An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act

This bill is from the 37th Parliament, 2nd session, which ended in November 2003.

Sponsor

Martin Cauchon  Liberal

Status

Report stage (House), as of Nov. 6, 2003
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

The Library of Parliament has written a full legislative summary of the bill.

Similar bills

C-2 (38th Parliament, 1st session) Law An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act
C-12 (37th Parliament, 3rd session) An Act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Bill numbers are reused for different bills each new session. Perhaps you were looking for one of these other C-20s:

C-20 (2022) Law Public Complaints and Review Commission Act
C-20 (2021) An Act to amend the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador Additional Fiscal Equalization Offset Payments Act
C-20 (2020) Law An Act respecting further COVID-19 measures
C-20 (2016) Law Appropriation Act No. 3, 2016-17
C-20 (2014) Law Canada-Honduras Economic Growth and Prosperity Act
C-20 (2011) Law Fair Representation Act

Child PornographyOral Question Period

February 14th, 2003 / 11:40 a.m.


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Northumberland Ontario

Liberal

Paul MacKlin LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, the introduction of Bill C-20 was clearly brought forward to deal with matters of this nature.

Specifically, Bill C-15A, which is already in force, is being acted upon and will be used in matters of this kind, for it will not only allow for a better prosecution process, but will allow a judge to remove all of that material from the computer database.

We believe that we are doing the job. We will get it done and make sure that child pornographers do not get a foothold there.

Child PornographyOral Question Period

February 14th, 2003 / 11:35 a.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Darrel Stinson Canadian Alliance Okanagan—Shuswap, BC

Mr. Speaker, here is something else Bill C-20 does not address.

Michael Parfrement was caught selling child pornography over the Internet. Police found a huge collection of child porn on his computer. This pervert got only 14 months of house arrest.

Why does the government continue to stand on the side of pedophiles and perverts, and against the children of our nation?

JusticeOral Question Period

February 14th, 2003 / 11:30 a.m.


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Northumberland Ontario

Liberal

Paul MacKlin LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, it is very important that the hon. member understand that we are taking many important steps and that all of these steps, when put together, are very effective in dealing with child pornography.

We have brought forward legislation in Bill C-20 that brings only one defence against child pornography. We have taken away the defence of artistic merit. In fact, it is going to be a very effective way of dealing with those who would be child pornographers. We are here to protect our children.

JusticeOral Question Period

February 14th, 2003 / 11:30 a.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Vic Toews Canadian Alliance Provencher, MB

Mr. Speaker, why does the member not speak to police instead of bureaucrats?

Instead of protecting children in Bill C-20, the justice minister has refused to raise the age of consent for adult-child sex from age 14. He has failed to effectively eliminate all defences for child pornography. He has failed to eliminate house arrest for child predators.

Why will the justice minister not do the right thing? Why will he not finally change the law to protect our children?

JusticeOral Question Period

February 14th, 2003 / 11:30 a.m.


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Northumberland Ontario

Liberal

Paul MacKlin LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, our child pornography laws are among the toughest in the world, unquestionably so. We have continued to follow up. For example, Bill C-15A is now in force and deals with Internet luring. We have increased penalties within proposed Bill C-20. I think we are doing a fine job. We are doing our utmost to protect those children, who are a priority with this government.

JusticeOral Question Period

February 14th, 2003 / 11:30 a.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Vic Toews Canadian Alliance Provencher, MB

Mr. Speaker, the justice system is a mess and the justice minister is not helping. The courts have consistently failed to protect victims even where maximum allowable sentences are raised.

Under Bill C-20, child predators will still be entitled to house arrest instead of prison. When will the minister give Canadian children the protection they need by establishing minimum sentences for child predators?

Assisted Human Reproduction ActGovernment Orders

February 11th, 2003 / 10:30 a.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Gerry Ritz Canadian Alliance Battlefords—Lloydminster, SK

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to join my colleagues in speaking to Bill C-13 on human reproductive technologies. It is one of the most controversial pieces of legislation that we will deal with in this session of Parliament, and my colleagues have touched on that point. It really does divide Canadians on the direction we should take. What can be more important than how Parliament approaches the subject of science and human reproduction on behalf of our constituents, Canadian society as a whole? There is a fine line between those.

