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)

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

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to a bill that has been a long time coming. This bill is important for all members and for all Canadians. It is absolutely crucial that Parliament take a closer look at this bill and address an extremely important issue, that is, the protection of our children.

This is not a new issue for me as a member of Parliament. It is not a new issue for some of my colleagues who were here with me in 1999-2000 when a decision was made in British Columbia by Justice Duncan Shaw with respect to the Sharpe decision. That decision created a panic throughout Canada. The protections that had been passed by Parliament in the past were then subject to judicial review and many provisions meant to protect children were knocked out.

It became very clear to parliamentarians, many of us who took these issues very seriously on a bipartisan basis, I might add, that what we were witnessing at the time was a lack of understanding and appreciation of those who were excited, those who would offend and those who would continue to use any means at their disposal, including technology, which I will come to in a moment, the purpose for which this bill has been created, to feed their addiction of exploitation of children.

It appeared at the time that there seemed to be a lot of misunderstanding, if not innocent ignorance, as to what was behind it. Many people thought this was a matter of expression, that we could not ban some of this information, particularly if it was written, because it might be analogous to banning the book Lolita.

No one wanted to put those two imperatives of protection of children against the right of privacy, one against the other. Rather, what we have seen in the past eight or nine years from parliamentarians, Canadians, psychiatrists, police forces and coordination through our crowns and judges is a better understanding of the pernicious nature of child exploitation and child pornography.

I want to give a message of a much stronger Parliament. I know there has been some discussion about where Canada falls short, but in my experience of working with the Toronto police force, going back to 2001, with the Ontario Provincial Police, under Project P, and with the RCMP, we are further ahead than we give us ourselves credit for. I am not here simply to toot our horn, but we are teaching other countries how to coordinate and build capacity to combat child exploitation, particularly through cyberspace exploitation or exploitation through the Internet.

Part of what is being addressed here today is about obligations. Many colleagues have spoken about how Internet service providers are in fact responding to the call and helping our law enforcement agencies trap, monitor and detect those who are engaging in the distribution of this information. This no doubt leads at one end to exploitation and at the other end to deal with providing people the medical and other kinds of interventions and help they need. What we have before us today is a very important first step in terms of ensuring and compelling Internet service providers to do what is necessary.

Some of this did not just happen in a vacuum. We will recall in April of 2002, I convened a meeting in which about 40 or 50 colleagues from all parties joined in a film or demonstration or depiction of the seriousness of the problem. I recall full well Paul Gillespie, who is now with the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance, a pre-eminent advocate, as well as Detective Sergeant Gary Ellis, who later became inspector before his retirement, along with Sergeant Bob Matthews from Project P, Roz Probert from Winnipeg and others attended a conference organized very quickly by members of Parliament.

After that 30-minute presentation, we got it. Not only did we get it, but within about two months our good and capable parliamentary secretary at the time, Paul Macklin, former member for Northumberland, was able to convince the government to provide the initial fund and first tranche of some $50 million to create a cyberspace network to help and facilitate so in smaller communities across Canada police could get the kind of training they needed to detect, share and arrest the behaviour.

We have done a lot over a period of time dealing with Internet service providers. We have also encountered some very unsavoury examples of where there has been reluctance by carriers not to provide information for whatever reason, such as privacy, cost, et cetera. We got around some of those.

However, I suspect the biggest stumbling block we faced then continues today. When a police officer is confronted with all these images, perhaps in the thousands at any given time, and a charge is brought against the individual, in order for the process of the charge to be laid and to be heard in a court, the evidence has to be sworn through each and every image. Because of a decision in the R. v. Stinchcombe case, it makes the job of our police forces practically impossible.

We are at a stage now, although there is better understanding of how to help police do a better job, where we need to do more. Certainly the bill goes in that direction.

I want to talk about something that is far more important to where we go. The minister was asked by several reporters what would be done once the domain of someone who was distributing child pornography was identified. We have no way of breaking down or knowing how to combat or how to address this issue. It is great to have a database and to be able to provide and get this information, but can we go after each and every one? I am not sure. We need to look at whether we have the ability and the resources to tackle the great numbers that we see out there.

This leads me to a bigger point, which I hope the committee will be able to address. I would ask the indulgence of all colleagues in the House to understand that it is more than just Internet service providers and people downloading information. It is really the peer-to-peer expression or the peer-to-peer sharing of files that is the most pernicious part of this. I am not sure if the legislation will be able to cover this, let alone if we can get our minds around the more modern way of distributing this information, which is undermining the integrity of young children and destroying their futures.

Short of going to the Orwellian perspective of big government watching everything people are doing, we need to come up with a better solution, not just for Canada but around the world. I salute those many organizations, including our RCMP, the Toronto police force and the OPP in my province, that have done yeoman's work of training the rest of the world.

However, we need to begin to look more fundamentally, more specifically, at the underlying new way in which information is shared, file to file. How we get around that will require a bit of dexterity in looking at these networks. We will have to find ways to train them. We will need to have the best practices, but we will also have to avail ourselves of the greatest technology out there.

