Bill C-22 (Historical)

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.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act

[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.

[Daniel Petit, Conservative, Parliamentary 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.

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, being very close to my colleague for Abitibi—Témiscamingue, I know that he did not have time before to answer a question. I will give him the time to answer the question.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have answered so many questions that I would have liked my colleague for Hochelaga to indicate which one, although I have an idea.

What I wanted to say earlier is that the government has to stop holding press conferences to give press conferences. It has to stop holding press conferences to tell us that it is fighting crime and taking care of victims. With regard to the matter before us, Bill C-22, the House is clear and unanimous. Unless I am told otherwise, the last I heard it was unanimous: everyone here is against child pornography.

Therefore, the government must stop holding press conferences and start taking action. That is what we are debating. We have to provide the means to implement this bill as well as others. Barely one hour ago, we were discussing Bill S-2. How are they going to implement Bill S-2 if they do not provide police forces with the money to carry out their responsibilities when these bills are passed?

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

Mr. Speaker, as I was preparing to speak, I pulled my speech from the last time this bill was before the House.

It is one of a number of bills that the government has been grossly incompetent in dealing with. I say that from two vantage points. This is one of the bills that died on the order paper because of the prorogation decision by the Prime Minister in late December 2009.

It also reflects the inability of the government to deal seriously with major crime issues. It is much more concerned about using it for blatant political purposes than it is for dealing with crimes that affect a good number of Canadians, and in this case children in particular. It is much more concerned about maneuvering and manipulating the political system to its advantage, as it did with the prorogation in December, than actually dealing with the problem and the crime, and dealing with it effectively.

On top of that, in spite of all of the claims of getting tough on crime that the government makes, this issue has been before Parliament since even before it was government, but it has now been government for four years. There have been two elections. This is an identification, however, that this problem with regard to child pornography dispersed electronically, in particular, has existed for quite some time.

The government cannot claim ignorance of the reality. It certainly cannot claim to a significant degree either an unwillingness or an incapacity to deal with it and certainly to deal with it in a timely fashion.

We saw this bill before. It is identical to the one that was here before prorogation. It was Bill C-58 at that time and it is now Bill C-22. It deals with the issue of imposing a mandatory responsibility on the part of Internet service providers and other companies that provide services to the Internet, that in effect make the Internet function.

It requires both individuals and corporations, and it will be almost all corporations, to report incidents of child pornography on the programs and hardware equipment that they identify.

Before I go to more of the specifics, I want to say two things. One, as I said earlier, this bill has been required for some time. I recall in the justice committee back in 2004-05, the issue was before us. We heard some very interesting evidence at that time from our police forces and some of our prosecutors about the refusal on the part of some of these providers, private company providers, to co-operate with the police during the course of an active investigation.

It was with a good deal of anger from all members of the committee that we responded to those facts. What has happened since then is a significant increase in co-operation, in part because of the pressure by the police and the prosecutors but also by the justice committee in terms of talking to some of the major service providers in the country. So they have become more co-operative.

However, it is quite clear that they have not all done that and they have not all fully co-operated, and that they have not gone out of their way to identify sources of child pornography within their system or network and to report those.

I have to say a bit in their defence. It was not clear how much they could divulge without exposing themselves to civil lawsuits around breaches of rights of privacy.

The bill addresses some of that. One of the concerns I have is whether it is clear enough and broadly scoped enough to provide that protection. However we knew about that in 2004-2005. It was very clear what the problem was.

The other point I want to make before moving into the bill specifically is that this issue of protecting our children by imposing a responsibility on the part of adults, in particular professionals, is not new to our law. It is, I believe, the first time we will do it in the Criminal Code, but we have imposed this responsibility at the provincial level for child abuse for over 30 and almost 40 years now. We started back then in the late sixties and early seventies.

We began imposing on doctors, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and a number of groups who have extensive interaction with children in their professional lives, the responsibility that if they determine that the child has been a victim of child abuse that has to be reported either to the children's services agencies that are responsible for child protection in the region or to the police.

That legal principle of doing that is not new. In fact, as I said, it is almost four decades old in Canada at various provincial government levels. However, it will be the first time that we will do it in the Criminal Code at the federal level.

I know my colleague from Manitoba keeps making this point, but we as parliamentarians are constantly having to catch up with new electronic developments and new technological developments. This is certainly a classic example of the law running well behind what has become a major tool for purveyors of child pornography to use to send that child pornography all the way around the world.

Child pornography has been with us forever. We can find it going back into the Egyptian period, the Roman period, and further into Asia during some of those civilizations. It shows up in some of the paintings and sculptures that were created during those periods of time. Therefore, we know it has existed for a long time.

What has happened because of the Internet, because of that technological development, is the ability to spread the child pornography that is created primarily in eastern Europe and in Asia, because most of the sources are from there. The ability on the part of those organized crime syndicates to get that out across the globe has proliferated to the nth degree. I do not think we know how much more is getting out as compared to what was being processed prior to computers and certainly prior to the Internet.

That is the factual reality that we have known about, at least for the last half decade in terms of its extensive proliferation, and our police forces and prosecutors have known about it for at least another five years before that.

The bill is way overdue. What it does do is impose upon the operators of the network a very specific responsibility that if they identify it, and I want to be clear on that, if they identify it or if it comes to their attention, they have to report that to an agency that will be established under this legislation.

In that regard, it immediately begs the question of whether the government will provide the necessary resources for that agency to exist in an effective and efficient manner.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

That is unlikely given its history.

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

As my colleague from Winnipeg is saying, given the history of the government being prepared to spend hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to incarcerate people, it is much less willing to spend money on prevention.

That is what we are talking about. The identification of the purveyors of this pornography, if we can identify them, will prevent a great deal of crime.

The other point I would make in this regard, and I think the government really has a hard time understanding this, because I do not think the Conservatives have the intellectual capacity to gather it, is--

[An hon. member]

Speak very slowly.

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

Speak slowly. Is that the advice? I will slow down my speech.

The Conservatives are really strong on deterrence. That for them means punishment. It means beating people into submission by incarcerating them for life. I am sure that the majority of the Conservative caucus members, if they had the ability to do it, would bring back the death penalty as well, because they think of deterrence that way.

The approach in this bill is a much more effective deterrent. It is a deterrent to organized crime. Deterrence rarely works, certainly not in crimes of passion or in crimes to our youth. Deterrence just does not work. There is no evidence to the contrary. All of the evidence we have shows that deterrence does not work in those circumstances. However, making an effective tool available to our police so that they can get to the purveyors of child pornography is a very effective deterrence tool.

I do not think that the Conservatives have the ability to comprehend this fact, but every study we have ever done, and I learned this in law school and repeatedly in my professional practice as a lawyer, shows that we deter crime by convincing those people in our society who contemplate committing a crime that they will be caught. This bill is an effective tool in sending the message that if people put this stuff on networks across the globe, we are going to catch them, and we will deal with them under the rest of the sections in the Criminal Code. This bill is an effective tool from that perspective.

We are supportive of this legislation. However, I think that the government threw it together rapidly, when it was Bill C-58.

I have asked some of these questions before, but I have not received satisfactory answers.

The bill definitely needs to go to committee so that we can take a look at it and have some people in from the industry, the Department of Justice, and the police to tell us whether in some respects it goes far enough. There may be some overreach, but in this case, as opposed to most crime bills we get from the government, it may not go far enough.