The Alliance supports some of the aspects of the bill. As in any Liberal legislation that I have seen in the two terms I have been here, there is always a bit of good mixed in with a lot of bad. The trick always is to try to separate the wheat from the chaff and come up with legislation that is in the best interest of Canadians.

We fully support, for example, the ban on human and therapeutic cloning. I think everyone across the country wants feels the same. On animal-human hybrids, why would anyone want to go there? Sex selection, germ line alteration, buying and selling of embryos and paid surrogacy are the types of things that people are e-mailing my office about, by the hundreds. Our e-mails are lighting up.

The petitions I have seen tabled in the House in regard to this legislation rival other issues such as the young offenders bill and things like that when Canadians leapt to their feet and said that they wanted changes. They are trying to get changes to this legislation before it becomes law.

Work has been done with non-embryonic adult stem cells. When we talk about adult stem cells, we are even talk about cells from an umbilical cord. A lot of people would think that it is part and parcel of the embryo but it is not. It is considered to contain adult stem cells. There have been tremendous advances made in research along that line and tremendous good has been done. They are finding less rejection with adult stem cells as opposed to embryonic cells. It is a tremendous dilemma.

We also see in the legislation a huge flaw. We see it again and again in some of the legislation that the government brings down. It is a failure to look after the best interests of children as its first priority. The government talks the talk but it does not walk the walk. We saw that in Bill C-20 that was tabled recently. The legislation is meant to protect children but a clause on artistic merit on child pornography has been left in the legislation and the age of consent has been left at 14 of age.

We see the same theme coming through in this bill where the best interests of our kids are not looked after. Under the bill, children conceived through donated sperm or eggs do not have the right to know the identity of their biological parents. We see that as a huge loophole. The donor offspring community gave moving testimony at the Commons' health committee on the need to fill in the missing gaps of their lives. People need to know their history. All of us use that as a foundation. That is what defines us as individuals in society. To leave that out is a huge and glaring hole.

We also have grave concerns over the accountability. The bill allows the minister to give any policy direction she likes to the agency, which she hand picks, and it must follow without question. We have seen that in other legislation where order in council does this, the minister has the right to do that and there is no overview. As parliamentarians, we represent our constituents.

All Canadians are represented by an MP whether they like it or not. We have seen things go astray when ministers have that type of power. We have seen that with the gun registry and in other failed ambitious legislation that those guys take on, where they give ministers sole discrepancy and they hand pick folks they like. We have seen things go off the rails in no time at all. We see that as a huge stumbling block. Whether one likes the legislation, that would be grounds enough to say “Wait a minute, let us take another look at this”, and we should.

Making the agency fully independent and accountable to Parliament as a whole would curb the political appetite that seems to permeate a lot of these things. It would ensure in the long run that it would serve the needs, aspirations and desires of Canadians.

Those two points alone would be enough for anyone of conscience to say that we have to step back and take a look at this.

Having scientists study and propose experimental methods for creating human life disturbs many Canadians. That has been shown in the petitions, e-mails and letters which we have all received. I know we are in the neighbourhood of approaching a thousand hits on this, just since the bill was tabled.

The problem with this legislation is it lets the genie out of the bottle. It is a reality with which we have to deal. The rest of the world is taking steps and moving in certain directions. The Americans have taken a certain direction as have the Europeans. As I pointed out, our Canadian legislation has some large flaws in it. We have problems and concerns with it.

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops sent a memorandum to every MP. In its presentation to the Standing Committee on Health the conference outlined its vision of a human embryo as a human being who should be protected as a person.

The bishops are of the mindset, and always have been, that an embryo from the point of conception is a human being. Many people would argue this but that is a reality. Even the scientists who came before the health committee said that. An embryo is of no use to them if it is not alive.

