This bill was last introduced in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session, which ended in March 2011.
Rob Nicholson Conservative
This bill has received Royal Assent and is now law.
This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.
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.
All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.
James Moore Conservative Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam, BC
moves that Bill C-22, 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.
Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders
Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles Québec
Conservative
Daniel Petit ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice
Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak in support of Bill C-22, the Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, a government bill.
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.
Although the Canadian laws designed to combat child pornography are among the most exhaustive in the world, we can and must do more to make sure our children are protected from sexual exploitation.
The creation of the Internet has provided new means for offenders to distribute and use child pornography, resulting in significant increases in the availability and volume of child pornography.
This bill is aimed at the Internet, and in particular the distribution of child pornography on the Web. Exactly as Bill C-58 did in the previous session, it proposes to enhance Canada’s capacity to protect children from sexual exploitation by requiring that Internet service providers report child pornography on the Internet.
This piece of legislation would strengthen Canada's ability to detect potential child pornography offences. It would also help reduce the availability of online child pornography, and would facilitate the identification, apprehension and prosecution of offenders. Most importantly, this bill would help identify victims so they may be rescued from sexual predators.
Last summer, the federal ombudsman for victims of crime released a special report entitled “Every Image, Every child”, which provided an overview of the problem of online sexual exploitation of children. According to a special report, the number of charges for production or distribution of child pornography increased by 900% between 1998 and 2003. Additionally, the number of images of serious child abuse quadrupled between 2003 and 2007.
Again according to that report, 39% of those accessing child pornography are viewing images of children between the ages of three and five, and 19% want to see images of children under three years old.
The federal ombudsman's special report quotes Ontario Provincial Police detective inspector Angie Howe, and this quotation was from her appearance before the Senate committee in 2005. She said:
As recently as one year ago, we did not often 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.
According to this report, commercial child pornography is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. Thousands of new images or videos are put on the Internet every week and hundreds of thousands of searches for child sexual abuse images are performed daily.
There are more than 750,000 pedophiles online at any given time and some of them may have collections of over a million child sexual abuse images.
The conclusions in the special report from the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime were quickly used in a more recent report from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, which presents an overview of the information obtained through tips received by Cybertip.ca.
Cybertip.ca is a Canada-wide tipline for the public reporting of online child sexual exploitation, which includes child pornography, Internet luring, child prostitution, child sex tourism and child trafficking for sexual purposes.
I would like to quote from this report because it contains troubling statistics about the prevalence of online child sexual exploitation. It also reports that the images are becoming increasingly violent and are showing increasingly younger children.
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 government is committed to doing everything it can to put a stop to this growing problem. That is why we are reintroducing in the House this legislative measure to create a uniform mandatory reporting regime across Canada that would apply to all Internet service providers.
The new measures in Bill C-22 will complete a series of existing measures in Canada that are intended to protect children from sexual exploitation, including 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, selling, importing, exporting, accessing, advertising and possessing child pornography.
The Criminal Code provides a broad definition of child pornography that includes any visual, written and audio depictions of sexual abuse of a young person under the age of 18 years, and any written material or audio recording that advocates or counsels such unlawful activity, or whose dominant characteristic is the description of such unlawful activity.
The Criminal Code sets out tough sentences for child pornography offences, including a maximum sentence of 10 years for producing or distributing child pornography. Since 2005, all child pornography offences carry a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment, which prevents persons found guilty of such an offence to be given a conditional sentence, for example house arrest.
In addition, committing a child pornography offence with intent to make a profit is an aggravating factor when determining the sentence. Since 2005, the courts responsible for sentencing have had to pay particular attention to the objectives of denunciation and deterrence when imposing a sentence for an offence involving the sexual exploitation of children.
The government recognizes that, although tough criminal laws are necessary to fight this scourge, they are not enough. For that reason, we announced last year that we were renewing our commitment to work with our partners on the national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. This strategy has been successful and has played an important role in recent years in ensuring that the increasing number of youth using the Internet are protected and that measures to stop sexual predators are in place. The government will invest $71 million over five years to ensure that this national strategy continues to be successful.