I ask people to look in particular at the penalties. A constant problem we have with the government is that it does not trust our judiciary. If convicted of not reporting, the maximum fine on the first offence, for individuals, is $1,000. I believe that the fine is $10,000 for corporations. These are very small amounts of money, given the individuals and the kind of revenue they generate from their operations. That is all the judge can impose. That is the maximum fine a judge can impose.

The situation that immediately jumped to my mind, and I am not sure why the government did not catch this, was this: What if over several months or several years there has been a whole series of reports to a company about child pornography on its system, and the company has not reported it? What is going to happen in the courts is that the company is going to be convicted for all of them all at once. The maximum fine in that situation would be $1,000. The individual who may have breached his or her responsibility under this bill one time would also be exposed to the maximum fine.

What this comes down to is that the government does not trust judges to look at that situation and say that this was one time on the part of this company, but on the part of that company, it was the 10th, 15th or 20th time people complained and pointed out that child pornography was on the network it controlled, and it had not reported it. That company would also get that $1,000 fine or that $10,000 fine.

Clearly, it is not a proper approach. If it were left to the judiciary, they could assess the situation once the convictions had been entered and could determine whether there would be a much more substantial fine for a company that continually breached its responsibility under the legislation as opposed to the individual or company that did it only once. That is one problem with the bill.

A couple of other provisions give me cause for concern. There is a provision in the bill that requires the individual or company that has the material to keep it for a maximum of 21 days. Knowing the workload we have imposed upon our police and prosecutors, that period of time seems tremendously short. The only way they can be required to keep it for more than 21 days is if the prosecutor goes to court to get a judicial order requiring them to keep it until further order. That process would require our police and prosecutors, in fewer than 21 days, to get the material together and get a court date. It is a very short period of time for them to function properly and make sure that the material or data is kept so that an effective prosecution can be pursued.

I do not know where they came up with 21 days. It seems to be totally out of keeping with the practicalities our police and prosecutors face in doing their jobs. I believe that we will have to take a look at that. As I say, they have not been flexible enough to look at this situation and say that this is just not adequate. I do not know whether they consulted with police and prosecutors. However, I think that anybody I would have talked to would have said that it is simply not a long enough period of time for the data to be held.

I just want to cover one more point, and that is the issue that in the past has caused companies and individuals not to co-operate. Some provisions in here, in several sections, deal with the right of corporations and individuals who identify this material, this child pornography, to report it without being sued. I have to say that I am questioning whether these provisions are adequate.

There are three provisions in clauses 8, 9, and 10 that in my mind raise doubts as to whether the bill goes far enough to protect them. These are individuals or corporations that are being responsible. They are reporting. However, they may step back and ask if they are going to be sued. Are they going to hesitate? It is very important that they do that reporting as soon as they possibly can so that an investigation can be carried out. The material can be saved, but taken off the Internet, and the police can be given the opportunity to chase back through that whole network system, which oftentimes includes a large number of providers.

We have heard from the police that they have had cases when they went through 25 to 50 service providers before they found the source. That is, of course, where we want to go. The sources, with very few exceptions, are international sources. They are not Canadian sources. It is very important that once they have the information, the service providers provide it. What we have to do is be very clear with them that they have absolute immunity from civil suits or prosecution under other legislation if they provide the material in a timely fashion.

We have to look at that. When it goes to committee, it will be one of the areas we look at.

The House resumed from June 15 consideration of the motion 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.

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

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, or the protecting children from online sexual exploitation act, brings back to life a bill that was killed in the last session when the government prorogued Parliament. It may be a tired line to hear from me or from members over here but the fact is that the former bill, Bill C-58, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, received first reading on May 6.

In short, the bill would make reporting child sexual abuse images mandatory for all Canadians, including Internet service providers, or ISPs. The tragedy here, of course, is that every day that goes by, more of these offences take place. It is a scourge on our society and we probably could have done something earlier but the P word stood in front of that. There was prorogation and the bill was not passed.

As the parliamentary secretary noted yesterday, government has an obligation to protect the weak and vulnerable in society, particularly our children. Debate on this bill is long overdue and I am honoured to speak in support of legislation that seeks to defend the rights of children in Canada and around the world.

While this bill is technical in nature, its purpose is a moral and praiseworthy one that ought to have been adopted long ago. At committee, I know this bill will be examined closely before any final decisions are made, such that this House can ensure Canada no longer lags in its responsibilities to protect our children from sexual exploitation.

I have a number of statistics that I will get into at the finish of my speech but the preface for them is this. Canada does not lead in the prevention of child Internet pornography or sexual exploitation.

I would like to express, though, how troubled I am that it has taken the government so long to do something about this important topic. It has been almost four and a half years that it has been the government and legislation to update criminal laws so that they better reflect the modern technologies and modern conveyance of information, as bad as this is, has not been brought forward by the government in a timely fashion.

The victims of these crimes cannot wait and the government's tactics have deprived many children the free and happy lives they deserve. Many of us have children and many of us provide the best we can for them and think that we are providing for them a free and happy life. Sometimes I say to my children that they have too free and happy a life, but let us be clear. There are many children who are in captivity. Their freedom has been taken away and they do not live free and happy lives whatsoever. They are children who have been exploited and continue to be exploited every day.

To begin, I want to discuss the current legislation governing child pornography. There are sections in the Criminal Code that exist, particularly in 1993 when the Liberal government introduced section 163.1 of the Criminal Code which prohibited the production, distribution, sale and possession of child pornography.

Let us all think back to 1993 when we did not have Blackberrys, our portable computers were probably the size of this podium and technology was certainly not as advanced as it is today. Therefore, the act, while it was good at the time, is woefully inadequate. It described child pornography as:

the visual representation of explicit sexual activity with a person who is or who is depicted as being under the age of 18;

the visual representation, for sexual purposes, of persons under the age of 18; or

any written material advocating or counselling sexual activity with a person under the age of 18.

That was all very good to have been introduced in 1993.

Canadians have a clear understanding of the illegality that is child pornography. At present, it is a criminal offence if one makes available distribution of child pornography, as I just defined, online. This is very straightforward and Canada continues to condemn the production and accessibility of online material depicting the sexual exploitation of children.

If society stopped there, if modern technology stopped there, if it were just a matter of stopping the production of child pornography and distribution of it online, I suppose we would be doing our job. Maybe there are some members who have been here since 1993 and remember, probably with some pride, that that was adequate at the time.

Under our present laws, if there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an Internet service provider, a judge may order the provider to supply the information to aid in locating and identifying the person who posted it. Judges may also order the removal of the child pornography if its source can be identified.

These laws are both valuable and necessary, though, as I will highlight later, further action is needed on the part of the government. Right now, in cases involving the online sexual exploitation of children, a prosecutor may choose whether the accused should be charged with a serious indictable offence or be liable for the less serious summary conviction offence. Cases of this nature ending in indictable offences are punishable for up to 10 years in prison. They are very serious. Summary convictions are currently punishable up to 18 months.

Let us be clear that viewing or possessing child pornography is punishable as well. Distributing child pornography online is as illegal as viewing it and this is a punishable offence. A maximum five-year sentence exists for indictable offences, while a maximum of 18 months remains for summary convictions.