By giving the green light to research on embryos that remain after fertility treatments, Bill C-13 fails to protect the human embryo. We see that as a huge flaw.

The Canadian Conference of Bishops is urging members of Parliament to strengthen Bill C-13 by amending it to prohibit research on embryos. We have had tremendous inroads and great gains on adult stem cell research. We do not have to use embryos. It is just that it is easy.

The conference of bishops made several points and I would like to review a couple more. Some argue that the embryos that remain after fertility treatments will die anyway, so why not do some good. We have heard that line from several different sources.

It is not necessary that we do something with these embryos so that some good or meaning will be given to their lives. They have already had meaning in their lives simply because they are intrinsically human, which also means from a faith perspective that they are known and loved by God. That is what the Catholic bishops said. I cannot disagree with that and I do not think anybody can.

It is unnecessary to search for meaning on their behalf, especially when such a search is really nothing more than a way of justifying the decision to release human embryos for research purposes. The bishops are saying that it is not required and that there is no need for embryonic stem cell research.

The Minister of Health, in speaking to the bill at second reading, said, “outlaw the creation of human clones whether for purposes of reproduction or research”.

Some questions have been raised as to whether the bill does exactly that. Does the bill go where she intends it to go? Are there some weasel words in there and some wiggle room that again we will see this challenged in the courts? We seem to be making laws for lawyers again and again. At the end of the day does this serve Canadians well? The Alliance does not think so.

The bishops are urging members of Parliament to ensure that the bill captures all forms and possibilities of cloning. Do not leave any wiggle room is what the Catholic bishops are saying. I do not think anybody can argue with that. They have put a lot of study and a lot of time into that.

I have an article that was in the Ottawa Citizen on February 10. Françoise Baylis, a medical ethics and philosophy professor, says that she has done some study on that. She suggests that the federal government could face a possible shortage from heavy pressure from Canadian researchers to remove any ban on the creation of human embryos for research purposes. She is saying that there will not be enough embryos.

At the end of the day her argument is a little self-serving. She is looking for a cash grant from the federal government to study this. It is a little bit more self-serving. She is raising the alarm so that she can go in and fill the void. We have certainly seen that done at government levels for that matter. They create a crisis and then they rush in as the white knights saying that they are there to help. It is a cause and effect situation. I do not think there is a lot of credibility in that treatise which was put forward.

Part of the situation we find ourselves in with a lot of what it out there is that we have been talking about this for 10 years. In that 10 years a lot of people have questioned if we have we got it right. I quoted some of the comments of the Catholic bishops. Many people from my riding and across the country have written me and have said the very same thing. They have asked if we have got it right? I guess at this point I would have to say we do not.

When we look at the number of amendments that have come forward on the bill, and a lot of good points in those amendments, will they be taken seriously? Will the minister, in her monopoly on handling this, take a look at those amendments? Will the minister agree that they strengthen the bill and make the bill better? Will she agree to vote those amendments through?

Child PornographyOral Question Period

February 10th, 2003 / 2:50 p.m.


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Outremont Québec

Liberal

Martin Cauchon LiberalMinister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, first the hon. member should have a look at Bill C-20.

Let us start with Bill C-15A, which now of course actually is the legislation in Canada that we have been using. We are talking about Internet luring. The hon. member as well should recognize that in this country we have one of the toughest laws in the world. With Bill C-20, we are going to be even more effective and more efficient.

What the hon. member should do first is read the bill and, second, support the bill so it can become law in Canada as quickly as we can do it.

Canada Transportation ActPrivate Members' Business

February 10th, 2003 / 11:55 a.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Myron Thompson Canadian Alliance Wild Rose, AB

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to stand and thank a member of Parliament, my Alliance Party colleague from Lethbridge, for putting children and their safety first and most important in decision making in this place. I know you are aware, Mr. Speaker, that this is something I have been pushing for quite some time with regard to the terrible atrocities that are going on in this country, where people are abusing children left and right through child pornography. They are child cripplers and child abusers, yet in the 10 years I have been here we have not had any legislation of any nature coming forward from that side of the House to deal with these problems.

