Bill C-12 (Historical)

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

Criminal Code

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address this topic on one more occasion.

I do not disagree with a lot of the philosophy behind the thinking that goes with the bill. I do not care to get into those kind of philosophical debates as to whether we should have a law indicating it is not a smart thing for a 40 year old, for example, to convince a 14 year old to have an activity at that age. There should be a stringent law to deter people from that possibility, but that is not a major part of my concern in regard to the bill.

Many in here know from the past where my concern comes lies, and that with the protection of children through the elimination and absolute ban of child pornography. We recently voted on a motion I put forward in the House of Commons. It asked for the creation of legislation that would eliminate all defences for people using child pornography for the purpose of exploiting children. That motion was unanimously accepted.

The problem I have with Bill C-12 is it does not do that, and therein lies the debate. Many Liberals will say the words “artistic merit” have been removed from the bill, but the words “public good” have been replaced them. Therein lies the topic of my debate, child pornography.

I would like to point out something for all members of the House and for the Canadian public at large. As a member of Parliament and the opposition critic, I have been working on child pornography. This is not a sporadic incident or something that comes up occasionally or seldom.

Before I came here today, I did some research. I have examples showing that this is not an occasional incident. Cases of child exploitation through the use of child pornography happen every day across Canada. They are not reported, or printed in big headlines in newspapers or not talked about on television. This is going on in a huge way, and we are unable to recognize that fact.

I have recent article from the last few days which appeared in the Calgary Sun . The headline reads, “No Jail Time in Kiddie Porn Case”. This is a small article not a big article like we read on the front pages. A guy was convicted of kiddie porn, but he was not put in jail. He was considered treatable, and he would stop this nasty business. He received no punishment except house arrest. Just recently a former Saskatchewan RCMP officer was found guilty of child sex offences, and he too received house arrest as punishment.

These cases illustrate to all Canadians, particularly members in the House, that individuals in Canada who are charged and arrested or being investigated for the offence of using child pornography come from all walks of life. People sometimes think only bums or whoever might be doing this, but that is not so. Bankers, teachers, preachers, officers of the law and others are being charged with this offence. It is widespread, and it is a huge industry.

I have another case in which a Alberta man ran a child porn ring, an international group distributing child pornography on the Internet. They were making huge profits. Lots of big, grown-up men are making money from absolutely evil pictures that come across the Internet. They are exploiting our young children across the nation. More than 1,000 images and 250 video clips were on the computers of this individual. That is astounding. There were videos of the most awful stuff one could imagine, children as young as two years old having sexual acts with adults. If that is not evil, I do not know what else one would call it.

A 78 year old man from the Waterloo region faces child pornography charges. Good grief, a 78 year old man. Then a London child porn offender, and I am talking just this week, got house arrest. A huge amount of material and images which he had brought back with him from a business trip to some other parts of the world were found on his computer. It is unbelievable. This guy is a successful businessman, making big bucks off the avails of child pornography, involving very young children.

Another headline states that an ex-Children's Aid Society worker was busted again. This was in Windsor. He is 27 years old. He is back in custody. He was busted once again because he had all this filth in his possession which exploited young children. Another headline says that porn charges were laid in Niagara Falls. He is to appear in court in St. Catherines next week.

I could go on and on. I have a whole pile of these. I could give example after example. Any police force or anybody engaged in trying to do something about this serious problem will tell us that these are everyday occurrences and they are running rampant. We only hear about the sensational cases. I do not know if it is fair to call them that. We do not hear about all of them because I guess it has become unimportant to the media. It does not talk much about it.

Governments are not responding very well. I look at the Toronto police department. It has only a handful of officers to deal with millions and millions of items that they have taken from people in the Toronto area who are under investigation for breaking the laws using child pornography. I know there are members sitting in the House right now who have seen some of the material that the Toronto police officers have confiscated. They are trying to illustrate to all of us how serious this is. There are images of babies in diapers all the way to young teenagers who are absolutely abused to no end. It is unbelievable that it is happening.

We also know that through the hard and dedicated efforts of five or six police officers in the Toronto region, a six year old girl from North Carolina was rescued. They were able to determine from the images who this child was, locate her and get her out of that situation. As far as I am concerned, these Toronto police officers are national heroes for having done that.

However, it saddens me when I read their reports. They can only estimate, but they tell me there could be up to 100,000 children being used to produce child pornography, which is being distributed and used throughout the world. Out of that, a few of those, a great many of those or several hundred of those could be here in Canada. They could be right next door to us, but we do not know where they are. However, through their hard effort, hours and hours of going through this material and doing the best they could with it, these people were absolutely successful in finding this one.

I really think we should listen to the police departments when they call for the government to provide them with some funding to help them set up a national strategy across the land and connecting with international agencies. Then they could really go after this in full force and defeat this evil enemy that is child pornography, the enemy of our children. Lord knows we would not have any trouble finding the funding when we look at where some of our funding goes.

Obviously, every member in the House agrees that needs to happen. They expressed that in the vote which I spoke about earlier. They said that they wanted to get rid of it. The only way we can do this is by first passing legislation that removes the possibility for anybody in this land to have possession of, distribute or make a fortune out of any child pornography that exploits the children.

We ran into a little problem recently. A fellow by the name of Sharpe ended up in court and some judge declared that some of the material he had in his possession had some artistic merit. Because of that decision, artistic merit was written into the law as a defence. There was an outcry from the public, and I was really pleased to be part of that, saying that we had to remove artistic merit. There is no defence for people exploiting children through child pornography. Everybody agrees on that. Then the government comes down with Bill C-12, and there is the problem. What has it done? It has replaced artistic merit with the words “public good”.

How long will it be before some child pornographer, who is brought to court and charged, pleads innocent under this law, Bill C-12, of public good? We do not even know what that public good might be. Will it be because a particular piece of stuff has some artistic value to it or some other value to it and the person will fight for the right to produce or use it for his or her own personal purpose, whatever they might be? We do not know what that public good definition will be, but one day we will know. Some judge, somewhere, in some court will have to define it because this legislation does not.

My suggestion to every member in the House is let us live up to the vote we recently had to eliminate all defences. Let us do that by protecting those individuals who may have a purpose for having this child pornography material in their possession.

I tried, to no avail, to convince a number of people from the governing party in this place, the Liberals, that all we need to do is cover all the possibilities we could think of and include them in the act if they happened to be missing. They have not done that. They continue to leave “public good” in place.

Therefore, I have a suggestion for this bill and this particular section. I have put together a private member's bill, which I have introduced. The clause in this private member's bill is going to say that when the accused is charged with an offence under the child pornography section-and I will not go into all the numbers--“the court shall find the accused not guilty if the [visual] representation or written material that is alleged to constitute child pornography has an educational, scientific, or medical purpose”. I want to add to that: “or if the acts that are alleged to constitute the offence were carried out for the purposes of law enforcement”.

What that does is protect bona fide doctors, psychiatrists and scientists who might be using this material for scientific, medical or educational purposes. Also, it protects the police who are investigating when they take this material into their possession. We need to protect those bona fide individuals who are working hard to stamp out child pornography. We can do that by including them in this clause.

Therefore, we could eliminate the items of “public good”. The undefined “public good” could be removed. Then we could send a message to the courts that they are to protect the bona fide doctors, scientists, psychologists, investigators, police forces or whatever agency it might be as long as it is for those medical, scientific, educational or law enforcement purposes. We do not want anybody who has a legitimate reason for having this in their possession to be arrested and charged.

However, more than anything else, I do not want to subject one more police officer in this country--and I am sure every member in here would agree with me--to having to sit in a chair day after day and hour after hour determining whether any of this filth that they have confiscated has any public good or artistic merit or any of that to it. We must not do that.

We must quit exposing our enforcers of the law to that, because it is driving them up the wall. And so it would if we had nothing else to do but go through all of these millions and millions of pieces of material that they have in the Toronto police department alone. It would have to drive someone around the deep bend. I know that there are members in here who know what I am talking about because they have seen those examples that were confiscated.

Let us put an end to it and get a strong message out to those who would perpetrate it upon our children. We are not going to look at this idea that the right to freedom of expression of a person who is going to exploit children through child pornography is going to override the rights of a child in this land to be safe from this kind of enemy.

We can do it. This government could do it. Bill C-12 does not do it because those two words, “public good”, are still in the bill. Let us get rid of it. Let us protect all those guys who are doing their work. Let us do the right thing. Let us all do what we as members of the House of Commons did when we unanimously agreed that we would eliminate all defences. Let us do it and do it now.