Needless to say, Canadians are well aware of the horrible continuation of child pornography around the world and they want to bring it to an end. They do not want Canada to be laggards. They do not want Canada to be behind. They want Canada to be ahead on this issue but we are not. Canada's current legislation clearly hands down harsh consequences for those who break the law regarding the online sexual exploitation of children but more must be done to prevent these awful crimes.

As I briefly mentioned, Bill C-22 would implement rules that would require Internet service providers to report images of child sexual abuse. This measure is a welcome change if Canada is to directly combat the rise in Internet pornography exploiting children. The legislation reads:

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 is calling on the public, third parties and people on the outside to notify the ISP that they have knowledge of child pornography on sites. Think of the ISP as the carriage or the distribution conduit for child Internet pornography. This is a good thing because I do not know if there is any one agency or one government in the whole world that can adequately survey, police, patrol or keep watch on everything that is happening on the Internet with respect to child Internet pornography or sexual exploitation.

Members of the public, third parties and the many interested groups across the country that are mobilized on this issue will be given the opportunity to report them to the ISPs, and now, because of this legislation, the ISP would have the duty to report.

I also want to highlight a couple of the clauses that are interesting and important in this bill. Clause 3 reads:

If a person is advised, in the course of providing an Internet service to the public, of an Internet Protocol address or a Uniform Resource Locator where child pornography may be available to the public, the person must report that address or Uniform Resource Locator to the organization designated by the regulations, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

Clause 4 reads:

If a person who provides an Internet service to the public has reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence, the person must notify an officer, constable or other person employed—

This is the addition. One would think that the notice would be given to a police officer. That is how the Criminal Code has been written for centuries. However, this act, written by the Department of Justice, continues on to read:

—for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace of that fact, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

It widens the scope to whom the reporting can be done. In a clever way, it widens the scope of who can report and it narrows the scope of who is responsible, that is the ISP, and broadens the scope as to who should be informed.

We expect that persons employed for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace could include people under the municipalities act for bylaw enforcement. This could, under the person power of the municipalities act across this country, perhaps in an uninvaded territory and constitutional talk, give municipalities or regents the power to be firmer on issues of Internet child pornography distribution.

Clause 5 talks about a person who makes a notification under the previous clause must preserve all the data. Everybody knows that in a court of law we need to have the evidence. It is not good enough just to have a whole bunch of people watching or make the ISP basically liable to report and having the report done to a wider audience or a wider array of public police officers. The person reporting must also preserve the evidence, the electronic data, because without that there cannot be any convictions.

Clause 7 reads:

Nothing in this Act requires or authorizes a person to seek out child pornography.

In other words, the act stops in making ISPs or anybody under this act a peace officer for the purpose of investigating or going further than what is on the ISP or the URL.

Clauses 8 and 10 talk about some civil liability and some limits of liability that a civil proceeding cannot be commenced against a person for making a report in good faith, under clause 3. This goes to libel, defamation and slander.

We can see a good-natured citizen making a report of a site that is questionable. It is reported by the ISP to a peace officer but there is no conviction. However, during the course of this, maybe it leaks to the public that this is being done and it might harm someone's reputation. So, we can see a litigation chill effect that if this clause, the whole harmless clause, were not in this act maybe it would clamp down on the reporting, which would be against the purpose of the act.

In September 2008, federal and provincial ministers of justice and attorneys general, those responsible for justice in Canada, agreed that the federal legislation to establish mandatory reporting of online child pornography by Internet service providers was necessary. So, this has come from a long line of meetings with comparable justice ministers and attorneys general. It is a good step but one wonders why it was not done earlier.

We now have this legislation before the House that would apply to suppliers of the Internet to the public, those that provide electronic mail services, Internet hosting services and operators of social networking sites. There may be some concerns that the net is too wide but let us take it to committee and examine that and call in the Privacy Commissioner. Let us bring the major Internet service providers into the House of Commons committees and explain why it is not their job to report incidents of the production or the distribution of child Internet pornography. Why do we not do that? Why have we not done it sooner?

As I have demonstrated in the duties implied in Bill C-22, the legislation would require groups to report tips they receive regarding where child pornography may be available and notify police and safeguard evidence that is involved with the offence itself.

Those providers who do not comply, this is the penalty aspect, would be faced with offences of graduated fines. For individuals, the maximum first fine would be $1,000; for the second offence it would be $5,000; and for subsequent offences it would be $10,000. We must remember that these are for the reporting agencies. They are quasi-criminal, they are fines, they are structured very much like environmental offences and they are a good start.

I think at committee I might push for some criminal negligence provisions that might strengthen this act to make it even more deleterious for companies and their directors who knowingly and repeatedly fail to comply with the law, which I think is fairly reasonable.

As I stated when I first stood on this issue, child exploitation is a scourge on our community and action is long overdue. The delays because of prorogation and the delays because of other quasi-justice issues being put in the storefront first are inexcusable.

I will say, however, that all the proposed changes that I have just covered in detail, while unexamined yet by the committee, certainly appear to ensure the future safety of children and aim to eliminate the online sexual exploitation of minors. Evidence is clear that action on the part of the federal government is essential to address growing sexual exploitation of children.

The government has touted its whole law and order agenda, but it has taken four and a half years to get to this most egregious part of criminal activity, and one area of criminal activity that has seen an exponential growth and therefore an exponential increase in the harm to the community. The time to act is now.

In June 2008, waiting for federal direction and leadership, provinces took the lead. Manitoba, for instance, passed a law requiring all persons to report to Cybertip.ca any material that could constitute child pornography. Ontario has now followed Manitoba, waiting for the federal government to catch up by passing a similar law. In 2002 the United States adopted laws imposing reporting requirements on ISPs. In 2005 Australia passed laws for the same element. So, 2002, 2005, Manitoba and Ontario; we are not leading here in Parliament. The government is not leading on this issue; we are following. Taking action is evidently the right thing to do.

I would like to share some statistics with the House that convey the utter urgency with which we must protect our children from online sexual exploitation. Statistics Canada in reporting on child pornography said that clearly it is an increasing problem. There were 55 offences in 1998 and 10 years later, the number is 1,408; 55 offences as compared to 1,408.

Estimates from the federal ombudsman for the victims of crime, when we had one, would indicate there are over five million child sexual abuse images on the Internet. This is inexcusable for a country that is wealthy, inexcusable for a country that pretends to care about the rights of children, inexcusable for a government and a country that is a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The crimes continue. Between 2002 and 2009, the aforementioned Cybertip.ca.ca analyzed that 57.4% of child pornography images were that of children eight years and under. Eighty-three per cent of the images were of girls. Thirty-five per cent of the images depicted severe sexual assault being inflicted on children.

The Internet, as I said before, is a difficult domain to govern; it is probably impossible, but we must make better efforts. Child pornography sites are hosted in roughly 60 countries, and the rankings are alarming.

We all have an idea how big Canada is in the world. We are a small country in population.

The country hosting the most child pornography sites is the United States, again a wealthy, northern, industrialized country that would seem, by all its political rhetoric, to care about its children. The United States hosts 49% of these websites. Forty-nine per cent of the world's child pornography sites are in the United States. Second is Russia with 20%. Remember that the United States is a very large country and a very wealthy country. Russia is a very large country.

Where would we expect Canada to sit in terms of its population, in the small ranking, let us pray? No. Canada hosts 9% of the child pornography sites in the world, and that is not a good statistic. That is why we have to pass this law. That is why it ought to have been passed sooner.

