Bill C-22 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Criminal Code (age of protection) and to make consequential amendments to the Criminal Records Act

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to raise the age, from 14 to 16 years, at which a person can consent to non-exploitative sexual activity. It creates an exception in respect of an accused who engages in sexual activity with a 14- or 15-year-old youth and who is less than five years older than the youth. It also creates an exception for transitional purposes in respect of an accused who engages in sexual activity with a 14- or 15-year-old youth and who is five or more years older than the youth if, on the day on which this Act comes into force, the accused is married to the youth. The exception also applies to the accused if, on the day on which this Act comes into force, he or she is the common-law partner of the youth or has been cohabiting with the youth in a conjugal relationship for less than one year and they have had or are expecting to have a child as a result of the relationship, and the sexual activity was not otherwise prohibited before that day.

Criminal Code

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the closing remarks of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that it is time. However, I want to make a comment and ask her a question.

I listened very carefully to her constructive comments with respect to the percentages and what has gone on with our young men and women. However, I have more of a concern with respect to predators who come in from other parts of the world to jeopardize the well-being of our youth.

As much as the age of protection can be increased through legislation, which is something we must do and, God willing, do as quickly as possible as the minister outlined, my concern is with the other stakeholders in this. As legislators, we can make all the laws in the world. My concern is that when we catch one of these perpetrators, how will the legislation be enforced?

This is the frustration coming from my constituency of Scarborough Centre. We make laws, but once we get the perpetrators into the courts, can we find people who will make judgments and have the willpower to impose sentences that will allow a message to be sent out to cause others to reconsider?

I am concerned also with 8 and 10 year olds. Would there not be some onus put on the parents? I have grandchildren, for example, and I will monitor what they do as 8 or 10 year olds when using the Internet. Does the minister have any ideas how we can address that as well?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, how we enforce laws has always been an issue. The first step is we need to have the legislation in place. We need to have the laws that will protect our children. Without them, as we have seen and as the member for Calgary Northeast cited in many examples, there was no way to charge people. We could not even get them to court because these predators were not breaking any laws. The first step is getting this legislation in place.

Police forces across the country support the legislation. They need it so they can lay charges and prosecute. It is not enough to prevent and protect. We need to have the ability to prosecute. This is the first step.

Obviously, we have to get perpetrators into the courts. I would hope that all judges in this land would have enough respect for our children that they would actually enforce this law.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration that the Bloc supports this bill.

Some young people are more prone to sexual abuse because they live in isolated communities or because they have physical or mental disabilities.

By “community”, I mean small towns where there are no police officers or remote first nations communities far from police outposts. I am sure the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration will understand what I am saying since this was part of her portfolio. I am also talking about the homeless and so on.

As for the philosophy behind this bill, does the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration think that people with disabilities or the homeless will be better protected?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government has taken a very strong interest in vulnerable people across our country, whether they be the homeless or people who have limited job opportunities due to age or literacy issues. This is another case where we are trying to protect the vulnerable.

There are challenges, there is no question. There are challenges in remote communities. There are challenges in ensuring that people understand the issues from which they need to be protected. Sometimes people are too innocent to believe or to recognize when they are being exploited. That is the first step. That is why the legislation is so necessary. Too many young people get caught in sexually exploitive situations and do not recognize it. They think they are in love or the sexual predator promises money, or other things or treats them like grown-ups.

That is where parents have a responsibility to step in. Parents can recognize these things. Parents can recognize exploitive situations and we have to give them the opportunity and the tools to do something when they encounter these situations. Only by having this legislation in place will that occur. We need to give parents the tools to allow them the freedom to raise their children safely.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-22, dealing with the age of consent. There always has to be a few dissenting voices, so I will be one of them.

As we know, the current age of consent in Canada is 14, and there are already very strict provisions in the Criminal Code for youth. They provide protection for youth between 14 and 18 from exploitative relationships that involve a person in authority or trust. I know the bill speaks about the protection of youth, but I would argue that provisions are already in the Criminal Code to provide this kind of protection.

We also have very strict provisions in the Criminal Code that prohibit activities related to prostitution for anyone under 18, and I am very familiar with these provisions. I was on the all party committee that dealt with prostitution. It very strongly believed that there should be strong criminal sanctions against prostitution activities, sexual exploitation of youth under 18. There are also very strict provisions regarding pornography. Therefore, these are already covered in the Criminal Code.