Yes, questions will be raised about privacy. I suggest, as the RCMP has done in the past, that the number of people who may be sharing this information is not 65,000. There was some information a while ago from the RCMP that there may be as many as 65,000 people in the country who are in receipt of this information and share it. However, this number could easily exceed one million.

I am not one who is given to the notion of throwing numbers around, but the committee that looks into this legislation will need to know and be comfortable with the size, the dimension and the seriousness of this issue. While we have a number of solutions, there is no point in talking about solutions if there is not a better understanding of the problem.

As we look at not only trying to provide practices and building capacity in other countries and recognizing the mandate of Parliament, I hope we are prepared to give a very strong and important blank cheque to our law enforcement officials, to those on the front end, the smart people, those who understand how the Internet works.

We need a forum and focus to match what the private sector does. I think of the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance that is going it alone. It does not have support from the government. We have nice words coming from the government about how it is going to do this and it is going to set up a facility here and there. Frankly, this is taking off. Canadians understand this. Agencies involved in good will recognize the ability for us to use our collective strengths, the brains that we have out there, the technological wherewithal to understand the complexities by which child pornographers try to hide and disguise their craft and their evil.

I suggest for all members and colleagues that each and every one of us can talk about this issue, but we do ourselves a service as members of Parliament if we anticipate the road ahead, not just for the purpose of protecting our children but to help other countries that do not have the technological capacity yet alone the resources.

On the road of goodwill, we have lost a few things along the way. Frankly, we are going down a road and we do not know where it is taking us. It is very clear to us that if we are not prepared to recognize that the bill, which is several years late, and I will not get into the politics of it, is really to address an issue that took place some time ago, the next big challenge for Parliament will be to deal with new technologies in the digital age that are used to circumvent, to get ahead and to continue exploitation.

Canada does not play a minor role in this regard. We have heard stats provided by a number of colleagues in the House of Commons as to the number of Canadians who may be involved with it and where we are in terms of protection of children. On the surface, the statistics look grim, but there is no doubt there is a will within Parliament. There are other very good statistics that demonstrate that our front line men and women, psychiatrists, police officers and those in the judicial system, are doing yeoman's work and are trying to find what is the best way to approach this ever-changing challenge.

Someone said that it was a little like trying to tack jello on to a wall. However, the frank reality is we have to continue to be aware of where the emerging problems lie in order to provide the kind of solutions that we owe our next generation.

Behind the technology are broken individuals who exploit. These are individuals who, short of legislation, also need therapy. These people cannot help themselves. These individuals need the state, they need society and they need rehabilitation. We can talk about penalties, but we also have to talk about prevention, as my good colleague from Mississauga South alluded to a little earlier. I cannot think of a better example of where we have to get it right for the benefit of all the children out there who might otherwise be exploited.

These are not comments that we simply take as members of Parliament wanting to do good. We recognize in our country and around the world that the issue of child exploitation is a greater threat than most, perhaps, against the next generation. We have to marshal the collective forces in our country and around the world to work co-operatively. I do not see that in the bill. I see we will do our own job from the ISPs' perspective, and this is only ISPs that exist within Canada, because we have no international reach. I suggest that is the way we ought to go.

I want to point out something we did in 2002, with a number of colleagues present. I recall one colleague, who was also very big on this, and I miss him a lot, Myron Thompson, the member for Wild Rose, who, with myself, made it abundantly clear that on both sides of the House we would work very hard to see this legislation would someday be a reality. Though he is not here today, I am sure he is very pleased to see we have moved down this road.

In 2002, to be specific, we suggested that there ought to be some changes on retention of information by Internet service providers. I will read what all colleagues at the time, or their predecessors would have known and were participating in legislation required or an amendment to the existing legislation at the time with Bill C-15, said concerning the retention of client information, records by Internet service providers. They said that ISPs must be able to furnish police with data, records on suspected child pornographers. We also urged, at the time, to make it mandatory for ISPs to keep client logs for at least one year, following the U.S. model in subjecting ISPs to substantial fines for non-compliance.

Those were some of the ideas that flowed from a very quick meeting that members of Parliament had. There is no doubt that the intention of Parliament has been focused on that ever since. Yes, there have been several elections in between, but thank heavens we have continued in the belief that we can stand up for those who have no voice and who would otherwise see their lives destroyed by those who truly need our help.

I am also convinced of the proliferation, the sophistication, the pervasiveness of technology. I had my BlackBerry here a few minutes ago. When I was elected as a member of Parliament in 1993, such devices did not exist. The ability to communicate, good and bad, is ever present and, as I suggested earlier, pervasive.

This requires parliamentarians of all parties to recognize that the changes that are taking place are challenges that we can overcome, particularly if they are used for nefarious and heinous ends, such as exploiting children, not just in Canada but around the world. We have an obligation to listen to those who can demonstrate a better way.

There is only so much bandwidth. I will not get into the issue of telecommunications; I will leave that for a consumer story at some point down the road. We have the ability to monitor the traffic. We cannot be seen as intrusive but at the same time we have to be ever vigilant. If we know something is taking place and it is being done by certain modalities such as, file sharing, network to network, or computer to computer, the government has an obligation to look and to test judicial chill, or Cartesian charter chill, with a view to saying that what must be done here is in the higher and best interests of Canadian citizens.