It is why the government has to do more about clamping down on Internet child pornography. It is a crime we all agree should be clamped down on. It is a crime about which we realize the government should do more. It is a crime that has so far been untended to by the communications industry, which is why I said all parties should be amenable to having all the ISPs, all the big names, say them, Google and others, in here. They should be defending why they have not done anything sooner, why they have not, on their own, cut back on their inherent knowledge, their implied knowledge, of the existence of child pornography Internet sites.

The figures are all from the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Anybody who doubts the urgency of the issue should understand Canada must act immediately.

It is very difficult to determine where the images and websites are hosted, but they can be supported from different locations in the world. As such, oftentimes each photo and each site must be individually tracked, something highly difficult to achieve. Bill C-22 goes somewhere toward that, but more work must be done.

For one website depicting the sexual exploitation of children, Cybertip.ca.ca tracked it for 48 hours and the site went through 212 different Internet addresses in 16 countries. That was in two days. ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service to those computers.

We need legislation to do that. That is not in this legislation. That is not even a justice issue. That is an issue on which the government with its various departments and ministers responsible should be concentrating.

In conclusion, it is important to note that the bill does not require anyone to seek out child pornography in an attempt to shut it down, although if an Internet service provider becomes aware and notifies the police that one exists, the provider will not be subject to civil proceedings, as I mentioned earlier.

Child sexual exploitation is one of the top three concerns regarding children and society. We must support this bill, but we must do more.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Before moving on to questions and comments, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, Forestry Industry; the hon. member for Vancouver Kingsway, Justice; and the hon. member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, Arts and Culture.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit surprised that I am not being given a chance to give my speech. I was told that we would have 10 minutes for speeches, without a period for questions. But if there is a period for questions, I have a question for the member who just spoke.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

We are now doing questions and comments. It is now time for questions or comments for the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have at least one question for the member.

In listening to his speech, I imagine that he has read the bill and is prepared to have it examined in committee. I do not know how familiar he is with the Internet. I use my computer a lot, but I admit that I do not always understand the idea behind what needs to be done. I would like to know whether the member understood why, when individuals responsible for a server are alerted that there is child porn on websites on that server, they must preserve this material and then are required to destroy it? Did he understand what that means? I understand what it means, but I find it is not worded well. This would protect people against self-incrimination. As a lawyer, my understanding is that to be protected against self-incrimination, one must first refuse to respond.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the member, who is a lawyer and a member of the Standing Committee on Justice. If I have understood the question correctly, he wants to know what will happen with a given site that contains unpleasant things. I feel that the bill makes it clear that ISPs have an obligation to report this to the police.

Perhaps the committee will look at the question of safeguards again self-incrimination. I would like to tell the member that I have no idea if that compiles with the Charter, but I imagine that all of the government bills and all those coming from the justice minister comply with the Charter. I assume that, but it would be a good question for our friend, the Minister of Justice.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for another excellent speech on this bill. I think I heard roughly the same speech last November.

Last November the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe talked about how Brazil had set up an ethics rules basis for ISPs. More importantly he talked about how Germany and Sweden blocked the child porn sites.

It seems to me to be very wasteful for us to have spent five years on this, and it will probably be another five years before we get this legislation through the House. The minister announced she was putting $42 million into more police activity to play cat and mouse with a bunch a criminals who are simply going to move to another jurisdiction when they are close to being caught.

We could solve the whole problem. If Sweden has blocked it and Germany has blocked it, why would we not simply short-circuit this whole tortuous route that we are following here and simply do what they are doing and block it?

Have those programs for blocking it been successful? When did they start? What can the member tell us about what is happening in Germany and Sweden?

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

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned in my speech, there are countries that have done much more than we have done.

I did review my speech from last November and I felt guilty that it was so strident in criticism of the government's inaction that maybe I was responsible for the prorogation and the lack of achievement here. As my father used to say, a half loaf is better than none. Therefore, my speech was less critical of the government.

Let us get the act and then let us get on the government's back, and really not the justice minister's back but the Minister of Industry's back, about what we are doing about controlling the Internet while providing safeguards for free speech and safeguards, as the member for Marc-Aurèle-Fortin said, against self-incrimination. There has to be a broader review of the criminal and quasi-criminal nature of Internet service providers nationally and internationally as they pertain to Canada.

With respect to this bill, I would say a quarter loaf is better than none, so let us get it passed.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member will know that the bill also provides for a number of areas where regulations have to be promulgated for this legislation to come into force. This is an opportunity for the government not to enact the legislation. With respect to the regulations, clause 13(a) of the bill refers to “designating an organization for the purpose of section 3”, the reporting agency, and clause 13(b) refers to “respecting the role, functions and activity” of that organization. This bill has not even been vetted properly. It is not efficient.

With all due respect, it appears to me that the government has been negligent in providing a bill that could effectively deal with the situation and give us an instrument which can be dealt with, with the urgency that it requires.

We have dealt with car racing and other minor amendments to the Criminal Code. There is no question in my mind that a bill to do with the protection of children deserves some urgency better than what has been demonstrated by the government at this time.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member's long service on the much coveted committee on the scrutiny of regulations has come to bear on that question. I was on that committee for six months; it felt like twelve.

The member asked a very important question. Regulations are either a real incentive and a prize in a piece of legislation because they allow some flexibility with the naming of authorities, naming of quasi-criminal power, as long as it is not delegated too much. There can be some good aspects to regulations promulgated to a bill. The ones that are dilatory the member has canvassed.

We have to take the government at face value and on good faith that it wants to fill the act with cogent and efficacious regulations that put the spirit of the act into compliance and go after the goal, which is not to have 9% of the world's child pornography Internet sites being provided from Canada. That is remarkably bad and the government cannot be proud of it.

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

Mr. Speaker, the question I would like to ask my Liberal colleague is quite short.

He seems to be very familiar with the legislation. I would like to know if he understands clause 7 in the bill, which states:

Nothing in this Act requires or authorizes a person to seek out child pornography.

I would like him to explain the meaning of this clause.

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

Mr. Speaker, that is simply the limit of the law.

This is a bit of a quasi-criminal statute and it says that there is a limit to the duty on the ISP and that limit is basically reporting. It is a step forward. It is not saying that ISPs have a duty to be the investigator and seek out where exactly the sites are, and who provides them, but to report them to the authorities. I would think that is appropriate. It is a great question for committee.

It seems to me that we would want police officers, constables and other persons as defined in the act, to do the investigations. We do not want the ISPs doing the investigations for a number of reasons: first, they may not have that authority because they are not peace officers under the Criminal Code; second, they might screw up the investigation, leading to acquittals; and third, they might charge more to all of us for that service.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, all our speeches on this bill can be summed up in one word: finally. Finally, the government has taken action on an issue that was easy to act on. It could have done something much sooner, when it knew it had the unanimous agreement of the House, but it did nothing for four years.

The government started by introducing a bill that died on the order paper. It reintroduced the legislation in the first session, but the bill could not move forward because of the prorogation. We would have thought the government could have introduced a bill that could pass easily, seeing as how it is so important.

I do not think I will ever head a minority government, but I would like to humbly make a suggestion in case there is another minority government. It seems to me that one of the first things a minority government should do is get down to work on legislation, introduce bills that have broad support and start accomplishing things. That is not what this government did. It leaves things until the end.

