Bill C-58 (Historical)

Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation)

An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service

This enactment imposes reporting duties on persons who provide an Internet service to the public if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence. This enactment makes it an offence to fail to comply with the reporting duties.

Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation)

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

moved that Bill C-58, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak in support of government Bill C-58, the child protection act.

I think everyone in this House would agree there is no greater duty for us as elected officials than to ensure the protection of children, the most precious and vulnerable members of our society.

The creation of the Internet, particularly the creation of the World Wide Web, has provided new means for offenders to distribute and consume child pornography, resulting in significant increases in the availability and volume of child pornography.

While Canada has one of the most comprehensive frameworks in the world to combat child pornography, we can and must do better in protecting children from sexual exploitation. This proposed new federal statute before us today would enhance Canada's capacity to better protect children from sexual exploitation by requiring suppliers of Internet services to report Internet child pornography.

Bill C-58 would strengthen Canada's ability to detect potential child pornography offences; help reduce the availability of online child sexual abuse; facilitate the identification, apprehension and prosecution of offenders; and, most importantly, help identify the victims so they may be rescued from sadistic pedophiles.

Less than a week ago, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection released a report that included an overview of the information received through reports to Cybertip.ca. Cybertip.ca is Canada's tipline for reporting online child sexual exploitation, in particular, child pornography, online luring, child exploitation through prostitution, travelling sex offenders and child trafficking.

I will quote from this report, which contains absolutely shocking information about the prevalence of online sexual assault and the distribution of these images:

The results of this assessment provide some disturbing data on the issue of child abuse images. Most concerning is the severity of abuse depicted, with over 35% of all images showing serious sexual assaults. Combined with the age ranges of the children in the images, we see that children under 8 years old are most likely to be abused through sexual assaults. Even more alarming is the extreme sexual assaults which occur against children under the age of 8 years. These statistics challenge the misconception that child pornography consists largely of innocent or harmless nude photographs of children.

The Cybertip.ca report reinforces similar findings revealed this past summer in the special report of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, “Every Image, Every Child”.

This report, which provided an overview of the problem of Internet-facilitated child sexual abuse, revealed that the number of charges for production and distribution of child pornography increased 900% between 1998 and 2003. Moreover, between 2003 and 2007, the number of images of serious child abuse quadrupled. Additionally, the images are becoming more violent and the photos are featuring younger children.

Canadians would be appalled to know that 39% of those accessing child pornography were viewing images of children between the ages of three and five, and 19% were viewing images of infants under three years old.

Here are a few other facts from the report. Commercial child pornography is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. There are over 750,000 pedophiles online at any given time. Thousands of new images or videos are put on the Internet every week, and hundreds of thousands of searches for child sexual abuse are performed daily. Offenders may have collections of over a million child sexual abuse images. An image of a four year old girl in diapers has been shared an estimated 800,000 times. Most child sexual abuse image producers are known to the victims.

The most disturbing revelation in the ombudsman's report comes in the form of a quote from Ontario Provincial Police detective inspector Angie Howe. When she appeared before a Senate committee in 2005, she said:

The images are getting more violent and the children in the photos are getting younger. As recently as one year ago, we did not see pictures with babies, where now it is normal to see babies in many collections that we find. There is even a highly sought-after series on the Internet of a newborn baby being violated. She still has her umbilical cord attached; she is that young.

We must do everything within our power to put a stop to this growing problem. That is why our government has introduced legislation to create a uniform mandatory reporting regime across Canada.

It is important to note that the measures proposed in Bill C-58 build upon our existing comprehensive measures to better protect all children against sexual exploitation through child pornography.

Canadian criminal laws against child pornography are among the most comprehensive in the world and apply to representations involving real and imaginary children. Section 163.1 of the Criminal Code prohibits all forms of making, distributing, transmitting, accessing, selling, advertising, exporting, importing and possessing child pornography. It broadly defines child pornography that includes visual, written and audio depictions of sexual abuse of a young person under the age of 18 years, that advocates or counsels such unlawful activity, or that has descriptions of such unlawful activity as its predominant focus.

All child pornography offences are punishable by significant penalties, including a maximum of 10 years' imprisonment upon indictment for the offences of making and distributing child pornography.