I know from the messages, the emails and the people to whom I have spoken in my community and elsewhere across Canada, people are very concerned about the exploitation, harm, violence and coercion that can exist, whether it is in a sexual relationship or not, and the protection of young people generally. I concur with that. It is a very serious issue in our society and it is something on which we should focus.

The problem I have with the bill is it goes way beyond that because it is a very sweeping bill. It goes much further in laying down a regime that becomes kind of a generic law, which will criminalize some sexual activity for young people. We have to look at that and distinguish where there are harms and where there are not, where there is consenting activity and where there is not.

I know at committee, Andrea Cohen, who is the president of the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health, which I believe was formerly called Planned Parenthood, an organization with which we are very familiar, made it very clear that the Federation for Sexual Health was not for the legislation. She said:

We believe it's a rather crude instrument to deal with a pretty complex issue, which human sexual behaviour is, particularly around youth.

She laid out three concerns to the committee, which she felt needed to be addressed.

The first was that young people, because of the bill, would not be feel comfortable about seeking information around sexual health services because of fear of a lack of accountability. I think the concern is if the bill is approved, young people will be less likely to seek sexual health information or advice if they know their activities are outside of the law.

Ms. Cohen also laid out a concern about:

The perception or reality that a young person or his or her partner would be reported to authorities and prosecuted for consensual sexual activity outside of the five-year limit will result in sexually active youth not seeking or getting the health services they need.

I know this concern was very much echoed by the Canadian AIDS Society and the Elizabeth Fry Society as well.

The second concern of the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health was that the increased age of consent could be used as a justification for denying young people the sexual health education services they needed. Its concern was that it may actually place educators and health professionals in a very difficult position in that they may be reluctant to enter into conversations or exchange information with young people, under the proposed new age of consent, due to the uncertainty about their own legal obligations. We should be very concerned about this. We are in an environment where young people will be very reluctant possibly to come forward and to seek the kind of health advice, information, support and counselling they need.

The third concern of the federation was it pointed out that the Criminal Code included a clause that set the age of consent for anal sex at 18 years, which is higher than for any other type of sexual activity. It pointed out that there was no logical or medical reason to treat one type of sexual activity differently than the others.

Those were the concerns that the federation laid out. The NDP justice critic, the member for Windsor—Tecumseh, tried very hard in committee to get them addressed. He tried to get amendments in the bill that would reflect these concerns, but unfortunately they were not permitted, leaving us with a flawed bill. I thank the member for trying to get those.

Members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community have also expressed their very serious reservations about the bill. People are concerned that this will lead us into a much more moralistic attitude and that will prevail. People are concerned that consensual sexual activities will be targeted, particularly in the GLBT community where there has been a history of prosecutions.

The government wants to raise the age of consent, and that is the main message in the bill. The message around the close in age exemption is not getting out. The main message is that the age of consent will be raised to 16. We have to be very concerned about the message that the bill sends out because it may create an environment where young people become very insecure and uncertain about their own rights and what they can and cannot do.

I also want to draw attention to another good presentation that was made at committee from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which raised a couple of concerns. This needs to be seen in a broader context over a lot of the legislation that we see from the Conservative government. The association said at committee:

—Bill C-22 represents a fundamental shift of policy and attitude toward sexuality. In 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada, in the Butler decision dealing with the definition of obscenity, signalled a fundamental shift from the legislation of morality to the legislation of harm.

This is a very important issue. Some members do not want to think about the direction that some of this legislation is taking. Since the Butler decision, there has been an emphasis to enact legislation that focuses on harm and the protection of individual rights, particularly where there are consenting activities. There is now a concern that this legislation will take us in another direction. We should be willing to debate this and to look at the implications and the consequences of that kind of direction. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association made an argument based on public policy and how it could change over the years.

The association also raised a concern that in the absence of evidence of harm, the rush to get through this bill is an unconsidered response to a moral objection rather than a legislative response to harms that have been shown. This is an important point.

I have heard some of the debate by Conservative members. I know they feel very strongly about their point of view, and I respect that. However, we have to also put on the table whether the legislation will accomplish what they are seeking to do, which is to protect young people from violence, exploitation, predators, rather than to put down this blanket that will criminalize youthful sexual activity even if it is consenting. That is my main concern about the bill.

The bill would criminalize consensual sexual activity for some 14 and 15 year olds. It sends a message of moral attitude and judgment rather than focus on harm and exploitation, which are issues with which we seriously need to be deal.