I cannot understand how people can deliver throne speech after throne speech, budget speech after budget speech, talking about all the wonderful things the government is going to implement to protect our children, and still make the same comments in the same speeches as we go from year to year. Nothing is happening.

Thank goodness we have people like the member for Lethbridge who, when he says he wants to do something to protect our children, does it. I am glad he was lucky enough to hit a draw in order to present it. I have several bills, along different lines, to protect children and I cannot seem to get the luck of the draw. It is unfortunate that this is the way it operates.

What I cannot understand is why anyone in the House, on this side or the far side, does not say when we have a bill before us that does protect children, “Let us do what we can to work together to make sure that is what happens”. Instead I can guarantee that members will stand on their feet, vote no on this and that will be the end of it. We will hear no more in the future from anyone over there or anywhere else because it has already been dealt with in what I think is a very unfair fashion.

We should start recognizing the important things in this country that we want to and have to deal with. We should put the protection of children on the table and say, “Yes, this is one thing we can all agree on”. For heaven's sake let us work together and start doing all we can to protect our children's safety, because there are tens of thousands of young kids in Canada who are being abused. More and more every day are being added to the list because we just do not do anything.

Here is an opportunity to take one small step to protect kids. We should support the bill and fix whatever might be wrong with it to make it better to implement. We should work together to do that and not just say no to a principle and an idea that is so essential. I for one am really tired of a group of adults, grandparents and parents, who sit in here year after year and do not bring forward anything to deal with the problem, except Bill C-20 which is supposed to get rid of artistic merit and does not because we are going to replace it with “public good”. It is all nonsense. Let us start getting some common sense in our brains and be determined. We should sit in our chairs and say that children in this country are in dire need of being better protected and let us make up our minds that we are going to do it.

I thank the member for Lethbridge for making the effort. It is too bad that we have people who will not support an effort of this nature.

Child PornographyOral Question Period

February 7th, 2003 / 11:50 a.m.


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Outremont Québec

Liberal

Martin Cauchon LiberalMinister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, as the House knows, we have tabled Bill C-20, which touches on the question of protecting our children. We all know that it is our top priority.

In that bill we touch on the question of defence, following the Sharpe decision. As well, we create a new offence to offer increased protection to our children, our young between 14 and 18 years of age. Also, we have tougher sentencing.

I recommend the hon. member read the bill.

Child PornographyOral Question Period

February 7th, 2003 / 11:50 a.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, we have presented thousands of petitions, with thousands of names, in which Canadians are calling for an end to child pornography.

Bill C-20, the government's current legislation, does nothing to strengthen the law. It is just a rewording of current legislation that does not work. That is why we are getting the petitions.

Why does the Liberal government continue to introduce ineffective half measures that simply do not protect our children?

Child PornographyOral Question Period

February 7th, 2003 / 11:30 a.m.


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Outremont Québec

Liberal

Martin Cauchon LiberalMinister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada

Mr. Speaker, the protection of our children is of course the top priority on this side of the House. The question of public safety is also a top priority for the government.

If members are interested in this topic, they should look at the bill that we have tabled, Bill C-20, which talks about the protection of our children, as well as the protection of the most vulnerable people in our society. In that bill we talk about changing the defence of artistic merit following the Sharpe case in B.C. We are talking as well about a tougher sentencing regime. They should be supporting--

Criminal CodeGovernment Orders

February 3rd, 2003 / 6:25 p.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Ken Epp Canadian Alliance Elk Island, AB

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to be able to stand in defence of children today. I share the concerns and the outrage of many of my colleagues at the total inaction on the part of the government to protect children.

The member who just spoke for the Liberal Party has urged us to support Bill C-20 because, in his words, it is a step in the right direction. Well, I am going to urge all members of Parliament, including the Liberals, to vote against Bill C-20 because it is such a tepid step. It is almost nothing. It is as if we were on our way to Edmonton from Ottawa. We are facing west but we are going to take only a small step forward. We might as well vote against it because it really has not done anything.