This money will make it possible for the government, through the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, to increase its capacity to fight against the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet by identifying the victims, conducting investigations and helping to bring offenders to justice, and also by improving the capacity of municipal, territorial, provincial, federal and foreign police by providing training and support for investigations.
We also want to enhance the centre's ability to help young people take charge of their own safety while engaging in online activities, and enable the public to report possible cases of online sexual exploitation of children through initiatives like Cybertip.ca
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 co-operation in combating crimes against children.
On May 6, 2010, the government reintroduced this important bill in the House to enhance our ability to co-operate with our international partners in combating this scourge.
I would now like to explain how this piece of legislation will work. 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 Internet service providers provide Canadians with the Internet services through with child pornography crimes are committed, they are in the best position to discover these crimes. That is why this legislative measure requires them to report to the police any Internet address related to child pornography that can be publicly accessed on the Internet, to notify the police if they think that their Internet services have been used to commit a child pornography crime, and to preserve any related evidence.
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 and deliver signals. This bill applies to ISPs and to all those who supply electronic mail services such as webmail, Internet content hosting, which would include web designers and co-location facilities, and social networking sites that allow members to upload images and documents. The law would also apply to those providing free Internet services to the public, such as cybercafés, hotels, restaurants and public libraries. This wide application will eliminate as many pedophile safe havens as possible.
This legislation would impose a certain number of obligations on those who provide Internet services. First, if a person is advised, in the course of providing an Internet service to the public, of an Internet address where child pornography may be available, that person would be required to report that address to the organization designated by the regulations. To be absolutely clear, these providers would be required to provide only the Internet address. No personal information would be sent to the designated organization. We chose this route in order to comply with the Privacy Act and because the designated organization would not require additional information to fulfill its obligations under the regulations. Even though the regulations have not yet been written, we foresee the organization's main roles to be: one, to determine if the information communicated about that Internet address does give access to child pornography in the meaning of the Criminal Code; and two, to determine the geographic location of the server where the content is stored, if applicable. Once this information has been confirmed, the organization would send it to the appropriate law enforcement agency.
The second duty C-22 would impose on Internet service providers would be to notify the police if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service has been used to commit a child pornography offence. For example, an email provider that realized while maintaining its message server that a user's mailbox contained child pornography would be required to notify police that it had reasons to believe that a child pornography offence had been committed. In addition, the provider would be required to preserve the evidence for 21 days after notifying police. However, to minimize the impact on the privacy of Canadians, the Internet service provider would also be required to destroy the information that would not be retained in the ordinary course of business after the expiry of the 21-day period, unless required to keep it by a judicial order.
So as not to prejudice a planned or ongoing criminal investigation, a person could not disclose that they had made a report or a notification under the legislation.
The general principle behind this legislation is that it must not promote the use or distribution of child pornography. In keeping with this principle, the bill expressly states that it does not require or authorize anyone to seek out child pornography. As well, the bill is not worded in such a way that Internet service providers themselves are required to check the information on an Internet address or investigate users' activities
The last two things I would like to talk about are offences and punishment. Failure to comply with the duties under this proposed legislation would constitute an offence punishable by summary conviction with a graduated penalty scheme.
Individuals, or sole proprietors, would be subject to a fine of not more than $1,000 for the first offence, a fine of not more than $5,000 for a second offence, and a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for a term of not more than six months, or both, for each subsequent offence.
Corporations and other entities would be subject to a fine of not more than $10,000 for a first offence, a fine of not more than $50,000 for a second offence, and a fine of not more than $100,000 for each subsequent offence. This two-level penalty system takes into account the diversity of the Internet service sector in Canada, where there are just as many sole proprietorships as there are multinational corporations.
Some might feel that these penalties are light, but we have to remember that this bill is a complement to all of the existing measures to protect our children against sexual exploitation, including the harsh penalties provided for in the Criminal Code for child pornography offences.
