would indicate there are over five million child sexual abuse images on the Internet. This is inexcusable for a country that is wealthy, inexcusable for a country that pretends to care about the rights of children, inexcusable for a government and a country that is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The crimes continue. Between 2002 and 2009, the aforementioned Cybertip.ca.ca analyzed that 57.4% of child pornography images were that of children eight years and under. Eighty-three per cent of the images were of girls. Thirty-five per cent of the images depicted severe sexual assault being inflicted on children.

The Internet, as I said before, is a difficult domain to govern; it is probably impossible, but we must make better efforts. Child pornography sites are hosted in roughly 60 countries, and the rankings are alarming.

We all have an idea how big Canada is in the world. We are a small country in population.

The country hosting the most child pornography sites is the United States, again a wealthy, northern, industrialized country that would seem, by all its political rhetoric, to care about its children. The United States hosts 49% of these websites. Forty-nine per cent of the world's child pornography sites are in the United States. Second is Russia with 20%. Remember that the United States is a very large country and a very wealthy country. Russia is a very large country.

Where would we expect Canada to sit in terms of its population, in the small ranking, let us pray? No. Canada hosts 9% of the child pornography sites in the world, and that is not a good statistic. That is why we have to pass this law. That is why it ought to have been passed sooner.

It is why the government has to do more about clamping down on Internet child pornography. It is a crime we all agree should be clamped down on. It is a crime about which we realize the government should do more. It is a crime that has so far been untended to by the communications industry, which is why I said all parties should be amenable to having all the ISPs, all the big names, say them, Google and others, in here. They should be defending why they have not done anything sooner, why they have not, on their own, cut back on their inherent knowledge, their implied knowledge, of the existence of child pornography Internet sites.

The figures are all from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Anybody who doubts the urgency of the issue should understand Canada must act immediately.

It is very difficult to determine where the images and websites are hosted, but they can be supported from different locations in the world. As such, oftentimes each photo and each site must be individually tracked, something highly difficult to achieve. Bill C-22 goes somewhere toward that, but more work must be done.

For one website depicting the sexual exploitation of children, Cybertip.ca.ca tracked it for 48 hours and the site went through 212 different Internet addresses in 16 countries. That was in two days. ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service to those computers.

We need legislation to do that. That is not in this legislation. That is not even a justice issue. That is an issue on which the government with its various departments and ministers responsible should be concentrating.

In conclusion, it is important to note that the bill does not require anyone to seek out child pornography in an attempt to shut it down, although if an Internet service provider becomes aware and notifies the police that one exists, the provider will not be subject to civil proceedings, as I mentioned earlier.

Child sexual exploitation is one of the top three concerns regarding children and society. We must support this bill, but we must do more.

The House resumed from June 15 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I was preparing to speak, I pulled my speech from the last time this bill was before the House.

It is one of a number of bills that the government has been grossly incompetent in dealing with. I say that from two vantage points. This is one of the bills that died on the order paper because of the prorogation decision by the Prime Minister in late December 2009.

It also reflects the inability of the government to deal seriously with major crime issues. It is much more concerned about using it for blatant political purposes than it is for dealing with crimes that affect a good number of Canadians, and in this case children in particular. It is much more concerned about maneuvering and manipulating the political system to its advantage, as it did with the prorogation in December, than actually dealing with the problem and the crime, and dealing with it effectively.

On top of that, in spite of all of the claims of getting tough on crime that the government makes, this issue has been before Parliament since even before it was government, but it has now been government for four years. There have been two elections. This is an identification, however, that this problem with regard to child pornography dispersed electronically, in particular, has existed for quite some time.

The government cannot claim ignorance of the reality. It certainly cannot claim to a significant degree either an unwillingness or an incapacity to deal with it and certainly to deal with it in a timely fashion.

We saw this bill before. It is identical to the one that was here before prorogation. It was Bill C-58 at that time and it is now Bill C-22. It deals with the issue of imposing a mandatory responsibility on the part of Internet service providers and other companies that provide services to the Internet, that in effect make the Internet function.