It is not good enough to say that we will adopt best practices from other countries or that we are going to look around the world and vicariously get some form of child protection in Canada. We have to be at the table. We have to recognize the changes that are taking place. In none of the speeches that I have heard today have members been focused on the next concern, which is the existing means by which child pornographers are disseminating their material.

I am asking parliamentarians, as they go through the committee process and as they ponder and consider this, to be more focused on what are some very obvious challenges to us, but ones which I think we can overcome.

I would also like to take a moment to thank the former members of this House who helped develop this bill and to point out some of the measures previously taken by our Liberal government.

I was proud to be here to see the changes and to see the amount of money invested to ensure that our agents, our police officers and Crown officials are not only aware of the scope of the problem of the exploitation of youth, but also that they can continue to promote and ensure best practices for other police forces around the world.

Last month, I attended a conference in Durham, in my region, at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. A KINSA agency was giving training to representatives of police forces from Indonesia, Chile and Brazil. Other countries may know what to do, but we also have practices that are the envy of the world. However, we still need to make some improvements and recognize the people who work with us.

My hope and experience leads me to believe that the committee will bring forth the experts that I am referring to, the psychiatrists, those who understand technology, the software program writers, those who know how the devices used to exploit are being used against us and against the next generation. These are the people we should be hearing from.

If we really want to protect and stand up for the next generation, for posterity, I suggest we get with the program, that we understand the technology and bring in the bright lights. In that way we will guarantee for the next generation a much safer future and at the same time, keep Canada where it ought to be, defending the interests of those who have no voice.

[Maurice Vellacott, Conservative, Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, SK]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the good work the member opposite has done over the years. I know he has put a lot of time and effort into this issue. He has hosted various seminars on the Hill, which members who were around in those days definitely benefited from in terms of the specific help, the specific exposé the police gave on those occasions.

The member opposite mentioned the very important need of monitoring, keeping on top of the ever-changing technology. We need to be vigilant so that we can truly protect our children the vulnerable, innocent children of the present and the future, from these heinous crimes against these most innocent vulnerable children.

Having said that, I would be interested to know at this juncture, either in a private member's bill or maybe some very specific amendments for the committee, what might be the major outlines going ahead from here, acknowledging as he did the good benefit of this government bill?

What might be the major outlines of a bill that he would do to even improve upon this bill, or that he might see in the future in terms of things that we could do further to get at and stomp out this very pernicious evil that we have in society today?

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

Madam Speaker, I know the member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin was there back in 2001 and 2002.

It is a reflection of the genuine belief that we can do better. We should look at having a full-time committee, a blue ribbon panel that would report to the Minister of Justice, but more important, to Parliament as to the evolution of best practices. It should be something that provides an annual report on the state of cybercrime in Canada and the state of the level of child exploitation in this country. It should not be used to panic people but to actually give some focus and perspective.

Some of this commissioning of information is done through the victims of crime organizations, but to put this in proper perspective, the RCMP and a number of agencies that are involved with child exploitation internationally and domestically who hold conferences could also bring out what is being done internationally and relate that to whether Canada is a hindrance or part of the solution.

We need annual reports and updates. By the time we get through elections and parliaments get around to doing good work, often those who exploit children have moved on. We need to continue to have a rapporteur, for lack of a better term, that would provide an update to Parliament each and every year on the best practices and most important, on what we are doing and what we are not doing.

I appreciate the hon. member's suggestions. That is an area the committee should look at. We have a bill and that is great. It deals with the problem today or perhaps the past few years but we need to look ahead.

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

Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Pickering—Scarborough East said he was elected in 1993, but I remember him from when I was the consumer critic for gas prices among other things in Manitoba. I would listen to him quite often on the radio and I would marvel. He is a very knowledgeable guy.

I notice that the definition in the bill includes more than ISPs. It also includes those who provide electronic mail services, Internet content, hosting services and social networking sites. Does the member think that is the all-encompassing, all-inclusive group? I am not up on all these issues as much as I used to be.

I would like to ask the member about peer to peer. Peer to peer came in big time with Napster and peer to peer is still around. He seems to think that is the most difficult area to work with.

I would like the member to take some time to explain to us why he thinks peer to peer is the biggest problem.

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

Those are excellent questions, Madam Speaker, and I am very happy to answer at least some of them to the best of my knowledge.

A cursory discussion with those on the front lines will tell us that peer to peer is de rigueur. It is the new means by which file sharing and downloading is occurring. It does require working through the networks but that seems to be the favourite way of doing things.

When police attempt to break a cyber network the police are actually finding a lot of mirrors. A lot of sites that come up exist for three hours and then move on. It is a very elusive game.

Does this legislation cover this? Yes and no. It talks about things in generalities but does not get to the specifics. My colleague from Moncton and I discussed this over the past few days. It does not actually get into where I think many of those who are on the front line are actually pointing to as being an area on which we need to focus.

The hon. member talks about Kazaa and Napster and other things. Of course those have been regulated in certain ways. I do not want to get into the issue of music or content, but rather deal with where the infrastructure is that is being used to deliver this information. It makes the job of trying to cover so many angles that much more difficult. I want to focus on this.