This bill sends a message to those who provide Internet services to the public that they have a social and moral obligation, and now also a legal one, to report the existence of this heinous material when they become aware of it.
We believe that the penalties provided for in this bill would allow us to balance the objective of the bill with its effectiveness. In order to achieve the objective of this bill, to better protect children, the government wants to ensure that all Internet service providers in Canada abide by the law, not just the major Internet service providers who already voluntarily declare such cases and assist the police.
In conclusion, I hope that all parties and all parliamentarians will support Bill C-22, the Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act.
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my hon. colleague and I will come back to what he said in a moment.
I have before me two press releases, one dated November 24, 2009, and the other dated May 6, 2010. In November 2009, this bill was known as Bill C-158 and now it is Bill C-22. We began studying it. Perhaps my colleague will say that we care more about criminals than victims, but that is completely false. In fact, we agreed with this bill and I will come back to this a little later, when I speak to this matter again.
I have a question for my colleague. As he might recall, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights had begun studying this bill. Something drew my attention and I hope my colleague is listening to me. According to a study by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 65% of child pornography websites are located in the United States.
The government had six months to introduce this bill again. We asked the government what it has done to implement an agreement with the United States in order to be able to access these sites, which are polluting Canada's cyberspace.
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, through you, I would like to mention that, according to our information, most pornographic sites are hosted in the United States and others are hosted in Canada and other countries. Most of the rules will apply to any company, big or small, that hosts child pornography sites. The company will be required to take the necessary steps to protect children from this abuse and, to some degree, help the victims.
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Mr. Speaker, the bill is laudatory in its aims but what is important is not just what is on the face of the law, but the resources behind that law in order to implement it. I understand that some efforts are being made by police forces in Canada to work together and work across borders to further the exchange of this information and stomp down on this egregious activity.
In keeping with moving forward on this bill, what further efforts are being made to formalize arrangements between police organizations within this country and to formalize intelligence sharing between this country and other nations? Are there negotiations under way or presentations at the world customs forum? Are there specific resources being geared up to give support to these very specialized workforces?
I know from very close friends and associates who are criminal prosecutors and criminal defence that it is extremely emotional work, particularly when one is dealing with crimes involving children. Are we putting measures in place to ensure that we have enough officers on board dealing with these matters so they do not get completely burned out?
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, through you, I want to thank my colleague for her question. Indeed, for the past four or five years, Cybertip.ca, a not for profit agency, has already been helping the system uncover pornography distributed by Internet providers.
I would like to point out that under the bill, Cybertip.ca may be one of the agencies chosen to help us fight sexual exploitation and child pornography on the Internet. Funding will be provided to these agencies that are already helping us for free.
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Speaker, I listened to both the English and French versions of my colleague's response. Since he did not answer the question, I will ask it again. Can the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice tell us whether an agreement has been worked out between Canada and the United States authorizing us to take action in the United States, which hosts 65% of the child pornography sites that are polluting Canada? Does such an agreement exist?
The members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights had asked him to be sure to answer these questions. I expect him to answer me.
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, I want to explain something to the hon. member. When what is known as the main drive is located in the United States, its content is released through a system that is licensed in Canada, namely the Internet service provider. That ISP is governed by Canadian laws. Even if the main drive is located in the United States, the Canadian company will have to convey the information. That is what I mentioned in my speech. Where is the child pornography site, and where is its geographical location? If the Canadian provider does not want to be at fault, it will simply have to stop presenting the content of this site.
Jim Maloway NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, the website cybertip.ca showed that the Internet sites containing child pornography are hosted in close to 60 countries and they provide a table indicating the rank of the top countries. For example, the United States is number one at 49.2% and Russia is number two at 20%. Canada is at 9%, Japan is at 4.3% and South Korea is at 3.6%.
The fact is that we know these sites are mobile. This is based on the 12,000 sites available right now. What we want to know from the government and the parliamentary secretary is what sort of strategy or agreements the government has to work in concert with these 60 countries. Perhaps it can look at expanding it beyond the 60, because we know that when we move on these 60, they will simply move to country number 61 or 62.
