Deborah Grey

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I only wish that everything could be afforded to people who are turning 19. He talks about becoming an adult at age 19, where a person is protected one day and the next he or she is not.

How about 14? Let us talk about people who are 14 years old. I taught junior high for 10 years. Fourteen is a very difficult age. We have all been there. It was not a pack of laughs when we were there and it is even that much more difficult now.

When I see potlickers preying on these young people, not at 19 when hopefully we know a few more things than we did at 14, why can we not stand up and say that other countries have it at 16 why can we not? The fact that the government continues to think that 14 is okay is very frightening.

We need to pick an age somewhere but when the hon. member says 19 in terms of adulthood, let us look at 14 and social values and how important it is to say that 14 is not old enough to determine sexual consent. Let us make it 16 and then we will worry about the 19 year olds after that.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am sure the four people the member mentioned are only four out of millions who have had great difficulty somehow adjusting. When life is great, it is hard enough, is it not, when we are talking about relationships and families and colleagues working together? Let us not pit the government against opposition. Let us just take the wall right out from along the middle here and say that we are people sitting in a circle who need to do something about this.

This is the fourth Parliament that I have sat in, Mr. Speaker, as it has been yours. What gets done? We are ready to leave because we basically have two prime ministers now and we are all more worried about that. I say that we should forget that and get on with the job of passing the motion and not just trumping ourselves for the great job we did. As my colleagues have mentioned, lots of things have been passed in the House, but let us get it done.

Let us make sure that the police say that it was not only passed but enacted so that our kids are safe, whether it is on the Internet or the physical or sexual abuse that they are going through, all these horrifying things. I ask the government to forget that it is the government. I ask all opposition members to forget they are the opposition. Let us enact this and move it ahead.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend from the other part of Saskatchewan splitting his time with me.

This is kind of a sad day. I have been sitting on House duty since 10 a.m. listening to the discussions on something that seems to me should not take a whole lot of discussion. We should have been able to put this through before morning coffee. We have been talking about it six ways to Sunday. We have been comparing it to Bill C-20. Surely we could just get this done.

Why in the world do we need to discuss perhaps the merits of Bill C-20, the merits of artistic merit, the merits of what the public good is when we see that sexual predators are allowed to do the stuff they do because they think it is all right? This is absurd.

We talk about the artistic merit of something. We could go to an art gallery. It seems to me that if we checked the heart rate and the heartbeat alone of people who are looking at art on the wall versus this kind of junk, child pornography, that ought to be enough to do it.

Some of these discussions today make me think we are talking about some volumes in the Library of Parliament. There has been so much sort of academic chat about this filth, that does not deserve to be talked about, as if it is academic stuff. Let us put it where it belongs. It is filth. It is disgusting. It is disgraceful.

I do not think we should be wasting a whole day in the House of Commons on it quite frankly. It is a sad thing that it has had to come to that.

Why can we not just pass the motion and say absolutely. However, that someone is allowed to go through the courts like Robin Sharpe and say that is just for his good, at whose expense? It is always the child who is the victim.

I can hardly believe that we would need to get into a discussion about this, about whether it is really okay or whether it is not, whether it will get distributed or whether it will get sold. Why do we need to waste time on this? I bet the people who are sitting in here can hardly believe it. Yet the minister today said Bill C-20 would look after all that.

He could turn this political and say that the opposition is just creating havoc or making a fuss. My friend from Wild Rose has been talking about this year after year after. Yet the minister does not need to worry about us. Let him listen to the Toronto Chief of Police for starts or the Canadian Bar Association. These people are not politicians. They are operating on the front lines and seeing this filth day after day.

When Paul Gillespie showed members of Parliament the kind of stuff that police officers had to look at every day, it was sickening. Somehow we can just treat this as though it is academic volumes. Shame on this House of Commons. Shame on the member over there who said earlier that with public good the cops could not have shown us that kind of stuff, that they would have been charged with it. There is some kind of logic.

Forgive me, I am blond, but I am not that dumb that they would be charged with the public good. They need this in there for defence, for showing members of Parliament how despicable this stuff is. No, they do not need any defence for public good. They need to show us that. If every member of Parliament watched this for about 45 seconds, we would not have wasted a day of debate here.

We can get this thing under control right now. When the police say that it will not curb it and when the bar association says it will not solve the problem, that is good enough for me frankly. Praise God, I do not need to look at that stuff every day.

I tell the members this. With stepchildren and with the many foster children whom I raised, I am just sick to death to see these people. These are people who these young kids know, who they are related to but most of all who they trust. These people abuse trust day after day.