It is funny, because on the morning the government introduced this bill, I happened to be talking to a legal counsel for a large police force. He asked me what we were doing with Bills C-43 and C-48. One of those bills was replaced with the one that is before us. Finally, this government has done something.

Obviously, this bill will have to be studied in committee. Since it is short, I took the time to read it before coming into the House. I have said in the past that I hate the way federal bills are written, but we cannot change tradition. They seem to be deliberately written so that most people cannot understand them at all. That way, the federal government can always claim the law says something and spark a political debate that the average person who wants to keep informed cannot follow. I have always said, and I still believe, that poorly written laws are first misunderstood and then poorly applied. I get the feeling that that will be the case with this legislation unless we make it a bit clearer.

Basically, the bill is good and that is why we will vote in favour of it. However, that is also why we want to make it clearer, so that the people who can take action realize what we want them to do. When an Internet provider receives an indication that someone is accessing child pornography through the service provided, the provider should be able to seek out that material and remove it. Basically, that is what we want. Everyone agrees that this is a good principle. We are very accommodating in terms of freedom of expression and freedom of publication. There are limits, however, and child pornography is one of them. These limits need to be enforced in this extraordinary new medium, the Internet.

Clause 3 states:

If a person is advised, in the course of providing an Internet service to the public, of an Internet Protocol address or a Uniform Resource Locator where child pornography may be available to the public, the person must report that address or Uniform Resource Locator to the organization designated by the regulations, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

This assumes that the person is advised. There is no question of that in the bill. Clearly, this means that if someone from the public informs the provider that there is child pornography on its server, that person is obligated to do something. That person must inform the organization that will be created. This will slow down the enforcement of the act. At the rate this government moves, I have a feeling that the organization will not be ready even by the time my granddaughters—beautiful twin girls whose first birthday is next week—are old enough to use the Internet. I really hope it will be created, because I do not ever want them to see child pornography on the Internet. I am more worried about the old men who look for such images.

I just do not have faith in this government. Whenever it spots consensus on something urgent, it chooses to wait until the end of the session, then tries to rush everything through. If I have time, I will talk about one urgent situation people are dealing with now.

I will now read clause 4:

If a person who provides an Internet service to the public has reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence, the person must notify an officer, constable or other person employed for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace of that fact, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

As I understand it, this is about the server, the person providing Internet service to the public. I would have thought that person should notify the new organization. When someone notifies an Internet provider that child pornography is available on its server, the address must be provided to the organization designated in the regulations.

Suppose that instead of doing that, the person complied with clause 4 and provided the information to a police officer. The police officer would find the address or organization in question to which the problem should be referred to remove the child pornography from the Internet. We all agree on that point.

There must be some details about computers that I do not understand. Clause 5(1) reads as follows:

A person who makes a notification under section 4 [the server that notified the police officer] must preserve all computer data related to the notification that is in their possession or control for 21 days after the day on which the notification is made.

The person has to preserve the data. If that person is smart enough, he or she will not allow public access to the data, but the data must be preserved because the police will need them to conduct an investigation.

Clause 5(2) reads as follows:

The person must destroy the computer data that would not be retained in the ordinary course of business and any document that is prepared for the purpose of preserving computer data under subsection (1) as soon as feasible after the expiry of the 21-day period, unless the person is required to preserve the computer data by a judicial order made under any other Act of Parliament or the legislature of a province.

The intent is that this person will remove the data and that it will no longer be available on the server. We also want the regulatory body to verify if it is child pornography. Action must be taken quickly. You have to be an optimist to believe that a new organization will act swiftly. This body has not yet been created. A number of organizations have been created and they are not working as quickly as we had hoped.

Suppose that action is taken quickly and that it is child pornography. It will be taken off the site. Perhaps they will search for the person who put the pornography on the site, who committed the offence.

That is the end of it. The person does not keep the data. That worries me. I understand that they should not put it back on the server and that it should be removed immediately. Nevertheless, this is rather inconsequential to our approval.

Some things really intrigue me. The member for Brome—Missisquoi spoke about clause 7, which reads: “Nothing in this Act requires or authorizes a person to seek out child pornography.” In other words, we do not want anyone to feel obligated to report child pornography or to look for it. We are not obligating everyone to do so. However, people are being encouraged to report child pornography to an organization that will ensure that it is removed from the site.

These sections are fine. The same goes for clause 8, which protects a person who makes a report against civil suits. It is obvious that a person who reports child pornography should not be threatened with civil or criminal proceedings because of their report.

Now for clause 9: “For greater certainty, nothing in this Act affects any right of a person to be protected against self-incrimination.”

For those who do not know what self-incrimination is, here it means when an individual testifies and is required to provide relevant information that could incriminate them, we want them to feel free to tell the truth and request protection against self-incrimination.

In this case, I do not really see under what circumstance there might be any self-incrimination. The person making the report might say that they visited a site but did not pay for it. I do not see what protection they would need, but it is good to give them that protection just in case because we want to encourage them to report the site.

This protection against self-incrimination has existed for a long time in English law, including criminal law. I have never understood this odd mechanism whereby we ask a question of an individual who refuses to answer it because the answer might incriminate them. They are then told that they are required to tell the truth but that they will receive protection by virtue of objecting. That means their testimony cannot be used against them.

This mechanism becomes quite complicated during a trial, especially if it concerns any criminal activity. Shortcuts have been taken and have become commonplace. I am sure people are familiar with the phrases “to seek court protection” or “to seek protection from the law”. When a person seeks and is granted court protection and is prepared to tell the truth, but is aware that their testimony could incriminate them, they would like their testimony not to be used later to incriminate them. In this case, this always takes place during the cross-examination.

Protection against self-incrimination consists in not answering questions, but here we are asking someone to report something on their own initiative. I agree that if a person says they used a credit card to pay for a certain site, that the person should be protected because they are serving the public good by allowing the site to be removed.

Clause 9 represents a very good intention that should be better explained. We should find a more modern way to ensure this right, which has always been expressed in such a complicated manner. My explanation is no exception.

Offences are created. Here again, we really need an explanation. We understand that the law has already been amended to make putting child pornography on the Internet a crime, which we agree with. In any case, if it is not one, it would have been a good opportunity to say so here and it is still a good opportunity to say so now.

Clause 11 states: “Every person who knowingly contravenes any of sections 3 to 6 is guilty of an offence and liable on...conviction—”

But how can someone contravene that? The person is not obligated to notify their Internet provider, but if they do, I do not see what infraction they could have committed under clause 3. Maybe the fact that they did not communicate the address as quickly as they could have could be seen as a contravention.

Essentially, these clauses encourage good citizens to get child pornography websites taken off the Internet.

Since our time is limited and we are at the end of a session, the Bloc Québécois is willing to give its consent to this, just as it was ready to support a number of causes presented by the justice minister. However, we are against some of them. If he wanted to, he could easily understand why we are in favour of some of them and against others. I think that he needs to understand some principles and forget the propaganda.

We are in favour of legislation that will reduce crime. We are in favour of measures that help find and convict criminals. We are not for criminals' rights. The rights exercised in court do not belong exclusively to criminals. They are rights that belong to everyone, should we ever be unjustly charged.

But here, the methods used are based on one philosophy only, fear of punishment.

