Justice committee  As Ms. Morency said earlier, we are seeing cases involving child pornography charges as well as contact child sexual offence charges. We are seeing that courts are more or less fairly consistently imposing consecutive sentences—not in all cases, but it seems to be a trend. Where we're seeing a little bit less consistency is in the multiple victim cases.

Justice committee  Yes. You also asked a question about the totality principle.

Justice committee  We are seeing that courts are taking note when there are multiple convictions for different offences that they would have imposed a lengthier sentence for one particular offence, but they're reducing it by a year or two in light of the totality principle.

Justice committee  Well, Bill C-36 posits that the best way to reduce the harms of prostitution is to not engage in it. That's true. That said, Bill C-36 recognizes that its ultimate objective will take time to realize, and during that time it has been informed by the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Bedford.

Justice committee  As the parliamentary secretary says, the main objective of Bill C-36 is to reduce the prevalence of prostitution with a view to ultimately abolishing it to the greatest extent possible. In no way does Bill C-36 seek to facilitate, allow, or condone prostitution. It doesn't criminalize the sale, that's true.

Justice committee  That goes back to the initial position, the objective of the bill. It's not trying to facilitate prostitution.

Justice committee  That said, it doesn't criminalize the implementation of certain safety measures. It doesn't prevent people who sell from implementing those safety measures that Bedford has outlined. We always have to go back to the main objective of the bill. It posits that prostitution is a form of sexual exploitation.

Justice committee  You are.

Justice committee  I would direct the committee's attention to the technical paper that was tabled by the Minister of Justice on the first day of committee hearings, in particular, to page 5, which goes over all of the extensive jurisprudence on the meaning of “sexual services for consideration” and “prostitution”, which, of course, is defined as “the exchange of sexual services for a payment”.

Justice committee  Prostitution has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in its 1990 prostitution reference. I would just note that Bill C-36 doesn't propose to use the term “prostitution” other than in its preamble.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes, it was an unnecessary addition, so we're removing it.

Justice committee  I think he spoke fairly to the amendment. These are preparatory offences, child sexual preparatory offences. The concern was to ensure that a person who committed a preparatory offence with the intention of committing a prostitution-related offence against a child would always be caught regardless of when the offence was committed.

Justice committee  Well, it was an error.

Justice committee  The intention was to ensure that somebody who commits a preparatory sexual offence against a child, after Bill C-36 is enacted, would be caught. Therefore, we put the historical offences...listed them in, but subsequently, in terms of the intense review that we always do again and again, and consultations with crown, who actually of course apply these offences, we came to the conclusion that it wasn't necessary.