It requires both individuals and corporations, and it will be almost all corporations, to report incidents of child pornography on the programs and hardware equipment that they identify.

Before I go to more of the specifics, I want to say two things. One, as I said earlier, this bill has been required for some time. I recall in the justice committee back in 2004-05, the issue was before us. We heard some very interesting evidence at that time from our police forces and some of our prosecutors about the refusal on the part of some of these providers, private company providers, to co-operate with the police during the course of an active investigation.

It was with a good deal of anger from all members of the committee that we responded to those facts. What has happened since then is a significant increase in co-operation, in part because of the pressure by the police and the prosecutors but also by the justice committee in terms of talking to some of the major service providers in the country. So they have become more co-operative.

However, it is quite clear that they have not all done that and they have not all fully co-operated, and that they have not gone out of their way to identify sources of child pornography within their system or network and to report those.

I have to say a bit in their defence. It was not clear how much they could divulge without exposing themselves to civil lawsuits around breaches of rights of privacy.

The bill addresses some of that. One of the concerns I have is whether it is clear enough and broadly scoped enough to provide that protection. However we knew about that in 2004-2005. It was very clear what the problem was.

The other point I want to make before moving into the bill specifically is that this issue of protecting our children by imposing a responsibility on the part of adults, in particular professionals, is not new to our law. It is, I believe, the first time we will do it in the Criminal Code, but we have imposed this responsibility at the provincial level for child abuse for over 30 and almost 40 years now. We started back then in the late sixties and early seventies.

We began imposing on doctors, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and a number of groups who have extensive interaction with children in their professional lives, the responsibility that if they determine that the child has been a victim of child abuse that has to be reported either to the children's services agencies that are responsible for child protection in the region or to the police.

That legal principle of doing that is not new. In fact, as I said, it is almost four decades old in Canada at various provincial government levels. However, it will be the first time that we will do it in the Criminal Code at the federal level.

I know my colleague from Manitoba keeps making this point, but we as parliamentarians are constantly having to catch up with new electronic developments and new technological developments. This is certainly a classic example of the law running well behind what has become a major tool for purveyors of child pornography to use to send that child pornography all the way around the world.

Child pornography has been with us forever. We can find it going back into the Egyptian period, the Roman period, and further into Asia during some of those civilizations. It shows up in some of the paintings and sculptures that were created during those periods of time. Therefore, we know it has existed for a long time.

What has happened because of the Internet, because of that technological development, is the ability to spread the child pornography that is created primarily in eastern Europe and in Asia, because most of the sources are from there. The ability on the part of those organized crime syndicates to get that out across the globe has proliferated to the nth degree. I do not think we know how much more is getting out as compared to what was being processed prior to computers and certainly prior to the Internet.

That is the factual reality that we have known about, at least for the last half decade in terms of its extensive proliferation, and our police forces and prosecutors have known about it for at least another five years before that.

The bill is way overdue. What it does do is impose upon the operators of the network a very specific responsibility that if they identify it, and I want to be clear on that, if they identify it or if it comes to their attention, they have to report that to an agency that will be established under this legislation.

In that regard, it immediately begs the question of whether the government will provide the necessary resources for that agency to exist in an effective and efficient manner.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have answered so many questions that I would have liked my colleague for Hochelaga to indicate which one, although I have an idea.

What I wanted to say earlier is that the government has to stop holding press conferences to give press conferences. It has to stop holding press conferences to tell us that it is fighting crime and taking care of victims. With regard to the matter before us, Bill C-22, the House is clear and unanimous. Unless I am told otherwise, the last I heard it was unanimous: everyone here is against child pornography.

Therefore, the government must stop holding press conferences and start taking action. That is what we are debating. We have to provide the means to implement this bill as well as others. Barely one hour ago, we were discussing Bill S-2. How are they going to implement Bill S-2 if they do not provide police forces with the money to carry out their responsibilities when these bills are passed?

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, I would like to agree with him, but he has tried to pull a fast one on us because what he is saying is not true at all. In fact, that is the problem. On the question of child pornography, I have the two documents, Bill C-22 and Bill C-58. They are the same thing. Allow me to go into one of the two documents that were prepared.