We are convinced, and my professional experience tells me, that the fear of punishment is not a deterrent for criminals. Heaven knows my law practice has been diverse. I was the one who helped create the Carcajou squad with Mr. Duchesneau and Mr. Barbeau. Policing principles are what produced the most results in the fight against organized crime. I do not want to be seen as someone who lobbies for criminals. However, I am a lawyer and I think it is important that laws be fair and that we avoid the dangers that our neighbours to the south have fallen into.

If the fear of punishment were a deterrent, the United States would have the lowest crime rate in the world, because it has the highest incarceration rate. In the United States, officials were applying minimum sentences to everything, convinced that that would reduce crime, but it did not work. There are so many reasons to explain this, and it is understandable. First of all, regarding minimum sentences, I would be curious to conduct a little test and ask all hon. members how many minimum sentences there are in Canadian laws. There are 27. What is the minimum sentence, for instance, for committing a crime with a firearm? People probably do not know. They are not familiar with our laws.

If most of us do not know what they are, then what about the public? Moreover, the public does not know much about the people who commit crimes, especially the most serious crimes. It is not the most educated people who commit crimes. People who commit crimes do not do the math and tell themselves that if they commit a certain crime, they could go to prison because there is a minimum sentence and that they should commit another crime because it carries a shorter minimum sentence. Come on. Crime is opportunistic, and criminals' main concern is not getting caught.

As I said, it is important to look at how countries use incarceration. The United States is the grand champion, with an incarceration rate of 760 per 100,000. Russia is in second place, with 626 per 100,000. I have some other figures from a list of about 185 countries compiled by Kings College Oxford in England. In Australia, the rate is 129 per 100,000; in China, 119. I do not know whether these data are reliable. Canada has a rate of 116 per 100,000, which puts us ahead of Holland, with 100; France, with 96; Belgium, with 93; Switzerland, with 76; Sweden, with 74; and Japan, with 63.

We can see that there is no connection with the severity of sentences. Here in Canada, people are three times less likely to be the victim of a homicide than in the United States, and in Quebec, they are five times less likely.

We are against minimum sentences, because they do not work and they force judges to hand down sentences they consider unfair.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member made one statement which I think is quite true, that we tend to write sloppy legislation federally. It is not very readable. It is not understandable. We have a small bill and I think we understand the intent of it, but it has several places where regulations are required. We have not even designated what an organization would be. It has not been created yet. We do not know what its functions or duties are.

In my case, I am not sure why we have provisions in clauses 3 and 4, one of which is that a person who is aware of an Internet protocol address or URL must report to this undesignated agency, but then if a person who provides Internet service becomes aware that there may be pornography passed through a site, he has to report it to a police officer.

I have never drafted legislation but one-stop shopping where there is a funnel and a place where all Canadians can participate would make us all part of the solution. This is a punitive bill in some strained type of language which would not stand the test of scrutiny in court challenges.

I wonder if the member, from his experience, would advise the House whether or not the bill really is going to be a good starting point in terms of dealing with the serious issue of protecting children from pornographic use. Perhaps we should reconsider an instrument in which we can have some sort of an agency set up so that all Internet providers and all Canadians can access to report any information to do with such nefarious activities.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the member who just spoke, I think that this is a good start, but it is just a start. There will have to be some follow-up. This is a good start because it does let people know that if they see child pornography on the Internet, they can do something, but the bill does not say that they must. That is not a bad thing to say. People who do not know who to tell, perhaps because they cannot find the information, will naturally tell the police.

There have been good results in a number of provinces with the co-operation of people who have come across sites belonging to kids who are obsessed with weapons or who are talking about murdering people or things like that. The person who was involved in the incident at Loyola College had a site like that. After that happened, of course a lot of people noticed certain sites and reported them to the Sûreté du Québec, which then went to those places and seized people's weapons.

At least this lets people collaborate, and that is a good start that we should not hold up.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask the member about the offences in Bill C-22. It seems to me that as an individual the offences are $1,000 for a first offence, $5,000 for a second offence, and evidently $10,000 for a third offence or possibly six months in jail. On the corporate side for companies it is $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for a second offence, and $100,000 for three or more offences.

It seems to me that most of the child porn sites would be run by corporations and probably underworld figures. That would be my guess. It seems to me that these amounts of money are not going to deter organized crime. The $10,000 for an offence is just nothing more than the cost of doing business.

I would ask the member whether he has the same sort of concerns about the offences in the bill and whether or not, at committee, we might look at perhaps increasing those penalties?

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this bill does not cover offences related to manufacturing pornographic material or making this material available to the public. Clauses 3, 4, 5 and 6 address the possibility of reporting such material, and also the Internet service provider's obligation to preserve this material and destroy it at a later date. Child pornography should be prohibited via other provisions in the Criminal Code, and those are the provisions that would apply if the source of the Internet child pornography were discovered.

I think that the sentences provided for in clauses 3, 4, 5 and 6 are sufficient for the crime in question. Nowhere do we see the crime of putting child pornography on the Internet. We are simply forcing people to alert the organization in question when they notice that child pornography is available. The organization will probably ensure that the child pornography is removed from its site.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the riding that is named after a painter—

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Marc-Aurèle Fortin.

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

Marc-Aurèle Fortin, thank you.

The Bloc would rather prevent crime and find remedies for it instead of arresting people after the fact.

Statistics in Canada show that most Canadian parents use outdated or ineffective methods to teach their children about personal safety. Does the member for Marc-Aurèle Fortin think that we could include some preventive measures in this bill to help parents teach children about personal safety and about behaviours that could cause them problems?

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that would probably be a good idea, but I honestly will not suggest it. I do not want to slow down the adoption of this legislation by suggesting another amendment. This is only the beginning, but it is a good start. It is giving the public access to an organization that will deal with online child pornography. I hope that it will make this material disappear.

It would be a lot of work to add obligatory child education. If we think about how long it took to craft this little egg, an amendment like that would be like crafting a bull. However, it would be a good idea to do it.

I have a beautiful bookmark with a painting by Marc-Aurèle Fortin that I would like to give to my colleague so that he can remember the name of my riding.

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

Mr. Speaker, part of the bill requires that an ISP or other person providing Internet services, when the police is notified, must keep the computer data related to the child pornography offence for 21 days and after that the computer data must be destroyed unless the police have obtained a court order to keep the data.

Other members have drawn attention to this provision and asked the question about whether the 21 days are long enough? I would like to ask the member, as a long standing lawyer and a member of the House, whether he thinks the 21 days would be adequate or is that another provision that we are going to have to change at committee?

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know my limitations and that question goes beyond my area of expertise. My impression is that the timeframe is that short for technological reasons. I am hoping that they will explain in committee what happens when someone has seen a website with child pornography and has informed the organization. What happens next? I hope that the child pornography will be taken down immediately.

However, the timeframe seems reasonable to me if it is in order to come to a conclusion about the nature of the site. It could even be longer than 21 days. If this organization is inundated with reports at the beginning, it will require an efficiency that is often lacking in government organizations.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

There are still a couple of minutes before 5:30 p.m. Does the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona wish to start his remarks?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-22 for two minutes.

I have to admit that this has been a very long process. I have been reading the Hansard on this bill and previous incarnations of it. This whole process has been about five years now. The computer industry changes very dramatically, so the government and Parliament had better hurry up and get on top of this issue. We may find that by the time we get to where we want to be, a new problem will have presented itself.

In June 2008 the legislative assembly of Manitoba passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca any material that could constitute child pornography. Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008. The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002 and 2005 respectively, imposing this requirement on ISPs.