In fact, if we were to analyze Bill C-20, we would find that all it does is change the words for some of the defences that are used when charged with this crime and it does not strengthen anything. In fact, in some areas I believe it substantially weakens it.

I have on occasion been told that real men do not cry, that real men do not eat quiche, and things like that, but I have to confess, and I do this rather unashamedly, that I have in the last couple of years actually cried on occasion for our country because of the lack of leadership in a whole bunch of areas but mostly because of the lack of moral leadership. We have no moral leadership all the way from the Prime Minister down to the ministers and the backbenchers on the government side.

We have Shawinigan shenanigans but it does not matter. The Prime Minister just says that he is doing his job. Yet we have accusations and charges. A whole bunch of people are under investigation into the misuse of money in Quebec on advertising. That is okay. That will blow over. The Liberals will get their party people to do the spin doctoring on that and that wave of negative reporting will disappear and they will move on.

That is unconscionable. There is no moral leadership, no moral anchor. We no longer have a leadership that guides in what is right and what is wrong. It has degenerated to the point where when it comes to things as obscene as the sexual abuse of children, here we are, a bunch of men and women, adults, most of us moms and dads, many of us grandparents, and we are not ready to stand up and say that we are not going there, period.

The other night I woke up. I was not at home. I was visiting my suffering mother in Saskatchewan who was recovering from the shock of having buried her husband of 67 and a half years and healing a broken hip. I guess I was probably a little emotional, having spent some time with her cleaning up some of the things in the house. This became part of my newspaper column in the local paper in Sherwood Park. It happens to me occasionally that I wake in the night and cannot go back to sleep. That happened at 2:23 a.m. I got to thinking about a whole bunch of things, including the imminent resumption of Parliament, I was wondering what would be on the Liberal agenda at the time and I contemplated what would be my highest priority.

Thinking about my family and my grandchildren, I had an inspiration which I wrote down. It was about 2:30 when this happened. The wheels were turning. I got out of bed, warmed up my computer and wrote my newspaper column at 2:30 in the morning. This was my inspiration. This was how I worded it, “Notwithstanding any Liberal interpretation of the charter, any person who knowingly creates, possesses, stores, distributes, sells or gives away any depiction, description or image of any child in a sexual abusive act or state in any form whatsoever, including but not limited to photographs, writings, computer images or files, is guilty of a federal offence and subject to imprisonment of a minimum of 25 years”. That was what I came up with at 2:30 in the morning a couple of weeks ago.

That is how passionately I feel about this. My young grandchildren should be protected. Everyone's children and grandchildren look to this place for leadership. Is it here? No. The government wants us to support this tepid, half a step bill that it labels child protection. It is not willing to say that this is simply not acceptable and that if people do it they will not be permitted to get away with it. I do not know why we are so timid in this area.

The other thing that occurs to me is that the Liberals are playing politics with this. I will explain how this is happening. Watch what happens in the next election. I do not know about my colleagues, but I will be voting against the bill because it does not touch the problems. It is not because we are not facing in the right direction. It is because we are not going anywhere.

I can already see the Liberal political tactic. In the next election the Liberals will ask the community of Elk Island not to vote for the incumbent because he voted against Bill C-20, the child protection legislation. The Liberals have done that before and they will do it again. They are planning an election campaign on the backs, if I can say it that way, of our innocent children. That is despicable. I cannot believe we have degenerated to such a low level.

I do not see any reason in the world why we cannot invoke the entire Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There was a lot of wisdom in the people of that day. In one step they put in the notwithstanding clause in order to protect against a court that would misinterpret the intentions of Parliament. Surely the writers of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms did not say that they wanted to have it in order to permit people to become predators of our children. We are irresponsible in this Parliament if we do not invoke that clause in the charter which was put there specifically so we could do that.