[Gar Knutson, Liberal, Minister of State (New and Emerging Markets)]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise again to speak to Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act.

As all hon. members know, Bill C-12 proposes a number of criminal law reforms that seek to better protect children against sexual exploitation, abuse and neglect, to facilitate testimony by child victims and witnesses, other vulnerable victims, and witnesses in criminal justice proceedings, as well as to create a new offence of voyeurism.

I believe that all of Bill C-12 is important and I support the whole of the bill. However, I will take the time that remains today to restrict my comments to those provisions that respond to the concerns relating to the age of consent to sexual activity.

Bill C-12's objective on the issue is clearly articulated in the first paragraph of the preamble:

Whereas the Parliament of Canada has grave concerns regarding the vulnerability of children to all forms of exploitation, including child pornography, sexual exploitation, abuse and neglect;--

The focus of Bill C-12's response to concerns about the age of consent to sexual activity is on the exploitative conduct of the wrongdoer and not on whether the young person or victim consented to that conduct. This is, in my view, both the right focus and the right response.

More specifically, Bill C-12 proposes to create a new category of prohibitive sexual exploitation of a young person who is over the age of consent, that is, someone who is 14 years of age or older and under 18 years.

Under the proposed reform, courts would be directed to infer that a relationship is exploitive by looking to the nature and circumstances of that relationship, including the age of the young person, any difference in age and the degree of control or influence exerted over the young person.

I understand that there continue to be calls to raise the age of consent to sexual activity. Why is this? As I understand them, these calls seem to be motivated by a number of different reasons. For example, one reason sometimes given in support of raising the age of consent is that raising the age of consent to 16 or 18 would prevent others from forcing young persons into the sex trade.

In response to this, I note that it is already an offence under the Criminal Code to force anyone under the age of 18 years into prostitution and that this offence carries a mandatory minimum penalty of five years imprisonment. I would think it is also against criminal law to force anyone into prostitution.

Another reason given seems to be related to the differing understandings of what is meant by sexual activity. Canadian prohibitions against sexual activity do not differentiate between sexual activity that consists of kissing and sexual activity that involves sexual intercourse.

I do not believe that Canadians think that a 14 or 15 year old girl is not mature enough to freely make a decision to kiss her 17 year old boyfriend. Nor do I believe that Canadians want to criminalize a 17 year old for kissing a 14 year old girlfriend. Whether we as adults like it or not, the reality is that adolescents engage in sexual activity and the criminal law is not the place to deal with this type of activity.

I think other reasons sometimes given is that 14 or 15 year olds are too young and immature to fully appreciate the consequences of their decisions to engage in sexual activity. While it is true that a 14 or 15 year old does not typically possess the maturity of an 18 year old, as a society, nonetheless, we consider them mature enough to be treated as an adult under the new Youth Criminal Justice Act for the commission of serious violent offences.

Whatever the reason for advocating an increase in the age of consent, the common thread appears to be the prevention of sexual exploitation of young persons. This intent is to be applauded. On this I think that Bill C-12 delivers.

Unlike proposals to raise the age of consent to 16 years of age, Bill C-12 proposes to extend protection not only to 14 and 15 year olds, but also to 16 and 17 year olds. It would protect youth from exploitation at the hands of anyone.

Bill C-12 contains many welcomed reforms to the criminal law to protect our most vulnerable members of society. I hope that all hon. members will support Bill C-12 to better protect Canadian children against exploitation in all its forms.

Westbank First Nation Self-Government Act

[Jim Abbott, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I noted with some interest that the member said that she was asking for the support of the House. I think she would know that in the vote last evening indeed there was overwhelming support for this bill.

Therefore, could she help me understand if there is some kind of strategy that her government is presently undertaking with respect to this debate that perhaps she could enlighten us on? I do not know if it is correct or not, but I should mention that I believe we have some people even in this chamber who are watching us who are very interested in seeing this bill go ahead.

What we find perplexing is that in spite of the overwhelming support of the House for this bill, the fact that there is very limited opposition and indeed any of those issues have been fully vented in the course of this debate, that the government continues to filibuster its own bill. We are rather confused about that, particularly when I for one happen to agree with the member that we should be getting on with the business of the House.

Would it have anything to do with the fact that the Prime Minister and the government are not prepared to govern at this particular point? For example, let us look at the other bills that will immediately follow this bill should debate collapse. Bill C-10, the marijuana bill, is at third reading, which means that we could have a debate on that and get that through. Bill C-11, the Westbank bill, certainly is one that we could dispose of right now. Bill C-12, child protection, is a bill that is at third reading and could be disposed of fairly quickly. Bill C-15 concerns the transfer of offenders.

The House is trying to get these bills through. Indeed in ordinary procedure one would have the opposition trying to stop things, or the opposition trying to bring forward particular points of view, which is just fine. That is what the parliamentary process is about.

Considering that the Liberals' legislative cupboard is completely bare as a result of the Prime Minister having no idea of where he wants to take Canada, is that the reason, in the judgment of the member, she herself, unimaginably, would actually be part of the filibuster of this very important bill that the people of Westbank want to go ahead?

Business of the House

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, tomorrow and Monday, we will continue with the business listed, namely third reading stage of Bill C-11, an act to give effect to the Westbank First Nation Self-Government Agreement, this reading of Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act, third reading of Bill C-15, an act to implement treaties and administrative arrangements on the international transfer of persons found guilty of criminal offences and third reading of Bill C-10, an act to amend the Contraventions Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act.

We will also continue with the report stage of Bill C-23, an act to provide for real property taxation powers of first nations, to create a First Nations Tax Commission, First Nations Financial Management Board, First Nations Finance Authority and First Nations Statistical Institute and to make consequential amendments to other acts, as well as debate on the motion to refer committee before second reading Bill C-29, an act to amend the Criminal Code (mental disorder) and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Tuesday shall be an allotted day.

On Wednesday, we hope to be in a position to take up the final stages of Bill C-9, an act to amend the Patent Act and the Food and Drugs Act. I understand that there are some discussions under way that could make it possible to deal with this bill a bit earlier. The government would be prepared to cooperate with any such desire.

I hope that my colleague across the way, and all of his colleagues, are in excellent shape, because we have a lot on our plate.

Criminal Code

[Gar Knutson, Liberal, Minister of State (New and Emerging Markets)]

Mr. Speaker, and all members of the House, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act.

This is not among my normal course of work being a Minister of State for International Trade. I know I share the concern with all members of the House about the protection of children and vulnerable people.

Bill C-12 proposes a broad package of criminal law reforms that seek to strengthen the criminal justice system's protection and response to children and other vulnerable persons.

Although I will focus my comments on child pornography, I would also like to note that Bill C-12 contains other important reforms. It proposes to strengthen protection for young persons against sexual exploitation. It would increase the penalties for offences against children. It would facilitate testimony by child and other vulnerable victims and witnesses. It would create a new offence of voyeurism.

As I said, I would like to focus my comments on the amendments relating to child pornography.

The sexual exploitation of children, society's most vulnerable group in any form, including through child pornography, is to be condemned. I know there is no debate among civilized people on this point.

Bill C-12 recognizes this and proposes amendments to our existing child pornography provisions that I believe will serve to better protect children against this form of sexual exploitation. Canada's child pornography laws are already among the toughest in the world and as my colleague before me said, Bill C-12 would make them tougher still.

First, Bill C-12 proposes to broaden the existing definition of written child pornography to include written material that describes prohibited sexual activity with children where the description is the predominant characteristic of the material and it is done for a sexual purpose.

The proposed amendment reflects Canadians' belief that these types of written materials pose a real risk of harm to our children and society by portraying children as a class of objects for sexual exploitation. Bill C-12 clearly states that such materials are not acceptable.

Second, Bill C-12 proposes to narrow the existing defences into one defence, of public good, a term that is now specifically defined in the bill. Under the new law, no defence will be available where the material or act in question does not serve the public good or where it exceeds or goes beyond what serves the public good.

The public good defence recognizes that in some instances, such as with the possession of child pornography by police as part of an investigation, such possession serves the public good and should be protected. It also recognizes that art or material that has artistic value can serve the public good. However and unlike the current artistic merit defence, the proposed public good defence in Bill C-12 will not be available for such art where the risk of harm it imposes to society outweighs any potential benefits that it offers.

Canadians have been demanding that we respond in a direct and meaningful way to the issues that flowed from the March 2002 case involving Robin Sharpe, and this is exactly what Bill C-12 does. The adoption of Bill C-12's amendments will reaffirm Canada's leadership role in protecting children from sexual exploitation through child pornography.