Since 2005, all child pornography offences impose a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment and, as a result, convicted child pornographers are not eligible to receive a conditional sentence, for example, house arrest.

As well, the commission of any child pornography offence with the intent to profit is an aggravating factor for sentencing purposes.

Also, since 2005, sentencing courts are required to give primary consideration to the sentencing objectives of denunciation and deterrence in sentencing for an offence involving the abuse of a child.

This government also recognizes that more is needed to combat this scourge than just strong criminal laws. That is why, in December 2008, we renewed the federal government's national strategy to protect children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. Initially launched in 2004, and under the lead of the Minister of Public Safety, this strategy is providing $42.1 million over five years to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre to provide law enforcement with better tools and resources to address Internet-based child sexual exploitation, enhance public education and awareness, and support the national launch and ongoing operation of Cybertip.ca as a national 24/7 tipline for reporting the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet.

As announced in budget 2007 and rolled out in 2008, we have allocated an additional $6 million per year to strengthen initiatives to combat the sexual exploitation and trafficking of children. These funds are being used to augment the overall capacity of the NCECC, as well as to specifically enhance its ability to identify, and ultimately rescue, child victims through the analysis of images seized from sex offenders, captured on the Internet or received from international law enforcement agencies.

The international community has also recognized that the protection of our children is of paramount importance in the many treaties that address the issue. In particular, the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime seeks to standardize a definition of child pornography and offences related to child pornography in an attempt to foster international cooperation for crimes against the world's children. The legislation introduced in the House yesterday would further enhance our ability to cooperate with our international partners in the fight to eradicate this violence.

I would now like to describe how this piece of legislation will work.

First, the bill focuses on the Internet and those who supply Internet services to the public, because the widespread adoption of the Internet is largely responsible for the growth in child pornography crimes over the last 10 years or so. Because suppliers of Internet services are uniquely placed to discover child pornography crimes, because they provide Canadians with the Internet services through which child pornography crimes can be committed, the bill imposes upon them a duty to report or notify.

It should be noted that this act will cover more than just ISPs. The term ISP usually refers to those who provide access to the Internet, in other words, the wires that go into our homes or apartments. This bill applies to all persons who supply an Internet service to the public. While this includes ISPs, it also includes those who supply electronic mail services such as webmail, Internet content hosting, which would include web server farms and co-location facilities, and social networking sites on which the public can upload material to an Internet service.

Furthermore, the act would apply to those who provide complimentary Internet services to the public, such as cybercafés, hotels, restaurants and public libraries. This wide application will ensure that the act has as broad a scope as possible and will eliminate as many pedophile safe havens as possible.

Under this new federal statute, suppliers of an Internet service will have a duty to comply with a number of requirements.

First, they will be required to report to a designated agency whenever they are advised of any Internet addressing information relating to a website where child pornography may be found. To be clear, it is only the Internet addressing information that they will be required to report to the designated agency. No personal information will be sent to the designated agency.

This has to be done for two reasons. First, in order to perform the triage function of determining where this material resides, the designated agency does not need any additional information. Second and most importantly, since the designated agency does not need personal information to fulfill its duties, which will be articulated in the regulations, to protect the privacy of Canadians, no personal information will be passed on by the supplier of the Internet service to the designated agency.

Although the regulations have not yet been finalized, it is anticipated that the main role of the designated agency will be to, first, determine if the Internet addressing information actually leads to child pornography as defined by the Criminal Code, and second, to determine the actual geographic location of the web servers hosting the material. The designated agency would then refer the report on to the appropriate law enforcement agency.

The second duty proposed by Bill C-58 would require persons who supply Internet services to the public to notify police when they have reasonable grounds to believe that a child pornography offence has been committed using their Internet service.

For example, if an email provider, while conducting routine maintenance for its mail servers, found a user's mailbox filled with child pornography, it would then be required to notify police that it had grounds to believe that a child pornography offence had been committed. This duty, which falls under clause 4 of this proposed new federal statute, also comes with an additional duty to preserve this information for 21 days once the email provider had notified police.

In order to ensure that the privacy rights of Canadians would not be unduly impacted, the person who notified police would also be required to destroy any information that would not be retained in the ordinary course of business after the expiry of the 21 days, or continue to safeguard the information if a further court order were obtained in relation to that information. Any person who made a notification to police under this act would also be required not to disclose the fact that he or she had made such a notification.