In the real world, teenagers do have sex. They do have sex with older people. Despite what the member for Wild Rose said, I think he said that kids were dumb, we have to recognize what this bill may end up doing in terms of the very people it seeks to protect.

This bill is flawed. I believe that it will tend to drive issues of youth sexuality underground. It will cause young people to be less open about what they need to protect themselves, and their sexual health and their sexuality.

I do not support the bill for those reasons. I do not support the approach being taken by the Conservative government. I do not support this kind of broad-sweeping legislation that I think will criminalize sexual activities of youth and will not in any way ensure their protection from predators. I have a great deal of skepticism about the bill.

Today I have heard members say that something like 80% of the population supports this measure. I do not know whether that is true or not. I am sure it is high. But, again, I think it is based on a very strong and legitimate concern about protecting young people from exploitation and predators, whether it is through pornography, prostitution or random sexual relationships.

However, I really feel that this legislation would take us beyond that, into a direction that would end up criminalizing young people who do not need to be criminalized and would actually put them into an environment where they would be less open about what is going on and less likely to come forward and actually seek protection and health.

I realize that is not a popular thing to say, but I do think it needs to be said. I think we should have very sober thoughts about this bill and what it would do. I have considered it very seriously and I have actually struggled with it, as have other members of the NDP caucus.

There are a majority of members of our caucus who support this bill, but nevertheless I feel that as a member of Parliament I have an obligation to put forward a view. I think there are some issues here that need to be addressed and for the reasons that I have outlined, I find that I cannot support this bill, not because I do not believe that children should not be protected, they should, but because I do not believe this bill would actually accomplish that.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that members of the Liberal caucus take very seriously the preoccupations and concerns that she raised about the possibility that the objective of this bill, while being the protection of our young people, could in fact have an unintended consequence in the sense of discouraging young people from getting sex health information. I am very aware of that. It is a real concern and we do share it. However, we have decided that we will nonetheless support this bill.

One question I do have, though, which I am not sure if this member addressed in her remarks on Bill C-22, is the issue of the government's decision not to repeal section 159 of the Criminal Code. That section, as the member would know, makes anal sexual intercourse for anyone under the age of 18 a criminal act and has been found to be a violation of the charter. It was found to be unconstitutional by two appellate courts, a court of Ontario I believe and the appellate court of Quebec.

This government had the opportunity, when it addressed the age of consent, to harmonize all pieces of the Criminal Code in order to ensure that there were no discriminatory sections of the Criminal Code and decided not to repeal section 159. Then again, in committee, when I brought an amendment to committee, it decided not to support that.

Even when there is a ruling that an amendment is outside the scope of a bill, the government, if it chooses to decide that it may be outside the scope of a bill but is something that was neglected and is in favour of it, can allow the amendment to go forward, and this government did not. I would like to hear what the member from the NDP has to say on that particular issue.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I did raise this in my comments at the beginning. This is one of the concerns that was put forward by the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health. I actually would point out that the member for Windsor—Tecumseh tried to bring this amendment forward as did the Liberal member.

I agree that it seems a contradiction that we would have this inconsistency in the law, that the age of consent for anal sex would be 18 whereas the current age of consent for other sexual activities is 14, presumably now going up to 16 with this bill if it goes through.

I appreciate the member's comments because what it does for me is reinforce the concern that I have with the government's refusal to address that contradiction, even though there have been legal decisions that have squashed that particular section, and I know the member is supporting it, and it is being brought forward on the basis that it has more to do with a moral view on what is right or wrong.

We are all entitled to those views. I have those views. Other people have those views, but to encode it in legislation and to not address the issue of anal sex and the inconsistency there really is a reflection of where the Conservatives are coming from. That is actually one of the reasons why I find that I cannot support this bill.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I found my colleague from Vancouver East's speech very interesting because it raised more questions about an issue nobody really knows much about.

We know that children who are victims of sexual abuse display a range of symptoms, including anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, behavioural problems, age-inappropriate sexual behaviour and low self-esteem, all of which are harmful to young people.

How does the member feel this bill will help young people escape abusive situations? As the member for Wild Rose and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said, this bill was essentially created to help parents catch the perpetrators.

Can my colleague from Vancouver East tell us what is to become of the many children who are sexually abused but do not have parents?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it does raise the whole question of what we can do through legislation and what we need to do in other ways, and the fact is that sexual abuse in our society is a very serious problem.