ISPs are not just the hosts, those who host websites, for instance Google and others. I am thinking of URLs that are used with hotmail. All of these are now caught by this legislation.

I want the committee members to focus on where the problem exists as it stands today. I do not think this is hot off the press but I also think that we have to be purposeful. We should be asking what we are doing with the information too.

Is it good enough to say we are going after ISPs and URLs? We get the domain names, but how are we prosecuting them? I do not think that question has been answered. It is important that we look at that as well.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to get right to a question involving the Criminal Code.

This bill is outside of the Criminal Code. Section 163.1 of the Criminal Code makes it an offence for any person who accesses child pornography. How is it different? Why is it a lesser offence for the people who allow and set up the system and do not report the fact that child pornography exists than for someone who accesses it? I want to know if he thinks that is proper.

In part V of the Criminal Code there is a hierarchy of offences: sexual offences, public morals and disorderly conduct. Why is it that the government is leaving these offences in the realm of public morals and not sexual offences? At the root, these images are evidence of criminal sexual abuse or rapes. The images reflect a crime. Those images, therefore, should be higher in the hierarchy than saying that we feel it is not proper conduct in this realm.

Why is the Criminal Code not used, and does the member endorse using the Criminal Code?

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

Absolutely, Madam Speaker. I agree wholeheartedly with the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

He has raised a point which I had not considered until now, the question of hierarchy of harms.

We all agree that there is child exploitation. Child exploitation is the destruction of human life, whether we like it or not. If the Criminal Code is not able to reflect that, or this legislation is not consistent with the opprobrium that Parliament and the Criminal Code hold against those who exploit children, that also would have to be a decent recommendation or amendment that the party should, on behalf of our critic, propose at committee.

I am not on committee. I am simply trying to provide some guidance with the latest of information which I think parliamentarians from all parties are going to have to look at more intensely.

I say these things because I think it is anticipating where we ought to be and it will put Canada back where it must be.

Yes, some Internet service providers have been helpful, some have not. Some have charged. Some have obstructed. Some continue to use issues of privacy, I think, indiscreetly. I agree with my colleague that optimal legislation would also include the ability to have a reasonable expectation of conviction, a reasonable expectation of stopping the practice in Canada. As well, what I think is the maximum of importance of this legislation is to give enforcement agencies the resources they need. If agencies in this country are creating true centres of cybercrime prevention that are in fact protecting Canadians and the international community, we have to be backing them with resources by Parliament, and not leave it to the private sector to, shamefully, do what we as parliamentarians want our government to do.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am proud to rise to debate an initiative that is extremely imperative to anyone who is a parent.

Child pornography has been with us in many forms for many years, but it is extremely despicable on the Internet because a lot of it goes underground.

I want to congratulate a former colleague, a long-term member of Parliament, a former attorney general of Saskatchewan, Mr. Chris Axworthy. In early 1994, Mr. Axworthy introduced a child Internet pornography bill that was supported by many police organizations across the country. When he left the House of Commons, I resumed his bill and I have re-introduced it on four separate occasions. Every time I have done that, I have handed the bill over to justice ministers to get them to do something about the scourge of child pornography on the Internet.

I am pleased to see today that the Conservatives, under their justice minister, have tabled a bill that mentions child pornography and what may or may not be done.

We have to ensure that this is simply not window dressing. We cannot just say that we are going to do something about Internet pornography and then not give the people who operate under these confines the resources they need to do it. This cannot just be about political opportunities.

I want to tell the House about an event that happened a few years ago that was told to us by an officer of the Ontario Provincial Police. This particular officer worked eight hours a day sniffing out child pornography on the Internet. His job was to find the scourge of our society and bring them to justice. For over three hours he explained how quickly young children can be trapped by professionals who lure them on the Internet. They entice young children to do acts beyond their comprehension.

He told us that he posed as a father with an eight year old child who were both willing to swing in this regard. That information is put out on the Internet to try to get people to latch on to it. He put that information on the Internet, and by the time he was finished talking to us he had over 50 hits, 20 of them from Ontario alone. In those three hours, 50 people wanted to partake in that type of activity.

I do not know how sick we have become as a society, but the reality is that something needs to be done and it needs to be done quickly. The NDP had a similar bill in the House over many years. We have given it to various justice ministers, asking them to carefully look at it to see what parts they wanted to use in their own bill.

Nothing will come of this if the government does not put the financial and human resources and the tools that are required to allow our police forces, the RCMP, the OPP, the Sûreté du Québec, municipal and regional police forces across the country to do their job effectively, the end goal of which is protecting our children.

Child abuse and child pornography have been with us for a long time. We have heard about the Christian brothers in Newfoundland, the residential school abuse. I just cannot imagine what it would have been like to have been ripped out of my parent's arms, put into a residential school, and then abused for many years.

I am glad to hear that a truth and reconciliation commission will be coming forward in order to help first nations, Inuit and Métis people deal with what happened at that time. I only pray to God that they find some solace and peace when they get their stories out.

It is rather quite ironic that a guy like myself would stand up and talk about the Internet because I do not use a computer. I do not have a Blackberry. I still wish that Blackberries were banned because I find them a lazy way to communicate.