In the area of penalties, companies may pay $10,000 for a first offence, $50,000 for a second offence and $100,000 for a third offence. Assuming that organized crime is involved in Internet pornography, does it not sound reasonable that a $10,000 fine would just be part of the cost of doing business?
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
It should be noted that, in the systems that bring Internet to our homes, a Canadian company monitors or houses the system that is called a server. The server is Canadian. It communicates with other servers located in other countries.
When our Canadian server discovers, is told, or reports to the police that it houses a child pornography site, it is the one that would be penalized. Therefore, it will stop housing pornographic sites from another country. Servers communicate among themselves. They can stop an activity, and that is what we are requiring them to do with our commercial trade partners. We are asking them to monitor everything that comes from other countries, since they are interrelated. This means they can put an end to an activity.
As regards the hon. member's second question, it is true that the organized crime may be behind this and may make billions of dollars. However, I should point out that the penalties are gradual. For example, in the case of an individual, it is $1,000 for a first offence, then $10,000 for a second offence, and so on. We felt that international companies and large corporations for which $50,000 is not much money should keep in mind that we can have a different scale for a small company and an individual.
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, I would like to agree with him, but he has tried to pull a fast one on us because what he is saying is not true at all. In fact, that is the problem. On the question of child pornography, I have the two documents, Bill C-22 and Bill C-58. They are the same thing. Allow me to go into one of the two documents that were prepared.
At the justice committee, we examined this famous Bill C-58. With all due respect, if the government had not prorogued the session, that bill would be in force. We are entitled to expect that the government would have put procedures in place, international agreements, to put an end to child pornography. That is what we were told in committee, and allow me to review a bit of it. When that bill came to us in committee, the first witnesses who appeared before us told us: "At last, Canada has entered the 21st century." And that is not bad news.
The government has dragged its feet on this for several years when there was in fact an agreement. Governments had agreed to have a child pornography bill passed in the United States, France, England and several countries, including Canada. Quite obviously, Canada has dragged its feet. We asked the Conservatives: "What have you done?" We were told that all the impacts had to be studied. That is why they came in with Bill C-58, which is now Bill C-22. I will say right now that the Bloc Québécois agrees with this bill. Our Conservative friends are going to stop spreading it around that what we care about is defending criminals, because it is not true. This is more exaggeration, more demagoguery.
There is a section in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that clearly states that every human being whose life is in peril has the right to assistance. That has been adopted everywhere. It is part of the charter of the rights of the child adopted by the United Nations. One of those examples is child pornography. In fact, it travels exponentially, and contrary to what the parliamentary secretary said, and I will say this again: when they tell me that the service provider is important and they are going to control the one doing the distributing, that shows a very poor grasp of how the Internet works. You have to go to the sites, and obviously I am not suggesting anyone do that, to see that once a site is detected it closes down as fast as it was opened. The justice committee was told what will have to be done with this bill, it was reiterated and everyone agreed, and that is to start now to put in place what the government needs for implementing this bill. At that time we were talking about Bill C-58, which is now Bill C-22. This Bill C-22 does not change anything. It is a copy of what the government handed to us in November 2009, except that it has now been able to hold two press conferences, to say the same thing two times: that they care about victims and that on this side, which makes no sense, we do not care about children, and we are this and we are that.
Sometime the government should stop trotting out these old ideas. Everyone has heard them. I hope no one in the House is in favour of child pornography. Once that has been said, we need to take the appropriate action. What is it? It is to force Internet service providers to report people to an organization. That is where the problem lies. We asked the government if it had already started to set up this organization. Does it know who it will be? Will it be the RCMP or some other agency? There was no answer.
We agree that this bill should be studied in committee, but these questions will still have to be answered. Everyone knows the bill will not be studied in committee this session. It will be studied next session, starting September 20, unless the government prorogues Parliament or calls an election or manages in some other way to make political hay.