I note from the clock that I am running out of time, so I just ask in closing that all hon. members support these amendments.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code, which, as everyone knows, is the protection of children and other vulnerable persons, and the Canada Evidence Act.

Bill C-12 proposes a broad package of reforms which seeks to ensure that the criminal law meets the concerns and needs of all Canadians, especially those who are most vulnerable among us, our children.

The bill has five key components. I would like to go through them one by one and give illustrations of how the bill would be implemented.

The first one is strengthening the existing child pornography provisions by broadening the definition of written child pornography and narrowing the existing defences to one defence of public good.

What this means in reality is that the existing defences for child pornography would be reduced to the single concept of the public good. A person would be found guilty of a child pornography offence when the material or act in question does not serve the public good or where the risk of harm outweighs any public good it serves.

The bill now defines the public good as including--and I think this is important--“acts or materials that are necessary or advantageous to the administration of justice or the pursuit of science, medicine, education or art”.

The proposed reforms would also expand the existing definition of written child pornography to include material that is created for a sexual purpose and predominantly describes prohibited sexual activity with children. The current definition of child pornography applies only to material that advocates or counsels prohibited sexual activity with children, and this is strengthening the concept that at the end it is the ultimate public good that must be served.

The second component is the creation of a new prohibited category of sexual exploitation of young persons, as evidenced by the nature and circumstances of the relationship, including: the age of the young person, any difference in age between the young person and the other person, and the degree of control or influence exerted over that young person.

This provision would provide new protection to young persons between 14 and 18 years of age. Under the proposed reform, courts could infer that a relationship is exploitative based on its nature and circumstances, including the age of the young person, any difference of age, the evolution of the relationship, and the degree of control or influence exercised over the younger person. This new category would focus the court's determination on the conduct or behaviour of the accused rather than on the consent of the young person to sexual activity.

The third component is to increase the maximum penalties for offences against children and make the commission of an offence against any child an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes.

These tougher sentencing provisions include, under the government's reform proposals, penalties for offences that harm children. The maximum sentence for sexual exploitation would double from five years to ten. The maximum penalty for abandonment of a child or failure to provide the necessities of life to a child would more than double from two to five years. The abuse of a child in the commission of any Criminal Code offence would also have to be considered as an aggravating factor by the court and could result in a tougher sentence.

The fourth component is the facilitating of testimony by children and other vulnerable victims and witnesses by enhancing their ability to provide clear, complete and accurate accounts of events while at the same time ensuring that all of an accused person's rights are protected and respected.

These measures to protect children and other vulnerable persons as witnesses involve several reforms which will help ensure that participating in the criminal justice system is less traumatic for the victim or witness. Current Criminal Code provisions would be expanded to allow all witnesses under 18 to benefit from testimonial aids in any criminal proceeding, not only those involving sexual and other specified offences.

These aids include providing testimony from behind a screen or by closed circuit television or having a support person accompany the young witness. Current provisions generally require that the Crown establish the need for a testimonial aid. Given the potential trauma of the courtroom experience for young witnesses, the proposed reforms acknowledge the need for an aid.

For all testimonial aids, the judge retains the discretion to deny the aid or protection where its use would interfere with the proper administration of justice. In addition, the facilities to permit the use of a screen or closed TV circuit must be available in the courtroom before the judge can permit their use. Fundamental rights for the accused are fully respected under the proposed amendments.

These reforms also would allow children under 14 to give their evidence when they are able to understand and respond to questions. A competency hearing, which is currently mandatory, would no longer be required.

The fifth component is the creation of a new offence of voyeurism to criminalize the surreptitious observation or recording of a person in defined circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy.

This new offence of voyeurism is influenced through the rapid technological developments of recent years. They have brought many benefits to Canadian society, but they have also had implications for such basic matters as privacy. Web cameras, for example, which can transmit live images over the Internet, have raised concerns about the potential for abuse, notably where the secret viewing or recording of people involves a serious breach of privacy or is made for sexual purposes.

The proposed offences would make it a crime in three specific cases to deliberately and secretly observe or record another person in circumstances where a reasonable expectation of privacy exists: when the person observed or recorded is in a place where one is reasonably expected to be in a state of nudity or engaged in explicit sexual activity; when the person observed is in a state of nudity or engaged in explicit sexual activity and the purpose is to observe or record a person in such a state of activity; or when the observation or recording is done for a sexual purpose.

Distributing material knowing that it was produced through an offence of voyeurism would also be a crime. The maximum penalties for all voyeurism offences would be five years' imprisonment and the copies for sale or distribution of a recording obtained through the commission of a voyeurism offence would be subject to seizure and forfeiture. The courts could also order the deletion of voyeuristic material from a computer system.

I believe that Bill C-12's objectives are clearly stated and reflected in the preamble. Paragraph one states:

Whereas the Parliament of Canada has grave concerns regarding the vulnerability of children to all forms of exploitation, including child pornography, sexual exploitation, abuse and neglect--

These words are an emphatic statement of purpose in Bill C-12.

Paragraph three of the preamble also notes as an objective that Bill C-12 seeks:

...to encourage the participation of witnesses in the criminal justice system through the use of protective measures that seek to facilitate the participation of children and other vulnerable witnesses while ensuring that the rights of accused persons are respected--

I believe we should all be readily able to recognize these objectives as not only important but fundamental to our collective efforts to provide better protection to our children and other vulnerable persons. I hope that all hon. members will support Bill C-12.

Much of the debate on Bill C-12 has focused on the proposed child pornography amendments. Canada's child pornography laws are among the toughest in the world. Bill C-12 will make them tougher still. I believe this bill's proposed expansion of the definition of written child pornography and the narrowing of the defences to one single defence of public good, now defined in Bill C-12, respond in a very direct and meaningful way to issues highlighted by the March 2002 case involving Robin Sharpe. I hope that all hon. members can support Bill C-12's child pornography amendments. I hope that all hon. members can support the bill.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Kilger)]

Hon. members will recall that, on Friday March 12, 2004, the hon. member for Surrey Central proposed an amendment to the amendment of the motion for third reading of Bill C-12. This called for the Standing Committee on Justice, Human Rights, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to report back no later than April 5, 2004. The date in the amendment to the amendment having passed, I am obliged to declare that the amendment to the amendment out of date.

Resuming debate on the amendment standing under the name of the hon. member for Lethbridge.

Budget Implementation Act, 2004

[Myron Thompson, Canadian Alliance, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the 2004 budget, a same as usual, nothing new, let us spend more money, let us not worry, let us all be happy type of budget. It is filled with many good things, many good promises, much the same as budgets have been filled with in the past since 1993.

I have seen several budgets now and they are all promises, promises, promises. In a big percentage of cases we are still back to square one. Many of the same things are being professed and many of the same things are being talked about.

I remember in 1993 we talked about the poverty in this country. The 1993 budget was going to address the fact that one million children were living in poverty in this country and that was a shame. We all agreed there was no doubt it was a problem that had to be addressed. Now in the year 2004 we are not addressing the problem regarding one million children living in poverty; it is now 1.5 million children living in poverty. That is some progress. We started with one million in 1993, and now we are up to 1.5 million. We still get the same kind of rhetoric and the same kind of messages in the budget that this is all going to be addressed and taken care of.

There was quite a bit of hype going on in the announcement just the other day regarding new helicopters and new equipment. That is great news for the people in the defence department. We all want to hear these things, but what I heard from most of the people in the military with whom I talked was that they will believe it when they see it. Those are good points. How many times have we heard these great announcements about all the new equipment and the new things that are going to happen that are going to help our military and our defence? These are all great things to say in a budget and pronounce, but they never seem to come to light.

Once again the Prime Minister with somebody else was out somewhere in the country making this big announcement that it is all going to take place. We are cheering it, that it is what we want to happen, but it does not seem to get there. I can understand why the people in the military sitting on the front lines in places like Afghanistan are saying, “We will believe it when we see it. When they get here, we will believe it”. In the meantime, it is all words, but it is in the budget.

As far as having a balanced budget, we cheer that. It is something that we said in 1993 had to happen. We pushed and pushed and finally at least the Liberals listened to us and they did get the budget balanced. Of course the taxes are higher than ever so it has been done on the backs of taxpayers, on the backs of provinces by cutting transfer payments, and on the back of the health care program which they reduced significantly in the early years to get the budget balanced.

It did not have to happen that way, but at least it is balanced. We are glad for that, but boy, it ought to be balanced. If they cannot balance a budget with the taxes that we pay in this country, then there is really something wrong.