I would have much more to say except for limitations of time, but I would like to move an amendment as this point. I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefor:

Bill C-20, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act, be not now read a second time but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

I will say in closing that the purpose is to strengthen the bill so that we can stand up in front of future generations and say that we actually did something tangible for the children of our country.

Criminal CodeGovernment Orders

February 3rd, 2003 / 6 p.m.


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Canadian Alliance

Chuck Strahl Canadian Alliance Fraser Valley, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to enter into the debate.

To carry on with the theme of the member for Okanagan—Coquihalla and the citation he raised, it was also said, “Whatever you do unto the least of these, you have done unto me”. That is also very much a lesson to all of us.

All of us here in the House take children and the protection of children as a special obligation or at least we should take it as a special obligation. We should realize that failing to do so will be partly how we will be judged as an organization in the years to come. Did we get the job done? Did we do what was necessary to protect our children?

The Liberal government's track record to date on the protection of children has not been good. I think of the efforts by my colleague from Langley—Abbotsford who brought forward a motion demanding that the House move ahead with the sex offender registry. That is just one of many things we could talk about, the Divorce Act and many others things.

Specifically on that one issue, the member for Langley—Abbotsford brought forward the proposal in a supply day motion. The House debated it and we passed the motion. We basically forced the hand of the Liberals because they never would have done it on their own. They finally brought forward a sex offender registry of sorts but it does not apply to anybody who is in jail. It is not retroactive. From here on they will be more concerned about making sure sex offenders are registered so we know where they are, what they are doing and making sure they are not reoffending and so on. However the ones who are already in jail start off with a clean slate.

It is ridiculous. It shows a lack of understanding of the chronic abusers of children who need to be monitored and need to be protected from themselves. More important, we need to protect the innocent children. We could not even get that right. Even after we passed a motion in this place to protect children, it got watered down. The Liberals use weasel words. They do half measures, half steps and in the end the provinces pass their own legislation because the federal legislation is not effective. There is a hodge-podge and a grab bag of solutions from coast to coast in different provinces because the provinces gave up. They waited for the federal government to show leadership and it has not done it.

Another example is the law we passed that deals with people who travel abroad to have sex with children. That is seen as a problem and the international community condemns it of course. We all stood here and condemned it so the government passed legislation saying that people who had these so-called vacations for sexual purposes with children would face the courts, face the law and face the wrath of the Canadian parliamentary system.

We warned the Liberals when they brought in that legislation that it was completely ineffective. We told them it would not work. How many prosecutions have there been under that law? How many convictions? There have been zero convictions. How many prosecutions? Not a one. Why? Because they are half measures, watered down, half-baked ideas that do not put the children first, but put so many obstacles and so many steps in front of law enforcement officials that they have not even tried to prosecute somebody on something that is, according to the United Nations and other international groups, a chronic problem in places like Thailand and other countries. There has not been one prosecution and not one conviction. The record is abysmal.

When we think of priorities, things the Liberals could be doing and should be doing, there should be emphasis on law enforcement and intercepting pornography. We have talked a lot about that today. What has the government done? It has eliminated the ports police. The ports are where people bring pornography into the country, and the government took the police out of the system. Now there is a conduit for pornography to come into the country. The government thinks nothing of it. It says it is not important enough.

The record on this is abysmal. It is especially abysmal because we are dealing with child protection. The Liberals cannot point to a single thing they have done. They cannot even get the Divorce Act right, which is a simple thing. We talked about protecting children.

We had an all party committee that gave a report called For the Sake of the Children , which had specific recommendations on how to protect kids in the case of family breakdown. The Liberals cannot even implement the For the Sake of the Children report in the House because they water it down with half-baked measures and little timid steps and say that maybe they can think about it. Nine years I have been in this place and they are still talking like that: It is just pathetic.