The reality is that the Internet can be a wonderful tool for information, but it can also be a dangerous place for unsuspecting individuals. What we need to do at the end of the day is make ISP providers, large and small, partially responsible for assisting and monitoring their sites. They do not have to do it all on their own.

This is where the federal government has to be proactive and ensure they get the additional resources, so that they can monitor their sites and with judicial oversight, we can protect the privacy of all individuals and ensure that they have legal rights. We must ensure that if the ISPs suspect something is happening that they are able to forward that information to the police. That is enough of what we should be doing.

As a father of two young girls, and I know many of us here are parents, it would be just a horrendous feeling to know that possibly one's child was sexually abused because of something on the Internet. I do not understand that for the life of me. I have tried to comprehend the thinking of an adult who thinks it is pleasurable to have sex with infants or very young children, but I just do not understand that type of thinking. I do not know if there is any type of rehabilitation for those types of individuals, but what is most important is that the government has recognized this as a scourge on our society, and we are please with that. I remind everyone that the number one goal of any government is the protection and security of its citizens including those who are most vulnerable, our children.

We will work with the government through the committee process. I know my colleague, the justice critic for the NDP, from Windsor—Tecumseh is one of the most knowledgeable people in the country and in the House when it comes to justice issues. I am sure he will be offering recommendations and amendments to make the bill even stronger, so that at the end of the day what the government purports to do, which is to rid or as best as possible eliminate child pornography on the Internet, we will ensure that the justice minister gets the help that he needs.

Most importantly, the justice minister in turn must provide those financial and human resources to all the police agencies across the country. They need the technology. They need the human element and they also need the financial commitment to ensure that they have the tools to do the very really dirty job that we ask them to do, which is to protect our children from child pornographers.

If we do that it will not only compliment the minister but it will compliment the House, and at the end of the day maybe one less child will be subjected to child pornographers on the Internet.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Madam Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-58 today with mixed emotions. We have been dealing with this issue in the justice committee since late 2006 or early 2007. It has been better than three years now. We actually had some consideration of it in Parliament in 2004 and 2006 as well, so it is going on five years.

I rise with mixed emotions because I am concerned. We are supportive of this legislation as far as it goes. Our major concern with Bill C-58 is that there are a number of other issues that should have been addressed long before this. Some of them have now been addressed in this bill, but there is a number that have not been addressed.

Addressing those issues and building a framework so that our police, prosecutors and judges would have greater ability to try to stamp out child porn on the Internet and the technological transmission of it would be a major step forward. We have not gone far enough on this and I am going to address at least some of those points.

I do want to set this in its historical context. When we were dealing with the legislation that dealt with the luring of children over the Internet, what came forward at that time was a good deal of evidence from various police forces, particularly from the Ontario Provincial Police and the Toronto Police Service. I do not want to disparage other forces, but at that period of time they were probably the most advanced forces in trying to combat child porn on the Internet.

The problem that we are now addressing came forward three to five years ago. We are addressing it to some lesser degree in Bill C-46 and Bill C-47, which are now before the public safety committee. The problem is getting at the service providers, which are in most cases the methodology, mechanism and technology by which the producers and traders of child porn are using to trade and sell this child porn.

What came out in the course of those hearings was that a number of service providers were refusing to co-operate with police forces both here in Canada and internationally. As a result of a number of fairly strong comments that came from members of that committee at the period of time when we had to deal with this, we have seen an increase in co-operation from the service providers in terms of giving police officers information, putting them on notice when they identify child porn on their service technology, and co-operating as fully as they can with the police.

That is not universally true to this day and that is why we are seeing this legislation. We really should have seen this legislation at least three years ago because it was very clear at that point that we had a problem. It was only because of some of the threats that came out of the justice committee at that time that we got greater co-operation from the service providers here in Canada.

It is still a major problem when we try to deal internationally. There are certain countries who are very co-operative with us and are actively engaged in trying to shut these sites down and to prosecute those who they trace the child pornography back to. However, there are other countries in the world that have no mechanisms at all to deal with this.

In that regard, I think it is worthwhile to note the assistance we got from Bill Gates and Microsoft. They assisted the police forces in developing a technology at quite a substantial expense to that corporation. It was in the range of about $10 million in human resources to develop the technology and the actual expenditure of funds to produce it.

It is important to note, both with regard to this bill and just generally, how child pornographers work. They put the information on one service provider and then skip it through a number of service providers. We have been told in some cases this material will go through up to as many as 50 service providers around the globe.

Through this technology, which was developed by Microsoft, through the Toronto police force's initiative, and funded by Mr. Gates, we are generally able to trace the material back to the source. So we may skip through a whole bunch of service providers, but we can eventually get back to the source and get the site shut down. We have seen at least several major busts in Canada as a result of this technology being deployed. A number of people were charged and in some cases convicted. Other cases are still working their way through the courts.

The technology was crucial and it was the first time it had been developed in the world. We are now sharing that technology with other countries with whom we are cooperating so they can use it to track things back to the child pornographers.

That was a major step forward. It was interesting to see in the media this week that some of the other technology that we have been working on in order to be able to register sites has not been developed. We had a five-year program that I think was initiated in the 2004-06 Parliament. We are close to the end of that. Under that program, people identify the site and advise the police, and then we have a registry of that.