When we look at what is taking place, we can understand why taxes have to be so high. After all, an election has not even been called and I have a list of what has happened just in the last two weeks. Is it not wonderful. The deputy leader of the government is giving $1 million for official languages in Sudbury. An ex-Conservative member who moved to the Liberals, who ran for the leadership, was glad to pass out a $50,000 cheque in his riding to buy bookshelves for a library. All kinds of grants have been given to different Liberal members throughout the land for renovations to old buildings or old schools, to upgrade them and make them look better.

The natural resources minister has been busy turning over thousands of dollars for archeological digs in Newfoundland. There is another $156,000 for a unique archeology website online to promote the digs and other features of that particular region.

Another Liberal put $35 million into his riding when he was the minister of the ACOA. He announced that there is another $348,000 for two wharves in his riding. On April 5 an MP unveiled a $361,000 cheque to restore a historic railway building. A couple of days later the Minister of Labour gave another $400,000 to renovate a theatre in her home town, and another $432,000 for an Acadian festival.

Out west the Minister of the Environment provided $150,000 for the Victoria Symphony Society. The present finance minister gave $25,000 to fund the magazine Prairie North in Saskatchewan.

The ex-fisheries minister managed to find $159,000 to refurbish the historic Sinclair Inn in his riding. One colleague from Ontario was able to announce $385,000 for job creation grants in his riding. That is fine; job creation is good.

An Edmonton MP announced $130,000 for the Council of Indian Societies. That is great stuff. There is nothing wrong with that.

A member of Parliament from Ontario got $64,000 for the Friends of the Macdonnell-Williamson House to hire three people and landed another $166,000 from human resources to hire people at a food bank.

In Vancouver the former cabinet minister who in her wildest dreams saw burning crosses on the lawns of the people who live in Prince George announced $734,000 for a youth job creation program. I would be the last to condemn anybody for these kinds of things, but I have a problem with an announcement of $734,000 for youth job creation when I have a letter from the City of Airdrie in my riding which says that presently human resources has stopped the funding of the youth employment service program that had served the country for 20 years. The program that put young people to work every summer has been discontinued.

The city of Airdrie, one of the prettiest cities, if not the prettiest in the entire country, had 163 students and 120 businesses last year that were registered in the program. This year there is nothing because it has been cut.

I do not understand how ministers who live in these various select ridings throughout the country can pass out millions and millions of dollars for these fine things in their ridings, yet in my riding out west a program that had been going on for 20 years has been cut. Is it that the government is giving the GST money back to the City of Airdrie and now it is going to cut some other things to balance the books again? Is that what it wants to do? Does it want to give here, but take there?

The government cut the GST from the municipalities, something that never should have been there in the first place. Kudos to the government, but then it turns around and takes away this program. What is the City of Airdrie going to do? It is such a valuable program, it has worked so well to help young people to get enough cash together over the summer to continue their education that the city will fund it itself, because it is worth doing. That means a lot more money from the municipalities. How many more small towns and cities across the country are not going to be able to benefit from a good program that was once established? Why does the budget not mention that?

I am sick and tired of hearing about what we are going to do for the Indians and the reserves. We have heard for 20 years that we have to do something about the poverty and the situation on the reserves. Absolutely. Grassroots natives across the country have been crying for that for years, and this is a big announcement now in the budget about the wonderful things we are going to do? As some of the people who live on the reserves in my riding have said to me that they will believe it when they see it. It is the same old story.

I only have one minute left and I am going to get this one in if it kills me. I did not see anything in the budget about fighting child pornography, a national strategy or something that would put the police forces in this land on a good footing to fight one of the most evil things in this land, and that is child pornography. There was not one mention of it. The House unanimously passed a motion to put forward some legislation that would take care of child pornography once and for all by eliminating all defences, yet the government insists on continuing to push Bill C-12, saying there must be room for public good.

Public good in child pornography is a bunch of nonsense. That is a no-brainer. That is something that should have been done years ago. I cannot understand why we sit here like a bunch of idiots and allow child pornography to continue to exploit our children all across the world. It is about the sickest thing that we can see that is not happening.

We could all stand up and be cheered if we would look after our kids in that fashion. We are not doing it and I am ashamed of every one of us, to stand here and say yes to it in one day and never see it happen.

Do not tell me that Bill C-12 is going to fix it because it will not. There is still a defence in there called public good and that is a broad term. It is about time the government got off its duff and did something about it.

Business of the House

[Jacques Saada, Liberal, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister responsible for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we shall continue debate on Bill C-30, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 23, 2004. If this is completed, we will commence second reading of Bill C-28, an act to amend the Canada National Parks Act.

Tomorrow, we will debate a motion to refer to committee before second reading Bill C-25, an act to establish a procedure for the disclosure of wrongdoings in the public sector, including the protection of persons who disclose the wrongdoings, and hopefully deal with the Senate amendments to Bill C-8, an act to establish the Library and Archives of Canada, to amend the Copyright Act and to amend certain acts in consequence.

When the House returns on April 19, any of this business that is unfinished will be taken up, along with Bill C-11, an act to give effect to the Westbank First Nation Self-Government Agreement, Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code (protection of children and other vulnerable persons) and the Canada Evidence Act, and Bill C-10, an act to amend the Contraventions Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Bill C-15, an act to implement treaties and administrative arrangements on the international transfer of persons found guilty of criminal offences, Bill C-28, an act to amend the Canada National Parks Act, Bill C-23, an act to provide for real property taxation powers of first nations, to create a First Nations Tax Commission, First Nations Financial Management Board, First Nations Finance Authority and First Nations Statistical Institute and to make consequential amendments to other acts, and the bill introduced yesterday, Bill C-31, an act to give effect to a land claims and self-government agreement among the Tlicho, the Government of the Northwest Territories and the Government of Canada, to make related amendments to the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

I should like to wish my colleagues a happy and pleasant holiday period and to express my hope that they return refreshed and ready for a full legislative agenda for the spring.

Supply

[Derek Lee, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge River, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this debate. I am not so sure that as a government member I am as sanguine and content with the subject of the motion, but as all opposition motions are, they attempt to hold the government to account, and we on this side of the House attempt to respond.

The opposition would like to have us believe that Canadians have lost confidence in the legislative agenda of the government. The fact is that the government has the full support of Canadians on a number of legislative items now before Parliament. Let us talk about these, particularly measures aimed at protecting the rights and security of Canadians.

Since the beginning of this session, a number of important bills have been debated in this House. I believe it would be worthwhile to examine them closely.

I will start with a bill that I believe is of huge importance in protecting our children: Bill C-12, an act to amend the Criminal Code in regard to the protection of children and other vulnerable persons. It is currently at third reading stage before the House. It proposes reforms in five key areas. It strengthens the provisions against child pornography. It protects youth against sexual exploitation. It increases the maximum penalties for specific offences committed against children. It facilitates the testimony of child victims and witnesses and other vulnerable persons. It modernizes the criminal law through the creation of the offence of voyeurism.

The bill has been crafted to bring to our children better protection against abuse, neglect and sexual exploitation. Canadians are well aware of the gravity of the issue of child pornography. Even though Canada currently has on the books some of the toughest legislation to combat child pornography, Bill C-12 proposes to go even further by directly responding to concerns flowing from the child pornography case involving the accused John Robin Sharpe.

This is a case wherein the courts convicted Mr. Sharpe of possession of child pornographic photographs. He was, however, acquitted on the one charge of possession of written materials for the purpose of distribution or sale. Even though the court found these stories morally repugnant, Mr. Sharpe was acquitted of this charge because they did not meet the existing definition of written child pornography, that is, they did not advocate or counsel unlawful sexual activity with children.

Bill C-12 directly responds to this concern and proposes several changes to the Criminal Code to broaden the existing definition of written child pornography. It proposes to prohibit written materials, such as those authored by Mr. Sharpe, that describe unlawful sexual activity with children where these written descriptions are the dominant characteristic of the material and are written for a sexual purpose.

To the concern expressed by some Canadians that some people could circumvent the law by demonstrating the artistic merit of pornographic material, the bill includes a different test that draws on the wisdom of the Supreme Court of Canada. It proposes only one defence, the defence of public good, which involves a two-step inquiry. Does the material or act serve the public good? If not, there would be no defence. If it does, then an additional second question is asked: Does it go beyond what serves the public good? In other words, if the risk of harm to society posed by such material outweighs the benefit that it offers to society, then no defence would be available even if it had artistic merit or educational, scientific, medical or other value.