Bill C-58 was also crafted with the following overarching principles in mind.

This legislation should not contribute to the consumption or further dissemination of child pornography. In accordance with this principle, among other things, the bill explicitly states that it does not require or authorize any person to seek out child pornography. In addition to this, the duties were crafted in a manner that would not require a person who supplies an Internet service to do any personal investigation.

They are not required to verify Internet addressing information when they must report to an agency, and they are required to notify police only when they become aware that a child pornography offence has been committed using their Internet service.

The last feature of the bill that I would like to talk about this afternoon is the offences and the penalties.

Any person who knowingly contravenes his or her duties under this act is liable on summary conviction to a graduated penalty scheme, starting with fines of up to $1,000 for a first offence to $5,000 for a second offence with the possibility of a $10,000 fine and/or imprisonment for up to six months for a third and subsequent offence.

Increased penalties are available for corporations and these, in the same manner, are $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000 respectively. The two-tier penalty scheme recognizes the diverse landscape of Canada's service provider community which ranges from large multi-national corporations to sole-proprietorships. While some might argue that these penalties are relatively minor, the government believes that they strike the balance between sending a message to suppliers of Internet services that they have a social, moral and now legal duty to report this heinous material when they encounter it and the real focus of the bill which is compliance.

This government wants to ensure that not only the major ISPs, that already voluntarily report and assist policy, comply but that all suppliers of Internet services in Canada comply so that we can further the goal of better protecting our children.

I hope that all parties and all members of Parliament will provide support for Bill C-58.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, this is a timely bill.

I have a number of questions. The minister was absolutely correct in talking about the exponential growth in this heinous area of activity. However, as the bill targets those who permit child pornography to be distributed, and that in my view is as bad as creating child pornography, which is covered by the Criminal Code, I wonder why the government chose not to put these offences in the Criminal Code right next to section 163. They are very germane. We could look at doing so in committee as well.

The minister admitted that in 2005, the previous government widened the definition of child pornography, which was a good thing and also brought in the mandatory minimum sentence of one year, which was a good thing, but really I have only been here since January 2006 and there has been little done by the government on this file.

Why did it take so long? Why are we so far behind the EU and Germany in this regard?

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member recognizes that the debate we are having today about this very important bill is significant and very important to all Canadians.

When it comes to combatting crime across the country or child pornography, ending violence against women, or ending house arrest for serious crimes like human trafficking, property damage and such, our government's position is strong. We have a strong record on combatting crime and criminal behaviour.

This is something I know this member and all members of the House, regardless of their political stripe, know that the Conservative Party has a strong record on.

Judging from the member's questions today, I know that he recognizes the significance of Bill C-58. It is my hope that he will be supporting it.

I think it is important to highlight for a moment how many cases of Internet child pornography actually are investigated and prosecuted in Canada each year and how many of those have been reported by an Internet service provider.

The latest statistical data we have relating to child pornography is from 2007. During that year there were over 1,400 police-reported child pornography incidents of which 440 resulted in charges.

Unfortunately we have no way of knowing if any of these cases were initiated by an ISP report. What we do know, however, is that the proliferation of images over the Internet is a growing problem. According to the special report of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, entitled “Every Image, Every Child”, the number of images of serious child abuse quadrupled between 2003 and 2007 and the images are getting more violent and the children in the photos are getting even younger.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly support the intent of the bill. While I did not hear the entire speech of the minister, I wholeheartedly agree with what I did hear. In addition, my Liberal colleague's comments were on the mark.

It seems to me that police resources are the key to this. Canada's police forces have been very effective in dealing with this issue. We feel they should be given more resources.

The minister mentioned that $42.1 million is being given to the police over five years to provide law enforcement with more resources. Is the $42.1 million announced today new money, or is this simply money that the police had before?

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will have to get back to the member to give him a specific answer.

Another question asked was how much would it cost suppliers of Internet services to implement these new statutory requirements. It is anticipated that the bill would have a limited impact on the business practices of those ISPs that already voluntarily report cases of online child pornography.

The requirements in the bill were drafted in a manner that reflected, as closely as possible, the current practices of Canada's major ISPs.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to see the bill come forward and I certainly support the intent of it. If the government is as tough on crime as it says it is, I am curious to know the rationale for not putting this into the Criminal Code and instead leaving it on the civil side of things.