I will point out some of the benefits of dealing with cybertip.ca. It is currently estimated that over 5 million child sexual abuse images are on the Internet. An analysis of over 12,000 website incidents was done by cybertip.ca. It was looking into the countries that hosted these sites. The United States was number one at 49%. Russia was second at 20%. Canada had a surprising 9% of all the sites. Japan was at 4.4%. South Korea was at 3.6%.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I regret to interrupt the hon. member. He will be able to continue his comments with 18 minutes left when this returns on the order paper.

The House resumed from June 16 consideration of the motion 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.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

When this bill was last before the House, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona also had the floor. There are 18 minutes remaining in the time allotted for his remarks on this particular bill. I therefore call on the hon. member for Elmwood--Transcona.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to continue debate on what is now Bill C-22. I think this may be my last speech for a while, so all members can relax.

This is also a very important bill. Once again, it has been five years plus that we have been waiting for this bill, now titled Bill C-22. It was called Bill C-58 before the government prorogued the House. It is the child protection act online sexual exploitation.

There are some important points here that the members should know about this bill even though it has been knocking around now for five years and many speeches have been made about it. It is one of these bills where there really is not a lot of disagreement on the subject.

I personally am not really sure how it is going to play out. The reality is once we send it to committee, which should be fairly soon, and once the committee hearings are proceeded with, I really do not foresee many amendments to this bill and I do not foresee a lot of controversy with this bill. If anything, we may find that this bill is, in some respects, already out of date because it has been five years since we started discussing about it.

It is an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. Basically, an ISP is now going to be required to take action on this issue.

Bill C-58 was introduced in the House of Commons on November 24, 2009 by the Minister of Justice. Bill C-58, now Bill C-22, was intended to fight Internet child pornography by requiring ISPs, or Internet service providers, and other persons providing Internet services, for example, Facebook, Google, Hotmail, to report any incident of child pornography.

This requirement included several things, but one was that if a person providing Internet services was advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available, the person must report that address to the organization designated by the regulations.

I know the member for Mississauga South is bound to ask me a question about the whole issue of the regulations. Once again, until the bill passes, the government sets up the regulations, and we actually will not know what the details will be of this particular part.

Also, if a person has reasonable grounds to believe that the Internet services operated by that person are being used to transmit child pornography, the person must notify the police, that is a logical thing, and also preserve the computer data.

In terms of provincial and international measures, in June 2008, my home province, the Manitoba Legislature passed a law requiring all persons to report to cybertip.ca, which seems to be a very successful longstanding website, any material that could constitute child pornography.

Ontario passed a similar law in December 2008.

Thank goodness Ontario and Manitoba moved ahead because if they waited for the federal government, they would have been waiting an awful long time to get the job done.

The United States and Australia adopted laws in 2002, eight years ago, and in 2005, Australia imposed this requirement on the ISPs.

In terms of the current legislation that affects this area, we have section 163.1 of the Criminal Code, which was passed under the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien back in 1993. This was actually a very good initiative in its day, prohibiting the production, the distribution, the sale, and the possession of child pornography.

The definition under the legislation is a visual representation of explicit sexual activity with a person who is or is depicted as being under the age of 18, the visual representation for sexual purposes of persons under the age 18, or any written material advocating or counselling sexual activity with a person under the age of 18.

Internet child pornography takes the form of images, sound recordings, videos, drawings of accounts of sexual assaults on persons under the age of 18. In 2002, Bill C-15A amended subsection 163.1 of the code, which prohibited the distribution of child pornography by introducing the term “transmits” and made available to prohibit the distribution of child pornography online. The bill also added subsections 163.1 and 163.1 (4.2) to the code making it an offence to deliberately access child pornography by visiting a website, as an example.

Bill C-15A also provided for a special warrant in relation to Internet child pornography under section 164.1 of the code. If there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an ISP computer system, the judge may order the ISP to provide the necessary information to identify and locate the person who posted it. In addition, the judge may order the ISP to remove the Internet child pornography in question.

With regard sentencing, child pornography offences are considered hybrid offences. The prosecutor may choose whether the accused should be charged with an indictable offence and be liable to a summary conviction. The offences of producing, distributing and selling of child pornography, if treated as indictable offences, are punishable by a maximum prison term of 10 years and a minimum of one year. On summary conviction, they are punishable by a maximum prison term of 18 months and a minimum term of 90 days.

The offences of possession and viewing of child pornography on the computer are punishable for indictable offences by a maximum prison term of five years and a minimum term of 45 days and on a summary conviction by a maximum term of 18 months and a minimum of 14 days.

In terms of statistics on this issue, according to Statistics Canada, which gathers all types of information on pornography and not just Internet child pornography alone, child pornography offences have increased significantly in Canada from 55 offences in 1998 to 1,600 in 2007. I have some statistics that indicate how serious the issue is in Canada, which I will get to in a couple of minutes.

It is currently estimated that there are over five million child sexual abuse images on the Internet. According to an analysis by cybertip.ca, from 2002 to 2009 54.7% of the images on Internet sites contained pornographic images of children under the age of 8, 24.7% were of children aged 8 to 12, and 83% were girls. Over 35% of the images analyzed showed severe sexual assault. Children under the age of eight most often subjected to sexual assault was at 37.2% and extreme sexual assault was at 68.5%. Older children were usually shown naked or in an obscene pose.

The fact of the matter is that this situation is just getting worse. We are seeing this whole problem snowballing and getting bigger on a day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year basis while we sit here and do not take action.

The cybertip.ca study showed that the Internet sites containing child pornography are hosted in close to 60 countries. We know which countries are hosting these sites. For example, in the United States 49% of the sites are hosted in the United States, in Russia 20%, in Canada 9%. When we consider that we have only 30 million people in the country and 9% of the sites are hosted in Canada, that is a very large percentage. In Japan it is 4.3% and in South Korea it is 3.6%.

These sites are very difficult to track down because all of the child pornography files hosted on a web page are not necessarily hosted in the same location. For instance, image A may be hosted in Canada while image B on the same web page may be hosted in the United States. The web page itself might be hosted in yet another country such as Japan.

Similarly, an illegal site can hide the host location through an anonymous proxy server or through server rerouting. There are a lot of technical terms here that the average individual may not be familiar with. Suffice to say that whatever laws exist, the criminal elements, and we are talking about criminal elements, try to be one step ahead. When there are tough laws in one country, they simply move to another country.

The Liberal Party critic for this area has spoken several times on this bill. He has pointed out countries that have simply blocked the sites rather than put money into fighting this problem. Maybe that is the answer.

I asked the minister at the time, who is no longer even a member of the Conservative caucus, why she was announcing that she was going to spend $42 million chasing these sites. I asked her whether this was new money or old money. That was a year ago. She was still a Conservative and a minister in those days.

In Hansard she tells me that she is going to get back to me on this issue. I have yet to hear from her or anybody else in the government as to whether the $42 million to track down these sites is actually new money or just the same old money being announced over and over again.

What I suggest is that rather than spend $42 million to chase these criminals, because that is who they are, we look at those countries that have simply blocked the sites. That is the problem solved right there, it seems to me. We would not have to keep throwing endless amounts of money at the problem.

Identical sites may also be simultaneously located on different URLs. In such cases, it can be very difficult to remove the child pornography. Even if the site is closed down, the offensive material may still be accessible on the Internet. Moreover, illegal sites regularly change location so that they can avoid being shut down.

