Let the judges take the heat and let the lawyers be called the dogs of the day for arguing the cases. The fact of the matter is that when we hire lawyers we want our lawyers to represent us to the best of their ability, and then the judge makes the decision.
However, when the decision goes against the good of children, of all people, certainly the government should have the intestinal fortitude or the guts to make the change to protect our children, but it does not. It goes along and tries to pass another bill, which I am sure it will get through, Bill C-20.
Bill C-20 fails to set a clear standard on the issue of the age of consent for adult-child sexual relationships. In other words, we allow our 14 year old children to be bought and paid for by some 60 year old, and we do nothing about it. We have become known in the world as protectors of the child sex trade.
I have had the unfortunate opportunity of seeing some of these programs that the police are so concerned about. Fourteen is at the high end of the age spectrum. These videos show three year olds and four year olds. They are sick and they are sickening. Yet time after time when we find these people and law enforcement collects enough evidence and is finally allowed to bring these people to court, they are let off with a slap on the wrist and we say that we can change these people or the way they do business in regard to child pornography.
I have heard the excuse of artistic merit. Nobody with any reasoning is going to argue about a drawing in a doctor's office, for God's sake, yet I have heard members, and I even have heard the minister, stand up and say that is reason the government wants to have this in the bill. What a load of garbage. It is a doctor's office. We know that doctors have drawings and pictures of body parts, so that does not wash with the public out there.
What does get the public angry is that when these people are sentenced they can go right through the whole system without treatment and be allowed to go back onto the street. They are allowed back onto the street to ply their trade, and that is all it is. These people are in it for the money and are using our children to make the money. They go through the prison system without even having to sit one day to understand what is wrong with their trade.