I do not know why they do not take some bold steps so that maybe a year or two later they could say they would have to have to back off on those steps a little, that maybe they were a little too strict, or maybe they would have to fight with the courts about it and find proper way. They do not even take a measure. They do not push it in the courts. They do not challenge court decisions. They sit back and wait for something to happen as if it will solve itself. Instead, the problems continue to get worse. It is a sad state that describes well Liberal inaction, lack of vision, lack of purpose, and no sense of the role of a parliamentarian, which is first and foremost to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

We are supposed to be grateful because Bill C-20 is at least tabled in the House and is at least called child protection. I am not convinced that it actually is going to do the job of protecting children. It is a timid first step. It does not boldly go where no one has gone before; it is a timid little step. For example, they are saying that, and the exact wording is here, they are going to change the law to protect kids who get abused when someone is “in a relationship with a young person that is exploitative of the young person”. They are saying that this will be an extra tough rule that they will bring in now.

There is already a law against people abusing positions of trust and authority. We already have laws on the books to prosecute and throw people in the hoosegow when they do that sort of thing, but they are just not effective. They are not working.

My colleagues have read out examples about people who abuse the trust of children, who spread pornography that is showing more abuse of children, who are recruiting people into this pornography business. Who knows what effect this is having on families and children? We can only imagine. What do they get? They get conditional sentencing.

I think we just throw that phrase out expecting people who are watching to understand what conditional sentencing is. Conditional sentencing, let me say to folks, means that a person does not go to jail. If a person has been watching pornography at home and spreading it around to other Internet users, conditional sentencing means that the person gets to go back into that home and spend more time there. That is the penalty. It is no penalty at all.

Criminal CodeGovernment Orders

February 3rd, 2003 / 5:40 p.m.


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Canadian Alliance

David Anderson Canadian Alliance Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK

One of my colleagues says it sounds like Lightning. Actually, it sounds also like the government. I believe the government is stumbling. We see it in almost every aspect of the government today. We saw it during question period and afterward in a number of different areas. We see it in areas such as the gun registry and the fact that the minister himself has gone outside and has paid a company to produce a report that he hopes will be favourable to his department.

We saw it in discussions about GST fraud. This is a government that for 10 years has been unable and unwilling to even deal with the issue of people defrauding the general public of taxpayer dollars.

We saw it during the last week or so with the government's inability to take a position on Iraq that anyone could possibly understand.

We see it in agriculture with the APF and an agriculture minister and a department. It is within two months of a new seeding season and they do not have the programs in place. They have had two years to put those programs in place.

We see it with a public works minister who is busy appointing committees and getting MPs to delay the release of reports, trying to delay as long as possible an inquiry into the government's contracting and its actions there.

We also see it for the one who would be the leader, the member for LaSalle—Émard, who was in Alberta this past weekend. I thought it was the height of hypocrisy to hear him speak about how he wanted to put money into the military after he gut it for 10 years. He wanted to call the government to accountability on the gun registry, when he was the one who had been funding it to the tune of a billion dollars over the last 10 years.

In Bill C-20 we see another example of a government that is completely disinterested and unable to come up with good legislation. Today we have heard from perhaps two members out of 170 on the government side. They do not seem to even be interested in coming to discuss the issue and debating it with us.

I guess the government's best response today, and I do not even know if I should go there, was from the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot. He said that his biggest fear was that this law would somehow interfere with freedom of speech.

I found it interesting that the best example he could use was Romeo and Juliet . I find it typical of small “l” Liberals. They take an extreme example and then try to make a rule from it. In this situation we have heard someone talk about child pornography, then equate that somehow Romeo and Juliet is tied to that.

Police officers who came and spoke to us did not talk about Romeo and Juliet . They talked about small children and babies that were forced to have oral sex with adults. They did not talk about Romeo and Juliet . They talked about small children who were being raped by adults. They did not talk about Romeo and Juliet . They talked about small children being held down while adults masturbate on them.

It makes me very angry when I hear someone say that the issue in this legislation is freedom of speech. It is not. It is child abuse and child exploitation. There is no excuse. What do we have to do? How long do we have to talk about this? How long does it have to go on before there is action on this issue?