At the justice committee, we examined this famous Bill C-58. With all due respect, if the government had not prorogued the session, that bill would be in force. We are entitled to expect that the government would have put procedures in place, international agreements, to put an end to child pornography. That is what we were told in committee, and allow me to review a bit of it. When that bill came to us in committee, the first witnesses who appeared before us told us: "At last, Canada has entered the 21st century." And that is not bad news.

The government has dragged its feet on this for several years when there was in fact an agreement. Governments had agreed to have a child pornography bill passed in the United States, France, England and several countries, including Canada. Quite obviously, Canada has dragged its feet. We asked the Conservatives: "What have you done?" We were told that all the impacts had to be studied. That is why they came in with Bill C-58, which is now Bill C-22. I will say right now that the Bloc Québécois agrees with this bill. Our Conservative friends are going to stop spreading it around that what we care about is defending criminals, because it is not true. This is more exaggeration, more demagoguery.

There is a section in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that clearly states that every human being whose life is in peril has the right to assistance. That has been adopted everywhere. It is part of the charter of the rights of the child adopted by the United Nations. One of those examples is child pornography. In fact, it travels exponentially, and contrary to what the parliamentary secretary said, and I will say this again: when they tell me that the service provider is important and they are going to control the one doing the distributing, that shows a very poor grasp of how the Internet works. You have to go to the sites, and obviously I am not suggesting anyone do that, to see that once a site is detected it closes down as fast as it was opened. The justice committee was told what will have to be done with this bill, it was reiterated and everyone agreed, and that is to start now to put in place what the government needs for implementing this bill. At that time we were talking about Bill C-58, which is now Bill C-22. This Bill C-22 does not change anything. It is a copy of what the government handed to us in November 2009, except that it has now been able to hold two press conferences, to say the same thing two times: that they care about victims and that on this side, which makes no sense, we do not care about children, and we are this and we are that.

Sometime the government should stop trotting out these old ideas. Everyone has heard them. I hope no one in the House is in favour of child pornography. Once that has been said, we need to take the appropriate action. What is it? It is to force Internet service providers to report people to an organization. That is where the problem lies. We asked the government if it had already started to set up this organization. Does it know who it will be? Will it be the RCMP or some other agency? There was no answer.

We agree that this bill should be studied in committee, but these questions will still have to be answered. Everyone knows the bill will not be studied in committee this session. It will be studied next session, starting September 20, unless the government prorogues Parliament or calls an election or manages in some other way to make political hay.

It will soon be a year since this bill was introduced in the form of C-58 or C-22. That is why we want our police forces to be immediate authorized to set up an action group. It is sad to say, but in order to put an end to child pornography, it is necessary to go on-line with snooping software. The RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and some other police forces have special teams and computer geniuses who can snoop and trace pornographic sites back to where they are located and installed. If they are located in Canada, it is easy to take action against them. However, legislation is needed to do so. The necessary legislation is Bill C-22, which we support.

There is a very important point that should be repeated over and over. People in Canada, Quebec and all the provinces need to know that child pornography will be diligently prosecuted. We should never yield in the face of this odious crime. There is no need to describe what child pornography is. The words speak for themselves.

It is important to remember that the increased likelihood of getting caught is much more dissuasive than increased penalties, which often seem distant and abstract. Everyone who hosts these child pornography sites should be told to watch out beginning right now because they will be hunted down thanks to a new system and they can be traced and punished.

Unfortunately, I must say very respectfully that I have not received any answers. The Bloc does not know whether the government is prepared to fulfill its obligations and implement Bill C-22. I am afraid it is not. We obviously will get back to this and agree that the bill should be studied in committee.

What is an Internet service provider? It seems to refer to people who provide an Internet access service. But who are they? Do they also provide e-mail services, website hosting services and social networking sites? It is not really clear in the current bill. Internet service providers generally means people who provide access to the Internet. Does this include Cablevision in Abitibi or Vidéotron? The bill needs to go further. We have to be able to get at e-mail, website hosting services and social networking sites. Does it include Twitter and Facebook? Will all these networks be subject to Bill C-22?