[Helena Guergis, Conservative, Simcoe—Grey, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our government is focused on combatting child pornography. This has been on the radar.

As the Minister of State for Status of Women, I have travelled across the country and have spoken with thousands of women and with organizations that combat violence against women and child pornography. They are very focused on women and children and ending that violence. On numerous occasions, they have highlighted to me that our government should proceed with this.

They assured me in all conversations that they knew all members in the House would be supportive of such an initiative. I take from the member's question that he is supportive of it.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-58, yet another bill destined for our already busy committee on justice and human rights.

I am pleased to rise to address this issue. Such issues are just as important to the people of my riding of Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe as to those across the country.

Everyone is concerned about the exponential growth in the production and distribution of pornography and child pornography in particular. We also know, whether it is child pornography, or information in general or social networking, the Internet in particular is the vehicle of the future for the dissemination of information, good and bad.

Countries around the world and provinces and territories across the country are moving to stop gaps. I think police forces and child protection agencies across the country are feeling that they are like the child putting the finger in the dike. We are just not keeping up.

As a preface before I get into the bill, I will state my overall view on the crime-fighting agenda of the government. I have only been here for three years, 10 months and a number of days. Since I have been here, the government has given great lip service to fighting crime. It has booked whatever TV studio wherever it could and created whatever press conference however it could to be seen as fighting crime.

That may have worked for a while. However, when we are sitting here almost four years after the government came to power and nothing has been done on issues regarding child pornography, one wonders why it was so eager to publicize its fighting crime agenda, but then not deliver the goods for four years. I will get into the nitty-gritty of whether Bill C-58 delivers the goods or not.

The reality is, in 2005, the mandatory minimum sentence of one year for an offence of possessing and creating child pornography was instituted by a Liberal government. The definition of child pornography was broadened by a Liberal government to include depictions, digital or otherwise, in order to trap more perpetrators of the crime. That took us up to late 2005.

Then we take the canvas over to January 23, 2006. I have sat through the justice committee meetings and read the literature since that time without interruption. I have not attended every meeting, but I have been there for the whole agenda. There has been nothing on child pornography in that time. If we are all united in Parliament to try to do some good and combat the ill effects of the web and child pornography exploitation in particular, we ought to say to each other that this is not good enough.

Speaking to the Canadian public between elections, some of which were called unnecessarily, and committee wrangling, some of which were instituted unnecessarily, there is enough blame to go all around. This is not partisan. However, the people sitting at home must wonder why child pornography has not been a priority for almost four years.

We will support sending the bill to committee. At committee, under the cold eye of revision and input, we may even make improvements upon the intent of the bill. That is always our intention when it goes to a committee. We might look at it at committee and ask a number of very searing questions. When he appears before the committee, the minister will be asked why it took so long to bring this forward.

We have a Criminal Code that keeps growing in size. Section 163.1 has a definition of child pornography and the sentences set out for the various offences involving making, possessing or accessing. That seems to be the triage or the flow. People can create child pornography. They can access or possess it. In doing that, they have committed a whole other group of possible offences, which might include enslavement, captivity, assaults and all those other related offences in the other part of the Code.

However, when we look at section 163, which starts out with creating the heinous images and it goes down to accessing child pornography, the bill we are speaking of could very well be inserted in the Criminal Code. To the outside world and to the criminal bar in particular, because the Criminal Code has a whole number of procedural safeguards enforcing the offences in there, it seems to me that the content of the bill could have been easily slipped into section 163.2 or something like that to make it a very copacetic law.

There might be some push-back with respect to this law, having made it only a separate law. I do not know, but we will hear from representatives of industry who might have resisted this. After all, the fines in the bill relate mostly to companies and individuals running services, which is in the realm of small business persons. If an individual supports an Internet service or works on websites and somehow has knowledge of pornographic material and does not report it, which is the essence of the bill, the person is subject to, on the first offence, a fine of $1,000. If a company is guilty of a similar non-action, the first offence is $10,000.

This is not the kind of tough on crime that the father of three daughters, like me, living in a middle-class neighbourhood in Moncton, New Brunswick, thinks is appropriate. I am sure people listening to the debate might wonder about this. People could knowingly ignore the pornographic images on a site that they manage, not report it, yet, if caught, they would only get $1,000 fine under this law. It may not be strenuous enough. It is not in the Criminal Code, and it is almost four years late.

