Justice committee  This is not my area of expertise, but I can try to help you a bit in terms of the sentencing options. Basically, the committee will know that Bill C-27 proposes some reforms to the dangerous offender provisions. That's one provision, or regime or framework, that exists within th

Justice committee  I think you have to look at how the luring offence works in terms of what's legal for young people to engage in with other peers. The age of consent to sexual activity is currently 14. Peers can engage in sexual activity, and they could engage in a similar kind of consensual type

Justice committee  No. Again, the luring offence not only piggybacks on the sentences that are provided in the enumerated offences, but it also is superimposed on the existing age of consent regime. So in your example that you give me, a 12- or 13-year-old can consent to engage in sexual activity w

Justice committee  I will draw your attention to one point of clarification. When the luring offence was brought in, the difficulty was in trying to have enough evidence before the actual contact offence was committed. That was the difficulty with arguing section 152 as an attempt, because you had

Justice committee  Yes and no. On the one hand, yes, because some of the offences are still going to have a maximum of five years, but the sexual exploitation in section 153 has now been increased to 10 years on indictment. I think as well that case law has evolved. Our experience and understandi

Justice committee  That's correct.

Justice committee  I think you are referring to chat rooms. Indeed, the type of communication referred to in rulings concerning the luring of children often involve chat room discussions.

Justice committee  Yes.

Justice committee  Yes, or the abduction provision or one of the others.

Justice committee  They were having to try to show that it was an attempt to commit one of those offences.

Justice committee  In that case, the mitigating factors and aggravating circumstances were quite significant. The accused had been in pre-sentence custody, suffered a number of assaults, and was expecting that this would happen again with the period of imprisonment. The accused was engaged in a per

Justice committee  I think I'm in a difficult position in terms of trying to comment on that in the case of Bill C-9. It may be an issue, for example, that gets considered in the other place, in its review of Bill C-9.

Justice committee  If I may, I will respond in English. The offence of luring requires the Crown to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused communicated for the purpose of committing one of the enumerated offences. The example you give involves offences under section 151, which specifies

Justice committee  No, and in particular following the reforms that were enacted as part of the former Bill C-2, raising the sexual exploitation offence from five to ten years at the maximum, it is consistent.

Justice committee  Unfortunately, it is almost four years since we had this before us. It's not enough time to get statistics through the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, so the numbers not are really helpful in explaining how many cases. There are a handful of statistics from 2003-04, whi