It will soon be a year since this bill was introduced in the form of C-58 or C-22. That is why we want our police forces to be immediate authorized to set up an action group. It is sad to say, but in order to put an end to child pornography, it is necessary to go on-line with snooping software. The RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and some other police forces have special teams and computer geniuses who can snoop and trace pornographic sites back to where they are located and installed. If they are located in Canada, it is easy to take action against them. However, legislation is needed to do so. The necessary legislation is Bill C-22, which we support.
There is a very important point that should be repeated over and over. People in Canada, Quebec and all the provinces need to know that child pornography will be diligently prosecuted. We should never yield in the face of this odious crime. There is no need to describe what child pornography is. The words speak for themselves.
It is important to remember that the increased likelihood of getting caught is much more dissuasive than increased penalties, which often seem distant and abstract. Everyone who hosts these child pornography sites should be told to watch out beginning right now because they will be hunted down thanks to a new system and they can be traced and punished.
Unfortunately, I must say very respectfully that I have not received any answers. The Bloc does not know whether the government is prepared to fulfill its obligations and implement Bill C-22. I am afraid it is not. We obviously will get back to this and agree that the bill should be studied in committee.
What is an Internet service provider? It seems to refer to people who provide an Internet access service. But who are they? Do they also provide e-mail services, website hosting services and social networking sites? It is not really clear in the current bill. Internet service providers generally means people who provide access to the Internet. Does this include Cablevision in Abitibi or Vidéotron? The bill needs to go further. We have to be able to get at e-mail, website hosting services and social networking sites. Does it include Twitter and Facebook? Will all these networks be subject to Bill C-22?
That will be the debate. The committee members were not satisfied with the government’s responses. The government said it was the responsibility of the Internet service providers, Videotron, Rogers or Bell Canada, for example. We must go farther. What we are asking the government is whether it is prepared to go onto the Twitter and Facebook sites. I give those two examples, because I think that is enough.
As members of the House, we receive between 200 and 300 messages a day. Very often we have no idea where they come from. Sometimes we see some rather special images, to put it mildly. How do we go about stopping all this? Of course I am not talking about child pornography only, but it is an example. There are also hate crimes.
The hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine has a whole series of photos against the seal hunt, which are incredibly biased and which were distributed to us over all the networks. You can imagine what the situation is with child pornography.
Many of our friends are on Facebook and Twitter. What will happen if those networks are not included? We think that it will be absolutely necessary to get answers to these questions. Since the bill will not come back before committee until next fall, the government will have time to answer these questions. We in the Bloc are even prepared to propose amendments to this effect. We must absolutely and totally eradicate the slightest possibility of access to child pornography on sites hosted in Canada. We will have to find ways of doing this. It is vital that police forces be able to implement special squads and task forces.
In this bill, there is a duty to report. Any person or group providing Internet services to the public will have to report if advised of an Internet address. The minute there is an Internet address where child pornography is available, what methods will be used to track down those responsible?
I would draw a parallel with drugs and money laundering. It is all very well to arrest the drug traffickers, but where does the laundered money go? This is how the commission of other crimes is abetted.
It is obvious to us that child pornography brings in hundreds of millions of dollars for organized crime. There is no doubt about that. The police must have effective means of dealing with this. This is something we need to come back to. Analyzing websites is fine, but once they are analyzed, how do we step in? We must and we will have to step in, not only in Canada, but also in the United States, in other countries of the Americas and even abroad. Some sites are hosted in Russia, and others in Asia. The Government of Canada, in particular, must take the leadership in signing agreements so that intelligence can be transferred very quickly and we can put a stop to this. For we know how it works.
As soon as someone realizes that they might be suspected, they close their site and open it somewhere else. The government will have to find the resources, but for the moment, unfortunately, we are not getting an answer. We absolutely have to be given answers to these questions. Otherwise, we will have passed a bill and done our job. Members are being asked to do their job: to introduce, develop and analyze legislation to combat child pornography or pedophilia sites.
Have no fear, we are going to do it. The public can rest assured that the Bloc and its colleagues in the Liberal Party and the NDP agree with the government. We are going to move forward, but the government absolutely has to find the resources and gives some speedy indications that it has given very serious thought to what has been decided at the international level to combat child pornography, which is extremely harmful to our young people.