That does not go to the substance of the bill. We will take it to committee and hopefully we will buttress it. However, we want to make it clear to the government that the time is now over for the five o`clock newscasts during which Conservatives say that they will introduce another bill and deliver on promises, some here and some there, and that they will meet with the territorial and provincial attorneys general, but only act on their recommendations a year and a half later.

Some of these recommendations, which were to have come from a 2008 provincial and territorial attorneys general meeting, were submitted in June for a September meeting. We are talking almost a year and a half before implementation of what every, to my knowledge, attorney general across the country feels. It is no wonder, then, that provinces, in the realm of many areas of legislation that should be brought in by the Conservative government, are doing their own thing.

Since 2008, Ontario already has on the books a child pornography reporting act. I remind the House that the Conservative government came into power in 2006. I am not familiar necessarily with the Ontario legislative agenda, but it had to do its own thing. I believe Manitoba has done something similar.

Last week, and around the speech from the throne in my province, Attorney General Michael Murphy, and he is a relation, brought in the civil forfeiture act. It is a unique law in the country that maybe other provinces will emulate. In the case of convicted child pornographers, their property will be forfeited. The civil value of those properties will go into victims of crime pools of money to help the province with people who have been subject to this terrible type of crime. Not only that, pending trial by way of escrow or in trust, the assets will be frozen and any proceeds from the assets will be held pending the outcome of a trial on charges like this.

It is the kind of thing that provinces had to do because, I would say, the Conservative government has had its concentration on publicizing the crimes they are bringing in rather than thinking about holistic changes to our criminal law in general.

Now to the bill. The bill itself deals with sole proprietors of corporations who fail to report child pornography on sites that they have a hand in managing. It certainly is timely. It is, however, as I mentioned, a civil bill, and it does not have as its consequences criminal in nature as we would expect.

Section 11 of the act has fines ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 for offences by an individual, and from $10,000 to $100,000 for all other cases. The definition completely scripts what the Criminal Code says about child pornography, so that will not be challenged. It has already been tested by the courts.

Now what are the people, the stakeholders, saying about this crime? There are two reports here. One is from the Cape Breton Post which says:

This in itself won’t make a big dent in the torrent of child porn still available worldwide but it will give police and anti-child porn agencies such as cybertip.ca some more chances to pick up the threads of networks and rings, and possibly even to rescue a few more children from horrific situations.

This is what I was trying to say earlier. The Internet has transformed modern life in many positive ways. The explosion of electronic child porn is the outstanding example of the cost of this. If some principles of privacy and freedom have to be qualified to reduce that cost to the children of the world, so be it.

Certainly, one of the questions I will be asking the minister and the Department of Justice officials is this. Is the concern for the privacy and the freedom of speech, is that the reason why this bill is not tougher? It is something we will have a debate in Parliament with respect to the balance between freedom of speech, any expectation of privacy, and the need to get serious about combating the Internet.

Let us be clear, the whip is not here and I should talk to the whip, but I do not want to criticize Cape Breton or the Cape Breton Post but I do not need the Cape Breton Post to make this statement, which is that the real problem here is not cracking down on reporting of known sites, the real problem here is to prevent those sites from being distributed in the first place.

We are almost attacking the people who see the sites or who are supposed to see the sites or who might see the sites, and we are attacking them if they do not report it. It seems to me that to get right to the core, we have to do as they have done in other countries and we have to take action with the industry to ensure that those sites are not distributed in the first place.

I am not suggesting we go to totalitarian regimes, and I will not name them, but I think we know that there are some countries where there is no Internet because the government wants to control the message and in those cases there is no message.

We cannot do that, but it does prove that if the small island of Cuba, and there, I have said it, can say, “There shall be no Internet at all”, and that is not a terribly technologically advanced country, how is it that we cannot, in this world, in this country, one of the richest countries in the world, do better in stopping the source of these sites.

Again, going from east to west, the Edmonton Sun says, with respect to the recent study by the federal ombudsman:

The number of Internet images of 'serious child abuse' quadrupled between 2003 and 2007.