That registry is still not up and running, because of technological problems. According to the article in the Chronicle Herald on November 25, as much as 40% of the budget that was allocated over that five-year period has not been spent because we do not have enough police officers actually working on this, and we do not seem to have been able to put enough resources into fully developing that technology.

That five-year period is just about up. I have no idea what the government is going to be doing in terms of continuing that funding until the service is up and running effectively. It is quite clear from the article that more police officers should have been specifically trained and designated to work in this area, and that has not happened.

With regard to the bill itself, one of the concerns I have is that, as is typical with the government, the government is out front, promulgating the notion that this is the be-all and the end-all. I am being a bit too harsh on them and I will admit that, but the reality is that the real work that needs to be done by government is to fund our police forces.

There are very few large police forces in this country that do not have at least one or two police officers specifically designated to deal with child pornography, mostly on the Internet but in print as well. We need more of those officers. We need a lot more of those officers in order to be able to deal with this problem.

This is a growth industry. It continues to grow because of the Internet. We have always had child pornography in print and even in paintings. We can go back hundreds and hundreds of years, maybe even millenniums. The explosion occurred with the Internet, which provided for easy transmission of this pornography, and it tapped into a substantial market that was unavailable before, crossing international boundaries and making it very difficult for national police forces to be able to deal with it.

I have to say this, and it is not just about the current government but also about the previous Liberal government and also about a lot of other countries. There are very few countries we can point to, England may be one of the exceptions, that have in fact dealt with this problem in an efficient manner, that is by moving enough human resources into combatting this.

We know that the province of Manitoba was one of the provinces that moved on this by establishing a snitch line. England has done the same thing and has funded it. It seems to be fairly effective in getting the public, when they are scanning various websites, to identify child pornography and to get that information to the police. The police can then deal with it in an efficient and rapid fashion, to shut the sites down and to try to track the producers of the sites.

It is working in that regard, in that we have a methodology, but we do not have enough resources. It is really a shame that our police forces are still struggling with that, because they have nowhere near the capacity to combat the sheer volume of what they have to deal with on the Internet.

In that respect, I urge the government in this coming budget to take another look at this area in particular. If we are really serious about protecting our children, we need to put more resources into doing that.

This legislation will help a little. I do not want to deny that completely, but it is a very small step in comparison with how much more effective we would be in combatting this scourge if there were more police officers working on it and also on developing technology. Police officers need training and they need companies like Microsoft to come into the field and cooperate with them to try to develop better technology to track this right back to its source. That is the only way we can effectively shut it down.

With regard to the bill itself, I have some concerns. There was a lot of debate before the bill got to the House over whether service providers would have a legislatively mandated responsibility to monitor their sites.

Going back to the bill on child Internet luring, the committee heard some evidence to the effect that it was going to be difficult for the smaller service providers to do that. On the other hand, it might, quite frankly, be possible to develop technology so that the computer would do the monitoring.

There are any number of other technologies and services that we use on computers that can do the search on a random basis. That technology needs to be developed and deployed. Maybe that is something we have to impose on the industry.

However, we have just given up. This bill does nothing to require the service providers to do any monitoring at all. All it requires is that if somebody tells them there is a site on their technology, the ISPs have to report it to the locator and a police force. They are under no affirmative obligation to monitor the websites using their technology.

I think the government backed down too much. At the very least, we should be looking at imposing some responsibility on them. It appears obvious that this bill is going to go to committee, and I am hoping that the committee can look at this again and perhaps strengthen the bill in a meaningful way to impose some responsibility.

I want to make a point about the penalties in the bill. The penalties assume that service providers are all corporate, so there are only fines in the bill. We need to take a look at that and see whether we should be pulling back the corporate veil.

I know the test will not be easy from a legal standpoint, but where we have been able to identify service providers that are abusing their responsibility to protect children, we should be pulling back the corporate veil, and police and prosecutors should have the ability to prosecute individual members, whether they are part of the executive or the board of directors, of those companies for these crimes.

We have been able to identify that in some cases it was quite clear that the corporate entity knew about the sites and did nothing about them, simply allowed them to continue on. If we have that kind of a scenario or that kind of conduct, then we in fact should be going after individuals and not just the corporations.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member will have five and a half minutes remaining in his speech as well as time for questions and comments.

The House resumed from November 26 consideration of the motion 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.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this bill which deals with child pornography and to put on the record the concerns, comments and support of my caucus.

This bill is roundly supported by all parties. We are here today to acknowledge the work of those in our community who have been fighting for decades to stop the curse of child pornography and more recently to put restrictions on the spread of this vile propaganda by the Internet.

I want to spend a few minutes reminding Canadians how we all have to work together on this issue. I want to reference the work of an organization in Winnipeg, Manitoba, that is headed up by Roz Prober, who has been working on issues of the sex trade and child pornography for many years. In fact, just this past week in Winnipeg a number of sessions were held and media awards were presented to organizations and individuals in our country who have been outspoken, vocal, and ever present on the issue of child pornography.