The government has as well clarified the notion of public good defence, including its legal interpretation. As amended, Bill C-12 now defines the public good as including acts or material that are necessary or advantageous to the administration of justice or the pursuit of science, medicine, education or art. This new, inclusive definition closely models the language of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Sharpe case, thereby strengthening subsequent reliance upon this judgment to assist with the interpretation and application of the public good defence.

The government also recognizes that we must do better in protecting youth against sexual exploitation by those who would prey on their vulnerability in other ways. Therefore, Bill C-12 also amends the law in order to allow a court to infer that a sexual relationship is exploitive, having regard to the circumstances and nature of the relationship itself. Essentially, this provision would remove the right to consent of a person aged 14 to 17 years of age, allowing for the conviction of the exploiter even where the young person actually had given the consent.

An additional fourth factor has been added to the list of factors that are considered in law, namely, the actual age of the young person. This more clearly indicates that the court must consider this factor as well as the age differential between the two parties, the young person and the older person. Up to now it was assumed the court would take note of the actual age of the young person. It appears that the court simply accepted this age as a given and extrapolated from that to look at the age of the other person. Now the court must consider the age of the young person who is alleged to have been exploited.

Bill C-12 also proposes important reforms to facilitate the testimony of child witnesses and victims and other vulnerable persons. Although this part of the bill has received less attention, it has been largely well received and was developed in close consultation with the professional community that works with child victims.

Bill C-12 also proposes to create a new voyeurism offence to better protect privacy of Canadians. It would prohibit secret observation by any means or recording in specific situations where there was a reasonable expectation of privacy, for example, when the person observed or recorded is in a place where a person is expected to be in a state of nudity or engaged in sexual activity, as in a bedroom, a bathroom or a change room, or when the observation or recording is done for a sexual purpose.

Bill C-12 would also prohibit the publication or distribution of any recording made as a result of an act of voyeurism. It would also enable the seizure of copies of any such recordings to prevent them from being distributed or sold, as well as for the deletion of electronic copies of these recordings from computer systems, including the Internet.

Bill C-12 is an important bill, one that the opposition and all members of the House should support and bring into law as quickly as possible. One might ask, then, why is the opposition intentionally opposing its passage? Why is it now putting up roadblocks? Why has it introduced what we call a hoist amendment at third reading? Perhaps members opposite will have a comment on that at the end of my remarks. The bill is aimed at protecting vulnerable persons and is, I suggest, too important to be the object of political games here in the House. I call upon the opposition to stop its tactics and pass the bill.

A second important justice bill currently before the House is Bill C-10, which is the bill to amend the Contraventions Act and the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. This is another important piece of legislation. Regrettably, however, it is another bill for which the opposition has introduced a hoist motion at third reading in an attempt to prevent the bill from becoming law.

Canadians do not agree with the opposition. I suppose it is fair to say there may be Canadians out there who do agree with the opposition, but I, sitting on this side of the House, believe that the vast majority of Canadians agree with the intent of the bill.

The government committed itself in 2003 in the Speech from the Throne to act on the results of parliamentary consultations with Canadians on options for changes to our drug laws, including adjusting the penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana. On May 27, 2003, the government introduced a bill that delivers on that commitment. I know; I worked on the House committee that worked very hard for a number of months, indeed, over a year, on this issue.

Presently under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the offence of possession of 30 grams or less of marijuana or one gram or less of cannabis resin is punishable by up to six months' imprisonment and/or a fine of $1,000. Very recently, two parliamentary committees--we have mentioned them here--examined the question of the use of drugs. The House of Commons Special Committee on Non-Medical Use of Drugs and the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs conducted thorough research and held numerous public hearings on the legislative provisions dealing with all drugs. Both committees concluded that changes to the legal scheme regulating these drugs were necessary.

Astonishing data emanate from recent research. Just to give a round number, about 100,000 Canadians use cannabis on a daily basis. Approximately 23% of Canadians have used cannabis at least once in their lifetime in spite of the fact that it is a criminal offence to possess this substance. In the last five years, cannabis offences have increased by more than 50%.

Canadians would like to see a reduction in the negative social impact of a criminal conviction. The opposition does not see it that way. I believe the opposition is out of step and out of touch with Canadians on this.

Canadians have also expressed concern over the unfair and unequal application of the law across the country. Police and court activity in respect of the possession offence varies considerably from region to region across Canada. In large urban areas, offenders often receive no more than a verbal warning, and if charged and tried will likely receive either a conditional or absolute discharge. In other parts of Canada, however, for the same offence an offender is more likely to be charged and, if convicted, to receive a fine and possibly a more serious penalty.

Based on these facts, it has been the commitment of this government to reform our legislation dealing with cannabis. The government has a responsibility to Canadians to adapt and address these current concerns. With this proposed legislation, our drug law would be reformed so as to reflect the Canadian reality.

The objectives of the bill are: to discourage the use of cannabis; to reduce the discrepancy in the enforcement of the law concerning the possession of small amounts; to improve law enforcement by peace officers; to modernize the law so that it better reflects the views of Canadians on consuming cannabis; to reduce the adverse consequences of a conviction for this activity; to maintain the crime status of possession of cannabis; and to combat large commercial cannabis grow operations. The bill contains large increases in penalties upon conviction for being associated with promoting or using these cannabis grow operations.

I have to point out as well that cannabis is one of a large and even a huge number of drugs that have been and are being used in our communities. The drugs being used vary. They include prescription drugs. OxyContin is one that has often been named as a culprit. It is a drug that is abused, over-prescribed and diverted from prescription use into illegal street use. I believe I recall that in one Atlantic Canadian city the street drug of choice was not cocaine or heroin but OxyContin, which of course is available at drugstores.

We all know that we have a serious drug issue, not just in urban Canada but across the whole breadth of our Canadian society. We must continue to take steps to educate and to deal with this. Not only do we have diversion from prescription use, but we have the old standbys. I do not want to pretend that it is just another routine drug description, but we have heroin making its way up and down the marketplace. We have cocaine and crack cocaine and we have all the other drugs which people have heard about and read about in their papers.

Among all those drugs, alcohol appears to be the drug that causes the greatest harm to Canadians, followed in close order, I believe, by nicotine. Tobacco is a bad one and extremely costly. We then get into heroin and cocaine, and we work down the list of addictions, and the cost to society.

This is my own view but I look at the overall picture, I regard cannabis as a bit of piker in the list of drugs that harm Canadian society. It is still a drug and it is still abused but it is not a drug that has a huge swath of addiction nor the broken lives and deaths that are associated with other drugs. I include alcohol in the deaths, broken families and ruined lives. While cannabis and marijuana use is an issue, and I will even rank it as an important issue, it is not the killer or as addictive as are all these other drugs.

As a country I suggest we have to focus on where the real harms are first. We will include all the drugs, including cannabis, but we must focus on where the real harms lay.

In conclusion, even though the opposition members do not like all of the government's agenda, I call upon them to please stop delaying passage of the bills to which I have referred today. This is social justice legislation that is of real importance. I call upon the opposition members to join with those members of the House who will vote yea in passage of these two important bills.

Criminal Code

[Leon Benoit, Canadian Alliance, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to debate this issue. Many others have spoken on some of the specific issues. I will do a little bit of that too, but I would like to talk about this issue in a general fashion first.

I would like to raise the question, why, after 10 years that I have been here, are we still just talking about this issue? I was first elected in 1993 and very soon after I came down here we raised many of the issues we are still talking about today. We have asked questions of the government, in committee and in the House of Commons, as to why it is not acting more quickly on something as urgent and so critical as protecting our children from sexual predators. What question could be more fundamental for government to deal with than that?

It has been 10 years that I have been here. I have been asking questions and my colleagues have been asking questions. We stated our position on protecting children from sexual predators and nothing has happened. The legislation that we are debating today, Bill C-12, in practical terms when applied, will not change things. My question to the government is, why has it taken 10 years and why after 10 years has nothing been done on such a critical issue?

I do not expect that I will get an answer to my question today, but Canadians certainly deserve an answer to this question. It is a question that Canadians are still asking. Next to some of the hot button issues, it is one of the issues most often brought to my attention, especially the issue of raising the age of sexual consent. However, there are other aspects as well that deal with protecting our children from sexual predators.

If this issue is so important to my constituents, I would have a hard time not believing that it is also important to the constituents of all members opposite. In fact, they are hearing the same things that I am hearing because in various ways I have heard them say so. They are concerned about the age of consent. They are concerned about some of these other things like artistic merit that my colleagues and everyone in the House has been debating.