What it opines on this law is:

So while the new bill will indeed provide an additional tool, it is not the solution and it must not be regarded as such.

I spoke about other jurisdictions. The international conference, combating child pornography on the Internet, which took place in Vienna, Austria, also adds some elements that I hope the government is considering. The whole world, at this conference, concluded that we have to take steps to ensure that we can obtain the evidence necessary to identify child pornographers.

The minister spoke very briefly about how this bill will be used to do that. We hope that there is further evidence on that because we want this bill to be effective. It is not enough just to penalize people who do not report. We have to know, and we will get this from the law enforcement officials, that the reporting will lead to the finding of child pornographers.

Second, there must be a balance regarding the privacy laws with respect to the expectation of privacy.

The third point, however, and probably the most important one that cannot be really addressed in legislation but has to be out there on a justice agenda, is that we must work together: hotlines, law enforcement and private industry. We need to shield from civil liability those hotlines, ISPs and others in the industry that in good faith attempt to assist law enforcement in investigations of child pornography.

The minister was very correct in quoting the statistics from cybertip.ca. The facts are outstanding. They are horrifying. For instance, of the 4,110 unique images assessed by an analyst, 35 showed sexual assaults against children, and if we broke it down by age, 37.2% of them were against 8-year-olds and 83% of the images were of female children. It is despicable. It is horrible. It must be addressed.

The international situation is deplorable for Canada. We speak a lot in this chamber about the government turning away from international obligations, international colloquia, international conferences, and international discussions on things from climate change to financial institutions, to international standards on child care, to not signing the universal declaration of aboriginal rights.

The government has all the excuses for those aversions to talking to the international community, but probably one that it would never think it has been absent on is the impression of its law enforcement standards across the world.

When we see these categories, I would think Conservatives who tout their anti-crime agenda would be embarrassed. Of the top five countries hosting websites with child sexual abuse images, we are third. Of the top five countries hosting images of child sexual abuse, we are second. And of the top five countries selling material on child sexual abuse websites, we are second.

The other countries involved are not countries we would like to be in line with. The United States has its commercial pre-eminence and its, until recently, overemphasis on freedom of speech and overemphasis on the right to be secure from privacy with Miranda and so forth, and not have incursions by the state into private life. Sadly, I think I hear echoes of this from the other side as being something that can be templated for Canada. I disagree. We are Canada, not the United States.

The United States comes first in all these categories. We do not want to go up in this category. We want to go down. One of the things that could be done, and has been done all around the world, and I would think that if there are opposition members suggesting being tougher on something, the government would want to, for instance, listen to or emulate Sweden.

In Sweden, the TeliaSonera launched child porn blocking services for ISPs, so the blocking is done at the source. In Brazil, the goal of the policy established there is to set up ethical rules for companies providing Internet services in Brazil, and for the users of these services. In Germany and the EU, probably the most advanced system, they are putting together systems to block access to websites containing child pornography.

In summary, we are just starting to get at this. It has been almost four years. With the goodwill in this House toward this unspeakable set of crimes, it probably could have been accomplished a lot sooner, so I guess the question we would all have is, why was it not done sooner?

Let us get at it. Let us improve this bill to emulate parts of the international community that the government normally, with respect to climate change and other items, does not want to be seen with, but for once maybe we will show the government, as we send this along to committee, that it is not bad to have friends internationally. It is not bad to emulate best practices around the world, and it is not bad to work with other parties.

[Claude Gravelle, NDP, Nickel Belt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member named some positions that Canada was in compared with other countries. I would like to ask him whether, if this child pornography issue were put into the hands of the police, who are trained to identify child pornography, would that help in making Canada a safer place in eliminating child pornography?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the police will be very involved in this.

The one thing that I would agree with the minister on, in her comments, is the great network of intelligence gathering and execution of responsibilities we have in Canada. CSIS and other organizations are top-notch in this regard. However, like anything, hiring a carpenter or a surgeon, we have to give them the tools. This reporting mechanism will only go so far.

I would think that the police officers in question would be very happy if there was not any child pornography distributed across the country. They would also be interested in the government investing money in police officers to better investigate, in social workers, as well as in people in the community to help people understand, by way of education, the dangers of sexual abuse, which leads to child pornography in almost every case.

So, the member is right on in giving the police officers better resources and giving them better tools to combat the issue.