Before I came here I taught school for 10 years. I understand the position of being an adult and working with children in a position of trust. I see this trust being blown apart by these people every single time they commit these wrong criminal acts. Let us put it right where it belongs. This stuff is filth. There is no way anyone can convince the victims that this has artistic merit. One just has to look at the kids who are being subjected to this. Is this somehow in the public good? I do not think they would say that.

Let us solve this today. Let the government go ahead with Bill C-20. It can trump whatever it likes. I do not care who gets credit for this. All I know is that these kids, who are innocent victims, have any number of pathetic implications that go on for the rest of their lives: sexual dysfunctions, addictions and psychological problems.

I do not know how we can stand here and have this little discussion saying that maybe Bill C-20 will be the answer if the cops and the lawyers say that it is not the answer and we should not worry about what the politicians on the other side say. We should take their word for it and do something about it.

For goodness sake, let us make sure that we call a spade a spade. It is filth. It is disgusting. These people collect it like stamps or baseball cards or something like that. It is wrong. It is criminal. It is evil. We should stand up in this place and say that it is enough already. Let us move forward with this tonight. Let us not talk about it like it is some artistic work.

I do not understand some modern art. Sometimes I stand and look at it and wonder what it is. However I would recognize every single piece of smut that is child pornography for what it is. It is wrong. It is disgusting. It is evil. Let us stand together in the House of Commons as 301 people and do something rather than just yap, yap, yap about it. Let us get this job done.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I will just introduce my remarks by thanking my partner for sharing his time with me. On a scale of one to ten, what chance does he think this has of going through.

[Supply, October 28th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his remarks and his contribution in the justice committee as well. He has been here many years and has seen legislation seemingly take forever. If we look at the street level, some of these horrifying things are still happening year after year, decade after decade.

I would like to ask him a question with regard to his comments that he just made about the court system. Who in the world can determine such a subjective thing as artistic merit and what is in the public good? I have a difficult time doing this because of course it is a sliding scale. Everybody has his or her own definition of what that might be.

It seems to me that where young children are being forced into nudity and sexual acts with adults, there is no way on God's green earth I would ever be convinced nor surely would anyone else in this chamber nor anyone in the Supreme Court of Canada nor any of the legal people that this somehow falls under artistic merit. If we look at the devastating ramifications and implications this has on children as they grow up to be adults, I think we are seeing something rampant here that in the next generation we will only know the devastation it has caused.

What is the member's feeling and what are his thoughts on the justice minister coming here this morning and ranting about how Bill C-20 will actually solve everything? In fact a press conference is going on right now in the press room with police and law enforcers saying that this is not going to cut it.

What does he think we could do to convince the justice minister that it is not just us on a political basis here saying we do not think that Bill C-20 will be the answer to all the ills, but the police themselves are saying it just will not hold up? What could we do about that?

[Committees of the House, October 22nd, 2003]

Madam Speaker, if you were watching the proceedings earlier, you would have noticed that when I presented the report of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament I had asked for concurrence in the report pursuant to Standing Order 118(1), but the government House leader was not aware of that.

I would like to say that it has been cleared with him now, and I therefore move for concurrence in that report.

[Committees of the House, October 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, as you know, I just had the pleasure of tabling the first report of the Library of Parliament. If the House gives its consent, I would move that the first report of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament presented to the House today be concurred in.

[Committees of the House, October 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament.

[Foreign Affairs, October 22nd, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, well, our so-called Prime Minister has once again failed Canada miserably on the international stage.

In response to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's recent anti-Semitic remarks that “Jews control the world by proxy”, our Prime Minister remained silent. While other world leaders reacted immediately to condemn such hateful rhetoric, our Prime Minister shook his hand and said nothing. Later our Prime Minister reported that he had told Mr. Mahathir only that his speech was not “well received” in Canada, but then went on to say that the Malaysian prime minister gave an explanation and invited everybody to read the whole speech, as if that would help. Is our Prime Minister suggesting that this is simply a matter of words taken out of context?

After two days of pressure, all our Prime Minister could muster up was “I regret today to have to use such strong words against you”. They were not strong enough. Shame.

[Petitions, October 8th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I know you and I and Polonius would agree, would we not, that brevity is the soul of wit.

I have 22,803 petitions here from people from all across the country. They are talking about preventatively using vitamins and supplements for health. I know we all understand that and appreciate it, but they are saying that they not only should be just as recorded by a pharmacist, as quoted in subsection 118.2(2)(n) of the Income Tax Act, but also that these vitamins and supplements should be GST exempt.

There are thousands here. There are thousands more coming. I will be delighted to present them when they arrive.