Roz Prober and her organization, Beyond Borders, have started a campaign called “Man to Man”. The reason for that campaign is that it is recognized that in most instances regarding child pornography and the use of the Internet to spread child pornography, the main propagators of this offensive material are men.

The idea of the campaign is to persuade other men, who know the importance of stopping the spread of child pornography, who know where it can lead, and how harmful it can be to our whole society, to encourage those men to speak to other men whether it be in terms of how they treat women generally or how they view women and children as sexual objects.

However, the importance of the campaign is to start at the very beginning with that notion that somehow women and children are the sexual property of men. If we can get at that root cause, if we can understand what drives people to produce, promote and spread child pornography, then we will have won half the battle.

Many in the House have worked for years trying to convince the present Parliament and previous ones to take tough stands and take serious legislative steps to crack down on anything that promotes the use of violence, violence against women, violence against children, and violence against any vulnerable members in our society, as a way to exercise power over others.

Many in the House have worked for years, and I think about previous members of Parliament: Margaret Mitchell, Dawn Black, Audrey McLaughlin, Alexa McDonough, and the list goes on and on. These women have stood in this place to say that we as a society, as a Parliament, and as a country have an obligation to get to the roots of pornography and violence against women and children. The only way to do that is to recognize it for what it is, which is the exercise of power over others.

The House will remember Rosemary Brown, who was a prominent member in Canadian politics, who was the first black woman to seek the national leadership of any political party. She worked as an NDP MLA in British Columbia for years and was well known renowned feminist across this country. I remember her words to this day, acknowledging that she passed away a couple of years ago and we lost a great heroine and a great fighter, but she always said, “If we do not challenge the notion that might is right, [that competition is the basis to survival,] then there is no point to this struggle after all”.

What we are talking about in this debate is power over others, how it is wielded, how it degrades people, how it makes them second-class citizens, and how it puts people on a life cycle of dependency, hopelessness and despair because the victims of child pornography are faced with formidable challenges in trying to overcome that humiliation, that sense of no identity, that feeling of being dirty and second class.

That is something that takes years and years to overcome. Sometimes it is never overcome and the victims of violence, child pornography, sexual degradation, or the sex trade, if they can escape it, they will fight for their whole lives trying to regain their sense of self worth and purpose in life.

This debate is pretty fundamental to our notion of a civil society, our notion that everyone among us, no matter whether we look at people through the prism of sex or race or ability can contribute to society. It is absolutely clear that our job as parliamentarians is to ensure that everyone, regardless of sex, race or ability is able to be who they are and contribute on the basis of their unique talents their individual potential and contribute that to our society. When they become pawns in a massive trade regarding child pornography, we demean not just those who are the victims who are portrayed in child pornography but we, in fact, demean an entire society and reduce it to its lowest common denominator.

Our job must be to use every strategy at our fingertips, every mechanism available to crack down on child pornography. This is not a time for anyone among us to debate the whole issue of freedom of speech because we all know that there is no freedom of speech when that freedom is used to take someone else's freedom away. That is what child pornography does. That is what pornography does generally. It takes away the freedom of that child or woman, or any other victim of pornography and sexual degradation, to be who they truly are as individuals.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge you to ensure that we move the bill as expeditiously as possible through all levels and all processes in this place to honour the work of those who have come before us and to recognize those members in our communities everywhere, whether it is in Winnipeg with Beyond Borders, whether it is a national organization in terms of child protection, or whether it is the women's movement, where feminists have been speaking out for decades to end violence against any individual and sexual degradation of any individual. We need to honour that work and bring it to fruition, entrench it in law, and crack down on the production, dissemination, and the spread of this vile propaganda that degrades and humiliates people and lowers the whole level of civilization in our country today.

I think it is an offence to the very notion of a civilized society that child pornography is allowed in any shape or form. It is contrary to any notion of what we believe in, in terms of a society where everyone is treated with decency, equality, dignity and respect.

I think it is incumbent upon each one of us to do what we can in our respective constituencies and communities, so that we are not just here promoting laws that will actually make a difference but we are on the streets, in our neighbourhoods, at the community level, in the grassroots of our communities, speaking out every time there is any sign, any sense, any whiff of material or actions or activity that shows and reveals children as sexual objects or women as second-class citizens.

So, what I am saying is this debate is more than just about the law. It is about government policies, in general, and whether or not we are there to support those organizations, those non-governmental community organizations, the women's movement, the cross-borders organizations of the country,and whether we are there supporting them through resources and through acknowledging the validity of their work.

While I know the government is very supportive of cracking down on pornography, as witnessed by this legislation, we sometimes wonder if the government is really there, prepared to get at the roots of the problem, and support organizations that need resources of the government to fight, to speak, and to act. We have had huge debates in this place about whether or not government funds should be used to do such things, to advocate on behalf of others. Many organizations have lost their funds because they are seen as advocates, as speaking out for a purpose, as fighting against something.

I know we have disagreements in this place sometimes about the end goal and our very notion of what is a civil society. However, I would implore government members today to think about the wisdom of that kind of approach and decision, and to, in fact, reconsider supporting women's organizations, which are the leaders on this issue, through core funding.