[Dan McTeague, Liberal, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my hon. colleague from Moncton. He will be familiar with the fact that his predecessor, Claudette Bradshaw, worked with members, as well as members from the other parties, on a very important initiative that took place back in April 2002.

One of the recommendations made was to not only provide a coordinating force within Canada but, in fact, several millions of dollars in order to provide an opportunity for police to become better trained and for Crown and other judges in this nation to better understand the implications of child exploitation.

I have had more updates since that time, and I take some pride in the fact that as a Parliament we have been able to work together on this. However, I wonder if the hon. member could perhaps hone down in his deliberations before the committee, speak to some of the experts, such as the Kids Internet Safety Alliance, which has done great work around the world, people like Paul Gillespie and David Butt, and many others.

They seem to be pointing out that there is a lot of initiative on behalf of the private sector willing to help and that the government simply is not there to create international centres in which we can sort of point out that Canada is putting its best foot forward. It looks like it is the private sector that is being sought for help when the government ought to be able to do it. We can have all the laws in the world we want. But I want to be more focused on the question of whether the hon. member would be able to precisely raise in committee the growing concern of many who are working on these issues about peer-to-peer file sharing, Internet file sharing.

We can talk about ISPs. We can talk about the Internet, probably about that big. However, when it really comes down to the tragedy in Canada and around the world, it is the conundrum, it is the blockage which is occurring as a result of peer-to-peer file sharing that seems to be at the source of this.

I also know the RCMP suggested 65,000 Canadians in this country some years ago may have been involved with child pornography and its distribution and dissemination. Those numbers could in fact be much higher.

I wonder if we can get from the hon. member that he will pursue the government and pursue the answers that I think will give greater clarity and bring Parliament up to date with the ongoing tragedy, in the hope of being able to protect at least more children, not just in Canada, but around the world.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the names Paul Gillespie and David Butt were in fact on my preliminary list of witnesses. I am very familiar with their work.

The hon. member proved today that he knows about a lot more than just gas prices. He knows how to use the Internet and how it is used.

He is exactly right, that this is a huge issue. This is not just changing the criminal laws of Canada. This is not dealing with criminals who knock over a gas station or a corner store, with a gun. This is an international crime across borders and it is spread by technology.

So, it is certainly something that I think we all have to work together because we are not quite the Luddites that people may think we are but we are not equipped in this Parliament, necessarily, to be experts on how technology works in the evil way. We find out, with the gang-related and organized crime study at the justice committee, that organized crime is way ahead of the police forces, which makes it probably way ahead of Parliament.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague knows, I sit on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, where we too had discussions. I listened carefully to the end of the member's speech, the questions put to him and the answers he provided. It seems obvious to me that he is very familiar with the issue.

This bill provides ammunitions and would make reporting mandatory. I wonder, however, if there will be enough police officers or equipment to follow up on the reports. In an interview yesterday, a university professor said that great expectations were being created. Initially, there will be a large volume of reporting, but very few police officers to act on it.

Does my hon. colleague agree? Has he given this any thought? Clearly, this bill will be referred to committee for consideration. How should we address the question raised by this university professor?

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.

The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights always raises the same issue and always asks the same question: are we providing police forces with enough resources to enforce the new act? As always, we never get a real answer.

We asked the Department of Justice if more resources were to be given to police forces. Unfortunately, we were told that it is the Minister of Public Safety who should answer that question. That is one way of avoiding the issue. However, the government must address all issues raised by every new bill.

Will police forces be provided with enough money and resources? That has the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights a bit worried. Every time the government introduces a bill, we know for sure that there will not be enough resources to correctly enforce it.

As always, the member asked a good question.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was planning to ask the minister a follow-up question but I did not get up. She mentioned that $42.1 million over five years would be provided to law enforcement to give law enforcement more resources, which I feel is an important part of this, but she could not tell us whether this was new money just being announced right now or whether this was just a re-announcement of existing money.

In addition, she said that in 2007 there were 1,400 police incidents and 440 charges but she could not tell us whether any one of those came from an ISP, and this legislation deals with ISPs.

Does the Liberal member think this legislation is really more about the six o'clock news? It has been on CTV around the clock for the last two days. The member mentioned that it should be in the Criminal Code. It has taken the government four years to bring this bill in--