That will be the debate. The committee members were not satisfied with the government’s responses. The government said it was the responsibility of the Internet service providers, Videotron, Rogers or Bell Canada, for example. We must go farther. What we are asking the government is whether it is prepared to go onto the Twitter and Facebook sites. I give those two examples, because I think that is enough.

As members of the House, we receive between 200 and 300 messages a day. Very often we have no idea where they come from. Sometimes we see some rather special images, to put it mildly. How do we go about stopping all this? Of course I am not talking about child pornography only, but it is an example. There are also hate crimes.

The hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine has a whole series of photos against the seal hunt, which are incredibly biased and which were distributed to us over all the networks. You can imagine what the situation is with child pornography.

Many of our friends are on Facebook and Twitter. What will happen if those networks are not included? We think that it will be absolutely necessary to get answers to these questions. Since the bill will not come back before committee until next fall, the government will have time to answer these questions. We in the Bloc are even prepared to propose amendments to this effect. We must absolutely and totally eradicate the slightest possibility of access to child pornography on sites hosted in Canada. We will have to find ways of doing this. It is vital that police forces be able to implement special squads and task forces.

In this bill, there is a duty to report. Any person or group providing Internet services to the public will have to report if advised of an Internet address. The minute there is an Internet address where child pornography is available, what methods will be used to track down those responsible?

I would draw a parallel with drugs and money laundering. It is all very well to arrest the drug traffickers, but where does the laundered money go? This is how the commission of other crimes is abetted.

It is obvious to us that child pornography brings in hundreds of millions of dollars for organized crime. There is no doubt about that. The police must have effective means of dealing with this. This is something we need to come back to. Analyzing websites is fine, but once they are analyzed, how do we step in? We must and we will have to step in, not only in Canada, but also in the United States, in other countries of the Americas and even abroad. Some sites are hosted in Russia, and others in Asia. The Government of Canada, in particular, must take the leadership in signing agreements so that intelligence can be transferred very quickly and we can put a stop to this. For we know how it works.

As soon as someone realizes that they might be suspected, they close their site and open it somewhere else. The government will have to find the resources, but for the moment, unfortunately, we are not getting an answer. We absolutely have to be given answers to these questions. Otherwise, we will have passed a bill and done our job. Members are being asked to do their job: to introduce, develop and analyze legislation to combat child pornography or pedophilia sites.

Have no fear, we are going to do it. The public can rest assured that the Bloc and its colleagues in the Liberal Party and the NDP agree with the government. We are going to move forward, but the government absolutely has to find the resources and gives some speedy indications that it has given very serious thought to what has been decided at the international level to combat child pornography, which is extremely harmful to our young people.

In September 2008, the federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers agreed that Canada's response to child pornography would be strengthened by federal legislation. It has been almost two years and to date nothing has been done because the session was prorogued last fall. We resumed almost six weeks late, and so we have not been able to study the bills quickly enough.

We are in favour of Bill C-22. We believe it is necessary and it is an important tool to combat criminal organizations and crime, something we should be doing day after day, fighting the people who put our children at risk of falling victim to these kinds of crimes.

I invite my colleagues to give their opinions on this bill, but it must be passed quickly so we can study it in committee next fall. The government must not delay implementing it; it can do it.

I would like to offer some interesting statistics. In 61% of sexual assault cases reported to the police and 21% of physical assault cases, the victim was a child. Seventy-two percent of Canadians think it is easy to find child pornography on the Internet. Ninety-two percent of Canadians say they are concerned about the distribution of child pornography on the Internet, and 96% think it is important to have a service for reporting child pornography on the Internet.

In those homes where the use of Internet is not monitored, 74% of the children say that it is when they are left alone that they surf on the Internet. Moreover, 21% of them say that they have met in person someone they first got to know on the Internet.

It is urgent that Canada take its responsibility and tackles the issue of child pornography on the Internet.