Most of the organizations I know that fight on these terms, on this basis, spend half their time trying to figure out how to keep going as an organization. They spend half their time making applications and trying to fit their program into a government-sponsored initiative, trying to fit a round peg into a square box, trying to be as creative and as imaginative as possible, in order to access a bit of resources just to keep going.

The women's movement has been drastically hurt in its ability to keep being that voice in our communities against child pornography and violence against anyone because it is spending most of its time trying to figure out how to stay alive, if it is still alive. In fact, many important organizations have had to be silenced, have had to terminate their existence because there is no support from a government that should support such organizations since they get to the very roots of the problem that we talk about today. We cannot just do it with the heavy hand of the law.

We support the bill because it takes a multi-disciplined and a multifaceted approach, but we have to fight at the community level, too. We have to deal with the very fundamental attitude that people can overpower others and do so in the most vilest of ways, through the degradation we have seen in some of the most horrific child pornography cases anywhere, as we know recently from the news in terms of pornography rings that have been broken and individuals charged.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. Pornography is everywhere. The way in which we treat women and children is rooted in a society where the powerful are given licence to overcome the more vulnerable, given licence because we do not stop them from repressing women and children and making them victims.

I hope, through this legislation, we crack down on child pornography on the Internet, that is spread electronically, at the speed of light, everywhere and is so readily accessible to everyone in society. At the same time, I hope, in the process, we recognize that we also have to change attitudes.

Every time there is an act of violence against another in our society, any time women are treated as sexual objects or children are seen as pawns in this game of trading pornographic material, anytime individuals in society are not allowed to be who they are on their own terms, then we have to act and we have to support community groups to do that.

We cannot sit back and allow cultural conditioning to overwhelm us, sex stereotyping to be pervasive, second-class status to be attributed to children. We have to recognize every one as an individual who should be unencumbered and free to pursue his or her life's dreams without being defined, stereotyped and placed in precarious situations because of a society that needs to make money off the treatment of others as second-class citizens.

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak today and to recognize community groups that have been there for us. In turn, I would ask Parliament to be there for them.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for spelling out how women have been silenced in Canada by the government and connecting that use of power by the government to the wish to have power over others and not necessarily for a positive reason.

Once children are violated by predators, it is too late. As my colleague pointed out, they live with humiliation and despair. My concern is that the government only talks about punishment. It is so focused on punishment that it has paraded a series of less than effective crime bills in front of the Canadian public, yet has acted negligently in terms of prevention.

Just last week, I received a letter from Mark Biagi from Powell River, B.C. He was very concerned about predators who used date rape drugs to take advantage of young women and the fact that there was nothing in our laws to prevent or to prosecute in these cases. We have also heard nothing about prevention of the crime of child pornography.

Could my colleague comment on the resources that should be in place so we can address the very serious problems of violence against women, violence against children in the form of pornography and physical violence and violence against women in terms of date rape drugs and those who use them and those who allow their use?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the NDP Status of Women critic, for her ongoing work in Parliament, raising these fundamental issues and questions.

I agree with her that there are too few resources and too little acknowledgement of some deep-rooted problems in our society and of the limited ability of organizations to fight back when government does not take them seriously.

Whether we are talking about cracking down on date rape and stopping date rape drugs or trying to work with young people and with organizations that try to dispel this notion of stereotyping and conditioning that is so pervasive in our society, or whether we are looking at more funding for organizations that provide services and programs to fight back against violence in the home or violence on the streets, or whether we are looking at organizations that simply work to create awareness and understanding about the vile impact, the horrific fallout from any kind of materials that treat people as second-class citizens or sexual objects, all those issues must be on the table. They must be addressed. In fact, this is a pervasive, serious problem that creeps up in every aspect of our lives, and we need to be there to deal with it.

I want to reference other organizations that work to end child sexual exploitation. Recently some of the celebrities in Beverly Hills started to get involved in this whole campaign. Maybe this will help in terms of bringing some awareness, when we see actors like Jason Priestley and race car driver, Jacques Villeneuve, among high-profiled Canadians involved in a campaign to end sexual exploitation of children.

This along with the work that I mentioned earlier of Beyond Borders is so important for getting the message out. Public awareness campaigns have to focus and be ever present. To do that, they need resources, money and support to do that.

Beyond Borders, which I mentioned earlier in my remarks, shows that 90% of those charged in terms of sexual exploitation of children or the use of children for sex or the perpetuation of child pornography are men. This goes back to reasons for their man-to-man campaign.

We need to be out there saying, “It's important for boys and men to hear that using children for sex and profit is not OK”. Those are the words of Roz Prober, president of Beyond Borders.

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

Mr. Speaker, when the minister announced the bill and spoke in the House the other day, she said that $42.1 million over five years would be provided to help law enforcement with more financial resources. When I asked her afterward whether this was new money, she could not answer the question. It goes to show us how ill-prepared the government is and how rushed the bill was.

The government did not look to best practices in other countries. Sweden simply solves the problem by blocking access to the sites. Brazil set up an ethical rules committee for the ISPs. Germany and the European Union block access to the sites as well.

Does that not make more sense than to bring in a bill that will simply slow the problem down a bit? We all agree that it has developed in an explosive manner in the last five or six years. It will only get bigger and fines will not solve the problem.