Obviously, parents and caregivers are people who are in a primary position of responsibility to provide trust and support, but as the member has pointed out, sometimes that does not happen. Sometimes the abuse may be in the home or sometimes it may be in a foster situation, or it may be young people who are on the street already.

To me, that is why it is so important, and the Canadian Federation for Sexual Health points this out very well, that we actually need to have programs, supports and services that provide those services in a non-judgmental and accessible way for young people. If we think we are going to solve everything through legislation, then we are making a huge mistake and we are actually driving young people more and more into an environment where they will not seek help when they need it.

I represent a community where we do have street youth, where we have kids who are really at very high risk, and this legislation is not necessarily going to help them. What they need are services and supports right at the grassroots, right in the local community that they can believe in, that they know they can access. When that happens and a relationship of trust is developed, that is where we can then work with them and help them make decisions about their own health, about their own lives.

However, if young people are fearful to go to that service or support program because they feel that they will be deemed illegal, then they are not going to do that. That is what I think is one of the consequences and problems with this bill, that we may be actually driving away the very young people who are at risk, who actually need help, because we will be putting them in this environment where they feel that they cannot come forward.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to some of the speeches regarding Bill C-22. I must admit that the speeches I heard are similar but do have some major differences. I listened closely to the speech by my colleagues from Vancouver East and Calgary Northeast. The member for Calgary Northeast was a police detective and worked with my uncle for several years.I know how important law and order are to him.

However, while listening to the speech by my colleague from Vancouver East, I realized that, although we support this bill, there are certain points that should lead us to ask some hard questions as to some of its provisions.

I concur with what my colleague said earlier that setting the age of consent for anal sex at 18 is very discriminatory. Why are we attempting to protect boys until they are 18 years old and girls until they are 16? That makes no sense and is ridiculous. Is there a difference in how children are affected by unwanted sexual relations based on the victim's sex or whether the relationship was heterosexual or homosexual?I believe that unwanted sexual relations are abusive sexual relations and cause a great deal of harm. I do not understand why there is a difference.

At my age, 57, we have come a long way from when we believed that we could become pregnant by kissing our boyfriend. When I was very young, I kissed my first boyfriend. I felt so guilty that I did not want to talk about it to anyone. We did not talk about sex back then. We did not talk about it in 1960 and we still do not in 2007.

It is the responsibility of the adults who look after and are close to our young people—their parents and teachers—to teach them about sex, give them information, and make them aware of their sexuality.

Even today, sexuality is a very taboo subject. We speak very little about the sexuality of older persons. You might say that we do not want to admit that older persons—our parents and grandparents—have sexual relations. Yet, the best seniors' residences are those that allow older persons to have sexual relations. Just because we become older does not mean that we stop having feelings and sensations.

Unfortunately, sex has always been looked on as something dirty, something that people should do only for procreation or for momentary pleasure. In addition, very little is said about homosexual sex. Very little is said about children's sexuality. Very little is said about the sexuality of persons with disabilities. Yet they too have a sex life and are entitled to one.

We do not talk enough about sex with our children. We are reluctant to talk to them about it. In my opinion, it is not good to perpetuate such taboos and avoid talking frankly with our children about sex. It is very important to talk about it.

When we hear that children are being lured over the Internet, when we see children in hotels or restaurants with much older people, we wonder how these children could have fallen into the trap, how they could have been lured by someone who used the Internet to tell them all sorts of things that were not true. It happens everywhere.

I always monitor the websites my grandson visits. I have custody of my 14 year old grandson, and this is extremely important to me. I talk to him about sex, the dangers of the Internet and what life is really like, because I love him and I want him to become a young adult who behaves responsibly in his relationships with his friends. I want him to become someone who takes responsibility not only for his sexual activity but in all aspects of his life. I often talk to him about these dangers, and I check the sites he visits. I ask Alexis who he is chatting with, what he is doing, who someone is. He always tells me that I am worrying for nothing.

Last week, he came home on the weekend and told me that one of his friends had been approached online by someone who wanted to meet him. At that point, my grandson realized that there were dangers out there. His friend could not confide in adults and asked Alexis what he should do. He told Alexis that this person had asked to meet him somewhere. Alexis told him, “Call the police, call the authorities and tell your parents”. He said that because that is what I have taught him.