In September 2008, the federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers agreed that Canada's response to child pornography would be strengthened by federal legislation. It has been almost two years and to date nothing has been done because the session was prorogued last fall. We resumed almost six weeks late, and so we have not been able to study the bills quickly enough.
We are in favour of Bill C-22. We believe it is necessary and it is an important tool to combat criminal organizations and crime, something we should be doing day after day, fighting the people who put our children at risk of falling victim to these kinds of crimes.
I invite my colleagues to give their opinions on this bill, but it must be passed quickly so we can study it in committee next fall. The government must not delay implementing it; it can do it.
I would like to offer some interesting statistics. In 61% of sexual assault cases reported to the police and 21% of physical assault cases, the victim was a child. Seventy-two percent of Canadians think it is easy to find child pornography on the Internet. Ninety-two percent of Canadians say they are concerned about the distribution of child pornography on the Internet, and 96% think it is important to have a service for reporting child pornography on the Internet.
In those homes where the use of Internet is not monitored, 74% of the children say that it is when they are left alone that they surf on the Internet. Moreover, 21% of them say that they have met in person someone they first got to know on the Internet.
It is urgent that Canada take its responsibility and tackles the issue of child pornography on the Internet.
Jim Maloway NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, cybertip.ca analyzed over 12,000 websites and found that of the hosting countries, the United States was at 49%, Russia 20%, Canada 9%, Japan 4% and South Korea 3%. I do not see countries like Sweden and Germany on the list. Sweden has a policy of blocking child porn as do Germany and other European Union members.
Why should we be playing cat and mouse with these people and spending huge amounts of money on police forces to chase people who are going to evade us by moving to one of the other countries that are not currently hosting these sites? Why would we not take the approach of Sweden and Germany, block child porn in the first place and avoid all this needless expense of having the police play cat and mouse with these people for many years to come?
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Speaker, I can only say to the hon. member that I do not know who must do what. I do not know if it is Cybertip.ca. What I do know, however, is that we must absolutely and quickly target the issue of child pornography. To me, that is clear. We must absolutely fight it aggressively, by taking appropriate means, whether it is Cybertip.ca, organized groups within the RCMP, task forces from the Sûreté du Québec, the Ontario Provincial Police, or whoever else, but we must do something about it. That is clear. We must have the means to tackle this issue and to closely monitor the individuals who house these Internet sites. In my opinion, that is a critical requirement.
Can this be done the way it is being done in Europe? I do not know, but it has to be done. When this bill is referred to the committee, our concern will be to ensure that the government has begun taking the means to deal with this issue.
Jim Maloway NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Mr. Speaker, I have another question for the member on the whole area of offences. We already have indicated that the bill has been in progress for about five years. There is no reference to Twitter in the bill, for example. The technology is ahead of any government, but it is miles ahead of the Conservative government.
In terms of offences under the bill, we are looking at individual offences of $1,000 for a first-time offence, $5,000 for a second-time offence and $10,000 for a third or more offence or six months in jail. When we get to the corporate side of it, we are looking at $10,000 for a first offence, $50,000 for a second offence and $100,000 for three or more offences. As I indicated before, the child pornography sites, I believe, are being run by criminal organizations.
Is this level of fines really nothing more than just the cost of doing business for people like criminal organizations?
Marc Lemay Bloc Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC
Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question.
It is obvious to me that my colleague is right. We should be able to prosecute the individuals who are hiding behind these networks and these child pornography sites. I fully agree with the hon. member that we should sue these individuals.
The problem is very simple: the government does not have the means to fulfill its ambitions. This means it is going to have to find those means. If we support a legislation such as Bill C-22—which, in my opinion, is a certainty—we must absolutely be able to implement it, so that it does not remain an empty shell, as is too often the case with bills that do not achieve anything. We will have to find those means, and I think we should begin looking for them now, since we know that we are going to adopt this legislation.