Therefore, if that concern is so widespread, including on the government side, why has appropriate action not been taken after 10 years? We will hear the government use the excuse that was used by the public works minister yesterday in question period when he said that it was not his government. He said that his government only started on December 12.

Really, that is what he said in response to a question. We were talking about how the government's reputation has been tarnished due to all the scandals, like the ad scam, the sponsorship program, and the military issue that my colleague from Prince George has brought up recently regarding how $160 million was somehow misspent. It is probably the worst type of corruption, yet the government did not pick up on it for years. These things come up, and we have been bringing them up on a regular basis.

What did the public works minister say yesterday? He said that his government has only been in place since December 12, trying to distance himself and the responsibility of the Prime Minister, the cabinet and all the members of Parliament on the government side. The Liberal members are trying to distance themselves from their responsibility; however, they were a part of the government over the past 10 years. I would be trying to distance myself from that too, quite frankly, if I were there.

However, corruption is one thing and we are not talking about corruption in this debate today. We are not talking about the sponsorship scandal or any of the other areas of corruption.

We are talking about something every bit as important though, and that is the protection of our children from sexual predators. If so many of these members of Parliament feel, as I know they do, that this is something they want to do, that they want their government to do, why have they been so ineffective in doing it? After all, they are part of the government, or at least they are supposed to influence the government in caucus and in other ways.

I do not think it is because they are not good people. I know that most members of Parliament, no matter which party they are from, do the best job they can to represent their constituents. They do that; we all do that. We work very hard at that. I believe Liberal members of Parliament are no different. I have talked with them enough to know that they want to represent their constituents.

Why then, on critical issues such as this, can they not do that? Why are they not allowed to do so? Why have they been so unsuccessful in dealing with this most urgent of issues, such as protecting our children?

The answer comes down to a lack of democratic process in the House of Commons, in the government, and in our political system. That is something that I have talked about an awful lot in the last 16 years since the Reform Party of Canada was founded.

One of the main issues that the Reform Party was founded on back in 1987 was the issue of democratic reform. It would put in place various democratic reforms so that each and every member of Parliament from every political party would have a real impact in this place. Members would be able to actually represent their constituents in this place.

Why after 16 years and why after more than 10 years of the government being in power has so little been done on that issue? It is because of Bill C-12, that we are dealing with today, and what happens with every other piece of legislation we deal with in the House that will depend on whether we have a democratic system or not?

Have we had a democratic system in place, one that was really working? The government has had 10 years to do that and it has actually made things worse rather than better. I honestly believe that things are less democratic in the House now than they were 10 years ago when I came here.

Had democratic changes been made, I believe the Liberal members of Parliament, who understand the importance of this issue, along with my colleagues and colleagues from other political parties, would have forced the government to pass legislation which would deal with these issues that we are talking about in Bill C-12.

It comes down to having a process in place that allows people from right across this country to appear to be represented and to in fact be represented by their member of Parliament. After all, their member of Parliament should answer to them and not to this cabinet and not to the Prime Minister. That is not the way our system should work.

Unfortunately, it is the way that it does work. That is a sad commentary on 10 years of Liberal government. We can go back farther than that. I am only looking at the 10 years that I have been here because I am very much familiar with those 10 years.

I know the fight that my colleagues and I, and some in other political parties too, including the governing party, have put up to bring democratic change. It would ensure that issues like the protection of children would be dealt with in the way that the general public wants it to be dealt with.

Every one of us is elected by the people in our constituency to work on their behalf, to represent their views. We learn about issues from polling and surveys, and many of us do that in our householders. We will take an issue such as the protection of children or the age of consent, and I have done that myself and many of my colleagues have done that. We have given information looking at both sides of the issue.

Sometimes we will invite someone who takes a contrary position to our own position to put information in our householders to our constituents. We will put our position in because part of being a representative is to be a local leader. Part of leadership is to try to persuade people to our point of view. We put our persuasive position in there. Then we allow our constituents to decide. We allow our constituents to make it clear, by actually voting, how they feel on these important issues.

Any survey that has been done backs up widespread public support to raise the sexual age of consent for children from 14. They should not be making decisions on whether to have sex with an adult. That is not something they should not have to think of at that age. Let them be children for awhile.

Every one of the official polls done on the issue shows an 80% support rate or higher for raising the age of sexual consent to at least 16.

It comes down to unfortunately the fact that we have, as the Prime Minister calls it, this democratic deficit. What has he done to fix it? Nothing. What has he done to deal with this issue when he must know about it, because I am sure many of his members of Parliament have made the point to him that they want these issues dealt with by the government. What has he done? He has done nothing about it.

This legislation, should it pass, quite frankly will not help solve the problem. I will quickly go through some of the specific issues in the legislation that have not been dealt with by the government. I will talk about issues that are conspicuous by their absence.

The first is the issue of artistic merit, and some of my colleagues have talked about it. The controversy on artistic merit has been going on for some time. It certainly came from the John Robin Sharpe case from British Columbia. I think we are all very much aware of that. He is a notorious child pornographer.

In the Supreme Court case, R. v Sharpe, it was determined that artistic merit should be interpreted as widely as possible. In the legislation the government has said that it will deal with it by taking away the artistic merit defence and put in place the public good defence. This was after a former justice minister, who was attempting to sell the bill to committee, admitted that the broader public good defence in fact would allow the artistic merit defence to be there. I want to read the quote from the former justice minister. He said:

Artistic merit still exists in the sense that a piece of art will have to essentially go through the new defence of public good and through the two stages. Of course, the first question is always this. Does it serve the public good?

He went on to say that artistic merit was a part of what was considered under whether it served the public good.

That issue has not been dealt with in the legislation in any kind of effective way. In practice, when it goes before the courts, it probably will not change a thing. It will probably be dealt with in exactly the same way and the artistic merit of what I call child pornography will still be a consideration and probably the results will be no different. The government has failed entirely in that regard.

The Conservative Party calls for the elimination of all defences that justify the criminal possession of child pornography. We are clear on that. Why is the government so unclear on that? What it is clear on is that it is not willing to take this issue and deal with it head on to ensure that our children are protected.

The second issue which has not been dealt with at all in the legislation is age of consent. I have already referred to that because it is an issue that so obviously should have been dealt with years ago. We all know that having 14 year olds decide whether they want to have sex with an adult is simply not acceptable, yet that is not in the legislation. In the general polling 80% of Canadians have said that they want it to be in there.

Canadians are clear on this and, as I said, many MPs have done their own surveys on this through their householders they send out to constituents. We have received results that in many cases are much higher than the 80%. Why has it not been dealt with?

Another former justice minister, although I cannot name her, said this on raising the age of consent. She indicated very clearly that it was something the government looked forward to doing. This was years ago. She said:

With regard to age of consent--from 14 to 16--we have our child as victim consultation paper. We discussed that at our federal-provincial justice ministers' meeting in September in Nova Scotia. Those consultations will be concluded and reported on by December 31 of this year, and I think we will see that a consensus is emerging that with certain safeguards we should probably be moving on the age of consent from 14 to 16.

This was in October 2001. What that former justice minister is saying is that she believes all provinces, and that is what we found too, want to go ahead with raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16. She acknowledged that was what Canadians wanted and it was certainly what the premiers wanted. Therefore, the federal government would not be improperly interfering in the areas of provincial jurisdiction, something that is so important to our Bloc colleagues as well as to us. We are very conscious of the federal government respecting provincial jurisdiction. That has been done. The provinces want to go with this and the federal government is ignoring that wish.

Again, Bill C-12 fails to raise the age of consent of sexual contact between children and adults. That is clear. The government claims that it has somehow effectively dealt with this issue of the age of consent. It has not. Though, as I have said before, probably a majority of its members of Parliament support that. Why do a majority of its members of Parliament support that, even in the governing party? Because their constituents have told them that.

The third issue, which I will refer to very briefly, is the issue of minimum sentences. In the bill the government raises the maximum sentence allowed under these various offences, but it puts in place no mandatory minimum sentence. Raising the maximum sentence probably will do nothing to help judges take these issues more seriously under the law. Putting in place mandatory minimum sentences for these offences on the other hand will mean judges will have no choice. Parliament will have dictated and minimum sentences will be put in place. It will give offenders at least the minimum sentence as required by law, but the government has refused to do that.

I want to close by saying that it is hard for me to understand why after 10 years this has not been changed and why the bill will not change it. It is a sad commentary. Let us move ahead. I can assure the House the next government will change that.