We are the primary instruments in educating our children so they know what to do when they are being harassed, when they are being approached by people who want to have sexual relations with them without their consent.

It is quite clear that, when it comes to a bill that will set the age of consent at 16 years, we sometimes ask why this is the case. I understand that, for my colleague from Vancouver East, this may seem quite sanctimonious and it is probably that reason that led the party that introduced this bill to want to have it passed. It is rather its philosophy, its thinking, its ideology that are quite different.

In this regard, I remind the House that we must be very careful not to fall into any traps. Indeed, as we see in the United States, the people who are the most conservative are quite often those who are the most guilty of excesses. We see this presently with Mrs. D.C, with a committee chairman and with some political figures who are being forced to resign from their positions. We saw a little earlier that another member of the Republican Party also had to resign because he was making overtures to young pages who were working for him. I do not see anyone doing this here, although our pages are quite good-looking. I am very happy that our young pages, who work so hard and so well to make our task easier, do not have to suffer such affronts.

Legislation should not be made only to maintain morality. When bills are written, we must be careful to protect the people for whom they are written. We have decided to support this bill, because we have managed, in spite of it all, to have included in the bill some measures that will limit the negative effects that it might have on some people.

I was saying that my grandson is 14. Right now, his girlfriends are the same age. However, he is 5 foot 9. He is a tall, well built, handsome young man. No doubt when he goes dancing on Friday nights, girls 15, 16 or 17 try to attract his attention. He looks older than he is. However, when someone looks like a 16 or 17 year old, that does not mean that he or she has the mindset that goes with that look or that he or she has the intellectual abilities of a 15, 16 or 17 year old.

So, I agree that we must adopt legislation to offer some protection, but we must be careful to make them fair for everybody. When my colleague from Vancouver East said that the bill would forbid anal sex between men or women 18 years old I did not understand. I was flabbergasted.

I think that we must go to the source of the problem. If we take a hard look at today's society, we realize that our children are not more sexually informed than us at their age. However, schools give sex education courses and have been doing so for many years in Quebec. Unfortunately, due to the cuts in federal transfers to provinces, services and courses for students have been reduced. Among other things, sex education courses were transformed into moral issues courses and that was detrimental to our children because they no longer know what to think and they must learn about sex through books, the Internet and the phone.

As I mentioned earlier, I look after my grandson. For me, his sexual life is part of his whole being. A few weeks ago, I took him with me to buy condoms. He was embarrassed and said: “Grandma, the parents of the other kids at school do not do that. What I am going to look like?” I replied: “You will look like a young man who wants to learn how to protect himself and the young woman or the young man with whom he is going to have sexual relations. This is what you will look like. You will look like a responsible person. Indeed, the fact that you love someone with whom you are in a relationship is not going to protect you from sexually transmitted diseases, or prevent you from transmitting such diseases.”

Now that he understands that, he has asked me if I would also inform his friends. I told him: “No, grandma does not want to become an agency that talks about and provides information on sexual relations. I informed you. Now, go and tell your friends that they should get that information at home, because it is important.”

As parents we have a duty to properly assume that responsibility. Let us stop burying our heads in the sand, and let us see the obvious.

Currently, there is a hypersexualization phenomenon throughout the world, among our young women and men, in the TV messages and on the Internet. Everything we see is hypersexualized, including messages that make us think in sexual terms as soon as we see them. It is not our children or pedophiles who are responsible for this. It is the agencies that come up with these messages.

All this needs to be re-evaluated by our society. How do we want to deal with our children? How do we want them to behave in life? How do we want them to view and understand sexuality? Sexuality is something that is good and wonderful, something that each person has the fundamental right to experience. It is something personal. By interfering with a person's sexuality, we could create a monster.

Therefore, we should not pass too many bills to prevent people from fully experiencing their sexuality, because it is a fundamental right. We are all born with sexual urges. Little children take great pleasure in touching themselves, and this is normal.

When I was young, I was taught by nuns. I remember them telling us that we had to sleep with our hands above the covers and not wash ourselves in the bathtub. At the time, there were no showers. We were not allowed to put our hands in the water to wash our lower bodies. That was prohibited. We had to use a washcloth and do it very quickly. We were not supposed to spend a lot of time on those parts even though those were probably the parts we would have wanted to spend the most time on because it felt good to clean them. I should point out that young people do not really like washing themselves.