We try to keep this as clinical as possible and keep it as far away as possible. However, when the police come here and show us that material, we know that something needs to be done. Perhaps that material needs to be shown at a Liberal caucus meeting some Wednesday. Maybe then they will realize these are real kids who are being destroyed by these people.

What is wanted? When we go to Canadians, the first thing we hear is that they want a clear definition of pornography. We are the people who are supposed to legislate the law in the land.

It is good to ban child pornography but we need to do something with it. What is it? I will read the past definition of what child pornography, the defence for it and how it changes.

The previous version of child pornography, as found in subsection 163.1 of the Criminal Code, reads:

--(a) a photographic, film, video or other visual representation, whether or not it was made by electronic or mechanical means,

(i) that shows a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or

(ii) the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction, for a sexual purpose, of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of eighteen years; or

(b) any written material or visual representation that advocates or counsels sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence under this Act.

The condition is it has to be an offence under this act.

The defence, which everyone is getting more familiar with all the time, is that where the accused is charged with an offence under the subsections, the courts shall find the accused not guilty if the representation or written material that is alleged to constitute child pornography has, those famous words, “artistic merit”, or an educational, scientific or medical purpose.

The changes are actually fairly small in terms of the definition. We are just adding a part to it. At the end of the section, we will simply add that it also includes:

any written material the dominant characteristic of which is the description, for a sexual purpose, of sexual activity with a person under the age of eighteen years that would be an offence under this Act.

I want to point that out because it does not say that it has to be just anything that involves this.

The defence is changed to:

No person shall be convicted of an offence under this section if the acts that are alleged to constitute the offence, or if the material related to those acts that is alleged to contain child pornography serve the public good or do not extend beyond what serves the public good...

My colleague, the member for Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, said this earlier. There is no definition of public good in the legislation. We need to talk about that. The Supreme Court has already ruled on this. It has extended the definition of public good beyond the old definition. The public good includes issues that deal with religion, administration of justice, administration of science, literature, works of art, or other objects of general interest. It looks to me like the government has actually broadened what will be included in the definition of child pornography, not narrowed it.

We have asked the government time and again to ban this stuff and get rid of it. We do not need it around. Then it comes back with a bill that, according to a five to two Supreme Court decision, will broaden the definition of what will be allowed and broadens the number of exemptions for this material. Canadians want a clear definition. They do not want to be fooling around, they want this stuff banned.

Canadians also are asking for a ban on child pornography. Every member in the House who has been paying attention to their constituents has probably brought one of these petitions forward. It clearly states, “Your petitioners call upon Parliament to protect our children by taking all necessary steps to ensure that all materials which promote or glorify pedophilia or sado-masochistic activities involving children are outlawed”. We have seen hundreds and hundreds of these petitions and tens of thousands of signatures. The government must at some point begin to listen to its people.

The public demand, brought about partially through the Sharpe case and through widespread public revulsion, is that people want this material banned. They are not interested in artistic merit or anything else with regard to this material. The average person just wants rid of it.

We also hear that police officers need help. We heard it in the media and we heard it when they came here to talk to us. They brought some of this material for us to see, and they need help in a couple of areas.

First, they need help in dealing with the evidence. Presently they have to go through every image they confiscate. Some of these collections, from what we are told, have 200,000, 500,000 or 750,000 images. Police have to take the manpower to sit and go through every one of the images, detail them and ensure that every one of them fits the criteria that the government set out. We say they need some help with this. They need a situation where they do not have to go through this material ad nauseam.

Presently when police seize a huge quantity of drugs, they take one packet of it and that constitutes a fact in which people believe that the rest of the shipment contained the same material. We need that sort of thing for our police.

Second, and I will have more to say on this later, is Internet issues must be addressed for the police. This material is international in nature. There needs to be an international initiative taken to get some control of it. Russia, I am told, is one of the conduits for it, but this is just a banquet table for perverse appetites and something needs to be done about that.

What people really want is protection for their kids in what is seen as a crazy world.