[Maurice Vellacott, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

My regrets, Mr. Speaker. I will just make reference to the former justice minister from Edmonton, Alberta, and I think people would have in mind of whom I am speaking.

She stated that raising the age of consent was something that the government should be moving forward on. She said back in October 2001 with regard to changing the age of consent from 14 to 16:

Those consultations will be concluded and reported on by December 31, 2001 and I think we will see that a consensus is emerging that with certain safeguards we should probably be moving on the age of consent from 14 to 16.

That was the case. The provinces unanimously want that to proceed. Then she went on, and this is the kind of way that she evaded, dodged and escaped from it. She said, in a very interesting way to kind of step around it:

But as with some of these things, they look simple on the surface, but they're not quite so simple. It requires a fair number of changes to the code; we're going to have to review all those sections where age is found. But it's certainly an issue very much on our agenda.

Well let us get it on the agenda. Let us put it forward. Let us do it instead of sidestepping in the manner she did. Where there is a will, there is a way. Yes, there are some complications but if there is really a heart and a spirit and a desire to move forward on this very vital thing, then we can do it. We can move it ahead. Where there is a will, there is a way to get it done, and very quickly.

One of the major objections we have to Bill C-12 is that it does not raise the age of consent for sexual contact between children and adults, those kinds of exploitive relationships. In fact there is a category that is aimed at protecting people between the ages of 14 and 18. In determining whether a person is in a relationship with a young person that is exploitive of that young person, a judge must consider the age difference between the accused and the young person, the evolution of the relationship, as well as the degree of control or influence by the accused over the young person.

Really it is something that allows just too much to slip through on this. It fails to create the kind of certainty of protection that children require. It fails to give that assurance and that kind of tool, if you will, to the good police across our country who need something. They need some more teeth in the law so that they can move forward in rapid fashion with these prosecutions instead of dragging on and on, with people slipping through with these kinds of defences that are allowed.

As it stands, this bill would not serve as a real deterrent and would simply result in longer trials and more litigation dragged out over time.

Prior to this bill, it was already against the law for a person in a position of trust or authority, with whom a young person between ages 14 and 18 was in a relationship of dependency, to be sexually involved with that young person. That already was in effect so there is nothing new in that respect in this law. It is unclear how adding people who are in a relationship with a young person which is exploitive of the young person does anything to add legal protection for young people. We are not convinced that there is any improvement by way of what is suggested in that little term exploitive relationship in Bill C-12.

In the Sharpe case there were two exemptions carved out for child pornography: materials such as diaries or drawings created privately and kept by that person for personal use; and visual recordings of a person, by that person, engaged in lawful sexual activity, kept by the person for personal use.

That latter exemption has the potential to expose children 14 to 18 years of age to further exploitation by child pornographers since they would be engaging in legal activity, but the government's failure to prohibit all adult-child sex continues to be an unacceptable risk. Only by raising that age of consent will young people be truly protected under the Criminal Code.

We are not advocating for the criminalizing of teenagers, as with other jurisdictions with a more reasonable age of consent, but in those jurisdictions, such as the U.K., Australia and most states in the United States, a close in age exemption would apply to ensure that those individuals, those teenagers, are not criminalized.

Bill C-12 would also increase maximum sentences for child related offences. They include sexual offences, failing to provide the necessities of life and abandoning a child. That is good so far as the statement exists, but it does no good if the courts do not impose the sentences.

We know by experience that when maximum sentences are raised, there is no corresponding pattern in the actual sentencing practices. This has been demonstrated across the land. The maximum penalty can be raised but if there is no minimum sentence, then it really does not do anything in the way of successful prosecutions and there is no change in the actual sentencing patterns. What is needed are mandatory sentences, truth in sentencing, eliminating statutory release, and that there be no conditional sentences for child predators.

As has been said by others here today, we are all experiencing the effects of modern technology. We are all part of the wave of technology and its advances, but that is also part of what is creating the difficulty here. The problem is it surpassed the legislative provisions. There is some archaism that governs the use of evidence in these cases. We really need to have that addressed. The bill fails to address those shortcomings. Amendments are required to deal with child pornography cases effectively and efficiently such that we make some serious impact to drive it back or push it off to the very edges of society or to eliminate it altogether, if possible.

The bill creates a new offence of voyeurism and the distribution of voyeuristic material. That is a positive step, and we will give credit where it is due. It makes it an offence to observe or make a visual recording of a person who shall have a reasonable expectation of privacy if the person is in a place in which the person can be expected to be nude or engaged in sexual activity.

There was a recent case in the city of Saskatoon at the exhibition grounds. I think that disciplinary action is being brought against the person, who is a law enforcement official himself. His excuse is that he was on certain medications and so on. He was using a camera in a voyeuristic manner in the washrooms at the exhibition in Saskatoon. We need laws in place because of the advancement of technology. Certainly that is to be commended and is a good thing.

The Conservative Party of Canada believes that the bill falls far short in terms of protecting Canada's children. Members of Parliament across the country have discovered this plain and clear especially as they have talked to those who work with youth, child advocacy groups. Conversations with the police make it very apparent that this is a flawed bill. It is inadequate and will not do the job, which is a very unfortunate, regrettable thing for the children of our country.

The bill will not give children the greater legal protection that they need and which we owe to them as citizens of this country. Children are the future of our country and should not be allowed to be at risk. We need to get the laws in place and we need to get it right . This bill simply will not do the job.

With those regretful comments at the end, I conclude my remarks. Bill C-12 is in serious need of amendment. The Conservative Party of Canada hopes that maybe at some point we could have that done.

[Maurice Vellacott, Canadian Alliance, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of my esteemed colleague who just spoke. He has been attorney general in his province and has worked in the law field for some time, so he has had a lot of discussion and dialogue with the authorities, with justice officials under his purview and his watch in the province of Manitoba, and he serves our Conservative Party very well as our lead critic in these matters.

The bill we have before us, Bill C-12, is one about which different people have wanted to speak out. People are outraged that we do not have it right in respect of the piece of legislation that we have here today. This whole controversy about the artistic merit defence actually began some time ago in reaction to the court case of John Robin Sharpe, a notorious child pornographer.

The bill purports to make amendments to the Criminal Code to safeguard children from sexual exploitation, abuse and neglect. We think the bill has not done this in the appropriate way and to the extent that it should. Therefore, as Conservative Party members, we have objections with respect to the Liberal government bill before us today.

The Supreme Court of Canada said in the Sharpe case that artistic merit should be interpreted as broadly as possible. That very much concerns us. We do not have any other direction from Parliament, the highest court in the land, if we will, so therefore we have a broad latitude in the statement from the Supreme Court on the John Robin Sharpe case. That statement helped shape the decision that allowed John Robin Sharpe to be acquitted for two counts of possession of child pornography with the intent to distribute.

That material, containing some very violent writings targeting vulnerable children, was considered by judges to have artistic merit. Since that time, this side of the House, particularly the Conservatives, has called on the federal government to eliminate that particular artistic merit defence.

Under this now slightly changed bill, Bill C-12, the existing defences of child pornography, that is, artistic merit, educational, scientific or medical purposes, are reduced to a single defence of public good, but this still has not solved the problem because of how wide and a little bit vague this term is.

Despite the attempts of the former justice minister, the member for Outremont, to sell us the bill and convince us on that basis that the artistic merit defence was eliminated--and technically speaking that would be true--he admitted in the justice committee that it is still included under the broader public good defence. Therein lies the difficulty. As he said in the justice committee, artistic merit still exists in the sense that a piece of art essentially will have to go through this new defence of public good and go through the two stages, and of course there is always the first question: does it serve the public good? That is in the committee records of September 25, 2003.

In the Sharpe case, the Supreme Court of Canada also briefly--

[Vic Toews, Canadian Alliance, Provencher, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-12, a bill that has been recycled by the federal justice minister, a bill that would do nothing to help give children the legal protection they need.

We heard a lot of evidence in committee regarding the bill. We heard from frontline police officers and from child advocacy groups, including groups like Beyond Borders. The government has simply ignored the mounds of evidence from these child advocate groups and frontline police officers who have indicated time and again that the Bill C-12 would not be effective in protecting children.

By reviving what has been referred to as pedophile-friendly legislation without a thought to the real needs of children, the Prime Minister has simply carried out the previous prime minister's legacy of indifference.

The bill does not address the fundamental problems relating to the protection of children that our criminal justice system should address. It does not eliminate all defences for the criminal possession of child pornography. It does not raise the age of consent for adult-child sexual contact from 14 years of age, one of the lowest ages of consent in the western world.