This is why I say yes to bills that protect our young people, but we have to be careful not to go too far in trying to protect them. We must not protect them from themselves. We must protect them from people who want to hurt them and attack them.

We are trying to punish pedophiles and stop people from attacking our youth. We want to stop them from hurting our youth. We are not trying to stop our 12, 14, 16 or 18 year olds from exploring their sexuality because that is how they will become whole human beings and be able to smile as they walk down the street.

Too many of the people in this House do not smile enough. Perhaps that is because their sexuality is unfulfilled. If people were more comfortable with their sexuality, maybe they would smile more. Many of my colleagues smile often, but too many of them never smile. I would like to wish everyone here a fulfilling sex life. To ensure that our young people have the opportunity to develop their sexuality, we must protect their right to grow up without being attacked by people who want to hurt them.

[Art Hanger, Conservative, Calgary Northeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I should point out that I served in the Calgary police department with the uncle of the member for Laval. I know that as a police officer Mr. Syl Demers had a lot of concerns about this issue. I think we would find most police officers feeling very much supportive of this kind of legislation.

The member for Laval brought forward several points, along with her concern over what might be some shortcomings in the bill. I do not think those shortcomings are realized and I think there is going to be far more good in the bill. The member has expressed concern about her children and grandchildren. That view is shared by just about every member in the House who has children or grandchildren.

In spite of all the shortcomings that the member might see, and I know you are supporting it, do you see any other areas that we could tighten up in the bill and that could make the environment more protective of our youngsters? I think that is the purpose of this particular bill, in addition to targeting those who want to abuse them.

[The Acting Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I would remind the member for Calgary Northeast that he should address his comments to the Chair, not directly to hon. members.

The hon. member for Laval.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. Unfortunately, this bill has already been studied and passed in committee, and has now returned to the House for debate so that it can be passed. Are there still things to be changed in this bill? Maybe there will be other bills to look at. I think that now, with the amendments that have been made, this bill is good.

As I was saying earlier, I know that there are some shortcomings when it comes to the age difference for people having anal intercourse. There are certainly some shortcomings, but I am convinced that we will be able to work reasonably well with this bill. Later, if there are other things we can do as parliamentarians, we will want to do them to protect our children. I am not worried, and I am happy to see that the member for Calgary Northeast is smiling at me.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I hasten to mention that I am smiling.

I very much appreciated the member's approach. She knows that I appreciate her interventions generally on all of the subjects that she raises. I agree with much of what she said and appreciate that she was as frank as she was about the discussions she has had with her grandson and other people on this particular issue.

I have a question for her, though, in that I agree with much of what she said, but I do not agree with her conclusion because I do not support this legislation.

The problem is that I believe we have good legislation in place that deals with many of the problems of relationships and sexual relationships. I believe that we have legislation in place that protects young people from being exploited where there is a relationship of power or authority. The current law is very clear on that.

It also is very clear on issues of prostitution. It is very clear on issues related to pornography and to its production. It is very clear and very restrictive.

All that the legislation we now have before us does is criminalize a consensual relationship between someone who is 15 years old or 16 years old and someone who is five years older.

I want to ask the member about what she thinks about dragging a relationship into court and criminalizing it and subjecting it to criminal sanctions where there is an age difference of six, seven or eight years or more, where it is a consensual relationship, where it has not been exploitive, where it has not been subject to a power imbalance, and where it has not been part of pornography or prostitution.

How does criminalizing that relationship help the people who are involved in that relationship? How does it address the problems of that relationship? How does it help a young person understand what it means to be in a full, appropriate and healthy relationship? How does taking it into the courts and the criminal justice system help that young person in the long run?

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I have a lot of respect for him and he knows that.

It is true that concerns may remain about this bill. However, my colleague from Hochelaga has ensured that amendments would prevent people from being unduly prosecuted because they had a sexual relationship with someone.

We are talking about sexual relationships between a 15-year-old and a 21-year-old or between a 14-year-old and a 20-year-old. I said earlier that, when one is young, one can look totally like an adult. There are rites of passage. Some 14-year-old women have the mind of a 20-year-old and some have the mind of a 12-year-old. There is no telling.

I believe the bill has some tools to ensure there will be no witch hunts. If we think there are witch hunts, the Bloc Québécois will be the first to denounce them and to ensure that they stop, believe me. This is not what we want to do at all. We want our children to be protected, of course, but we do not want them to be unduly punished for having their first sexual experiences with someone who is a little older than them. That is not what we want.