One of the provisions in the Criminal Code allows an adult to have sex with a child as young as 12 years old if that adult thought the child was in fact 14 years of age. While that may seem preposterous, that is exactly what happened in a recent case in Saskatchewan where a judge acquitted two adult males in their twenties who had sexual relations with a young aboriginal girl who had run away from home. They were acquitted because they thought she was 14 years of age.

The bill fails to introduce mandatory sentences for child sexual assault, as has been done in other jurisdictions, specifically the United Kingdom and the United States.

The bill also fails to streamline the laws of evidence governing convictions for sex offenders.

Canada is becoming a global haven for child predators because of these glaring Liberal policy failures. In fact, the entire bill is filled with vague provisions that fail to create the certainty of protection that children require. No doubt prompting therefore the applause from a notorious child predator like John Robin Sharpe, who supports the bill, because he believes it would bring understanding to the adult-child sexual relationship. Praise from a child predator is evident, but all the frontline police officers and child care agencies, indeed, every witness who went before the justice committee, condemned the bill, other than the minister himself.

Let me deal specifically with some of the concerns that have been raised.

The first concern that needs to be raised, which I know some of my colleagues have addressed, centres around the controversy regarding the artistic merit defence. That controversy began in reaction to the court case of the previously mentioned child predator John Robin Sharpe.

The Supreme Court of Canada in R. v Sharpe said that artistic merit should be interpreted as broadly as possible. That really opened the door to mischief in terms of trying to enforce this particular law. It basically meant that one could bring forward any witness to say that there was at least some artistic merit to these degrading writings and that would be sufficient for a judge to consider an acquittal.

That interpretation of the law by the Supreme Court of Canada helped shape the decision that allowed Mr. Sharpe to be acquitted for two counts of possession of child pornography with the intent to distribute, as the material, containing violent writing targeting vulnerable children, was considered by the judge to have artistic merit.

It is truly remarkable that we would never accept the defence of artistic merit with respect to women in our society and with respect to the exploitation of racial minorities, and yet with respect to the most vulnerable minority of them all, our children, the courts are more than quick to protect artistic merit rights and destroy the protection that children deserve. It is very evident that that defence needs to be eliminated. It is simply not necessary.

We have called on the federal government, as the Conservative Party, to eliminate that defence. The government responded but the response has been a pitiful response in terms of protecting children.

The defence in the old bill has now been reduced into a single defence of public good. Despite the former justice minister's attempt to sell this bill on the basis that the artistic merit defence has been eliminated, he admitted in the justice committee hearings that the artistic merit defence is still included under the broader public good defence.

Again, that is typical of the kind of approach that the prior justice minister took and now apparently the new justice minister takes. If people are sufficiently outraged they make changes, not changes that substantively address the concerns raised, but rather changes that simply disguise their original intent and in fact carry out that original intent.

What did the former justice minister state in describing what this new public good defence includes? He admitted, and I want to quote from his comments. He stated:

Artistic merit still exists in the sense that a piece of art will have to essentially go through the new defence of public good and through the two stages. Of course, the first question is always this. Does it serve the public good?

Clearly, within there is still the defence of artistic merit.

In the Sharpe decision, when it was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, the court also addressed that particular statement. It briefly considered the defence of public good. The court found that public good has been interpreted as “necessary or advantageous to...the pursuit of science, literature, or art, or other objects of general interest”. That was the Supreme Court of Canada's interpretation of public good.

The court went on to say:

It might be argued that the public good is served by possession of materials that promote expressive or psychological well-being or enhance one's sexual identity in ways that do not involve harm to others. In some cases this might eliminate some of the more problematic applications of s. 163.1(4). For example, it might in certain cases foreclose the law's application to visual works created and privately held by one person alone....

That statement by the Supreme Court of Canada has been the subject of a lot of controversy. One of the things that the court apparently did not understand was that this type of written child pornography is used to groom children into thinking that these types of sexual relationships with adults are all right. It is very difficult then to suppress this particular information or this type of child pornography. The excuse being offered by these pornographers is that they were only writing it for themselves.

I heard an interesting story with respect to some of Mr. John Robin Sharpe's material that it was in fact found with a notation on it, “This material may be illegal in Canada”. That is a curious thing to put on one's own writings required for one's own personal use. If Mr. Sharpe thought it would be illegal, that is one thing, but why would he have to put that on the face of the material itself? The inference is clear. He distributes this material in order to assist other child predators in their activities.

In trying to create these kinds of exceptions, ostensibly to protect free speech, what the court does is it opens the door to the abuse of children.

The Conservative Party calls for the elimination of all defences that justify the criminal possession of child pornography. Members opposite say that then means we have to make it illegal in every context. That is not correct. That is being mischievous. Obviously, for the purposes of prosecution, for example, it would not be illegal for the police or prosecutors to possess that or for researchers who are studying the effects of exposure to child pornography.

However there needs to be some limitation and clear delineation of what is acceptable and what is not.

We were met with a problem similar to this some years ago when it appeared that police officers were conducting certain illegal activity to further another criminal investigation.

The Supreme Court of Canada said there was no justification for police officers to engage in that illegal activity, no protection in common law, statute or otherwise. The House addressed that issue by passing legislation that set out exactly when police officers could break the law to investigate another charge. It was clearly delineated and set out in statute.

When members opposite say that the exclusion of all child pornography and categorizing it as criminal possession would never work because it would exclude the legitimate handling of pornography by police or prosecutors for a prosecution, is simply a lot of nonsense.

This bill needs to go back to the drawing board to address what I consider a fundamental flaw in that legislation, but yet a flaw that can be remedied by good statutory language. I might note in this context as well that civil libertarians have also indicated that they have a concern with the defence of public good and that it is simply too vague and too broad. So those who are interested in protecting children are concerned about this and civil libertarians who are concerned about certain artistic endeavours are also concerned that this phrase establishes no standard at all.

I want to talk about the age of consent. This bill, frankly, does not deal with that issue in an effective manner. Instead of prohibiting all child exploitation by adults where that child is, for example as in other countries, under the age of 16, this legislation requires a court to examine on a case by case basis if a child has been harmed. This kind of tiptoeing around criminal behaviour is reprehensible. The Conservative Party will not support this kind of vague legislation.

Again, comments by the notorious child predator John Robin Sharpe praising this pedophile friendly piece of legislation further validate the opposition's concern about this bill. Instead of raising the age to simply and clearly state that there shall be no adult-child sexual contact, the Liberals import this vague standard.

At the same time, I recognize that it is not the role of Parliament to get involved in certain social policy issues, for example, sexual relationships between children. The concern of the Conservative Party is not to regulate the sexual conduct of children between each other, that is, children under the age of 16. What we are concerned about is the exploitation of children by adults. We recognize that there needs to be a close in age exemption that ensures we do not criminalize consenting activity, but we do want to stop the kind of activity that John Robin Sharpe was just recently convicted of.

On the age of consent, 80% of Canadians polled said they want to raise the age of consent to at least age 16. The response of this government has been that there are certain cultural considerations in Canada which prevent it from doing that. We have asked time and again what culture in this country agrees with the sexual exploitation of children by adults. The Liberals have been silent. The government has tried to rely on some kind of cultural camouflage, which has only insulted Canadians of every culture. If there is evidence that cultures in Canada accept the exploitation of children by adults, why does the government not bring it forward instead of casting aspersions on every culture in Canada?

The approach of the Liberals in this bill to create this category of exploitative relationships is simply cumbersome and is in fact very difficult to prove in terms of trying to bring forward a prosecution. We already have a provision that makes it against the law for someone in a position of trust to exploit a young person between the ages of 14 and 18. Here, they are simply trying to recast this. Those are my brief comments at this time. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

Justice

[Rick Casson, Canadian Alliance, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the tired Liberal government is recycling a Jean Chrétien piece of legislation and touting it as legislation to protect children.

Bill C-12 does no such thing. Even Canada's most notorious pedophile thinks it is great. Why will the government not put teeth into the legislation so it will truly protect our children? Why will it not remove the loophole allowing for defence based on public good? There must be no defence for child molesters and pornographers.

Why will it not raise the age of consent from 14 to 16 years of age and catch up to the rest of the western world? Why will it not increase mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of preying on our children? Harsher maximum sentences that are rarely levied are not a deterrent.

Child molesters, pedophiles and the creeps who prey on our children support the legislation. It is obvious to me that it will take a Conservative government to put legislation in place that will send a clear message--do not mess with our kids.