I want to deal with the penalties under this act before I run out of time. The fact is that these penalties are not tough enough. For individuals, the penalties being proposed are perhaps accurate. However, when we start dealing with companies, and if one considers that criminal groups are running these sites, these fines are simply the cost of doing business. I think the fine for a third offence is approximately $100,000. I will get to that at the end if I have time.

As I indicated, illegal sites regularly change location to avoid being shut down. In a period of 48 hours, Cybertip.ca counted 212 IP addresses in 16 countries for a single website. A website can also change location in just a few minutes by utilizing a network of personal computers as zombies. These zombies relay the content of the website hosted on another server.

Cybertip.ca recommended that when zombies are detected, ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service for those computers until the infected computers are restored.

Another reason this whole problem is snowballing day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year into a bigger and bigger problem is the fact that the computer hardware and software has gotten so much better.

I can recall, perhaps 10 years ago, when the Rolling Stones announced that they were going to do the very first concert on the web. Nobody had done it before. That was in the days when the cameras were operating at 15 frames per second. We all remember those images being choppy. It was certainly in its infancy. The Internet was very slow in those days. We did not have the gigabit ethernet pipes we have today.

What has happened is that today we have a much more technologically advanced system that is designed perfectly for these criminal elements to take advantage of. Taking advantage of it they are.

Governments are sitting around, basically proroguing Parliament every year. We are thrown a bill that is really non-controversial in the sense that just about everyone agrees with the bill.

We passed pardon legislation dealing with the Karla Homolka situation in June in literally a day and a half. If the government really wants to accomplish something here and get the bill through, it only has to sit down with the House leaders and make an arrangement to sit for perhaps a few hours extra in the evening, given that there is not a lot of disagreement about how important the bill is and how it should be passed and put into effect to deal with the issues.

Any person may inform an ISP or other person providing Internet services that a web page, host page, Facebook page, or e-mail appears to contain child pornography. The ISP or other person providing Internet services must then report the address of the site, page or e-mail in question as soon as possible to an organization designated by the federal government.

For example, under Manitoba law, the designated organization is the national reporting agency Cybertip.ca. I want to say that Cybertip.ca has played a very important role in this whole process so far.

After being notified by a member of the public or an agency that child pornography may appear through the Internet services it provides, the ISP or other person providing the Internet services may have reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is being transmitted through its services. It may also reach this conclusion on its own. When this is the case, the ISP or person providing the Internet services must notify the police as soon as possible.

I am running out of time, but I want to deal with a couple of other issues. There is a provision in the bill that the police must keep the computer data related to the child pornography offence for 21 days. Several people have questioned whether 21 days is appropriate. It seems not only to me but to a number of other people that 21 days may be too short a period for that to properly happen.

I also dealt with the offences. In terms of individuals, the fine is $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for a second and a maximum of $10,000 or six months for a third.

For corporations, the criminals who are running these sites, it is only $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for a second and $100,000 for a third, which is no more than the cost of doing business.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure today to speak to Bill C-22 about online child pornography.

It is hard to imagine a more despicable, disgusting and appalling crime than the abuse of a child.

It is impossible for any of us to imagine that such a thing is possible, but we all know that today it is far too common. Unfortunately, the victims who bear the brunt of this abuse lay all too silent.

Most child victims of abuse are never found or are found far later in their lives. Their lives unravel at inexplicable times, and when we scratch the surface and go back into what started this, we often find episodes of child abuse.

Those who commit the abuse are often not found. Once individuals are found, it is discovered that not only have they had a few victims, but generally there has been a long-standing pattern of victimization. Many have abused dozens and dozens of children over a prolonged period of time. It is a psychiatric sickness, but it is also a cancer in our society that is absolutely intolerable.

The bill goes some way toward dealing with that and specifically with dealing with online child pornography. It was introduced on May 6 in the last Parliament and is being resurrected again in this Parliament.

The bill basically obligates people to report all website addresses they are aware of that may contain pornography. There is an obligation to report them to police if it is believed that a child pornography offence has or will be committed, based on the services one has. The provider must also preserve the relevant computer data for 21 days after notifying the police.

Failure of sole providers to report such a thing will result in fines of between $1,000 and $10,000, and failure of corporations to do this will result in fines of between $10,000 and $100,000. It is important to note that the bill does not require online providers to proactively seek out child pornography.

Therefore, the Liberal Party of Canada, given its long-standing history of addressing this issue, will be supporting the bill to go on to committee stage.

Legislative initiatives to deal with this go as far back as 2002, when the Liberal government of the day, for the first time, introduced legislation to deal with and criminalize online pornography and those people who contribute to it.

It would be worthwhile to talk a bit about facts and to discuss the depth and scope of this terrible problem.

The Internet is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it provides great opportunities to learn and disseminate information. The dark side of this, of course, is the issue we are talking about today, which is child pornography. It is important for us to understand what this actually means. No one thinks it is innocuous, but it certainly has to be dealt with in terms of how serious it is, as I mentioned, because of the long-standing trauma it inflicts on children. Children are not only being exposed to child pornography on sites but are also being victimized by it, as individuals try to lure children through the Internet capabilities they have.

Here is a little bit of information. Seventy-six per cent of offenders convicted of Internet-related crimes against children admitted to sex crimes against children that were previously unknown to law enforcement. Each offender admitted to 30.5 victims; so every person picked up as an offender has, on average, abused 30 children. That is an absolutely staggering number of children per abuser.

Of the 1,400 cases of reported child molestation, child pornography was used in the majority of cases by those who were the molesters. Child molesters almost always collect child pornography, and 80% of purchasers of child pornography who have been charged have actually been active abusers. We can see the strong connection between those who are actually engaging in and looking at child pornography and the fact that those individuals are also abusing children. There is a direct correlation.

The absence of contact with a child is probably the most significant factor in limiting the production of child pornography and the opportunity to access to children, which is an essential factor in the production of child pornography and child abuse.

The RCMP stands out as a shining example of a Canadian police force that has done an extraordinary amount of work in this area. The RCMP is known worldwide as being a leader in the area of combatting child pornography. All of us in the House should commend the RCMP for the excellent work it has done and the men and women who have to endure looking at these sites and horrible images. This cannot be an easy thing for them to do. For those men and women who work within the RCMP and who have to look at these sites, witness this horrible abuse and try to identify those individuals who do this, we thank them for their service to Canada and particularly for their service to the children of Canada and the world.

The RCMP has a site called cybertip.ca. This site has received over 35,000 reports, 90% of which were considered to be child pornography. If people who are watching this debate today are aware of or know of individuals who are engaged in child pornography or child abuse, I ask them to please contact 911 or cybertip.ca.

Only 30% of children who disclose that they have been sexually abused do so during childhood. As I said before in my opening comments, as a physician I have seen a lot of patients who have been abused sexually and oftentimes they have different problems. When their lives start to unravel and an indepth history is done, too often it is found that they have a history of sexual abuse.

I used to be a correctional officer. I also, as a physician, I worked in the jails. The number of people in jail who had been abused sexually as a child is very large. Many of them not only have psychiatric problems, but they also have substance abuse problems, a lot of which stems from early sexual abuse. Many of the pedophiles in jail were sexually abused as children. It is a vicious cycle that goes around and around.

The Liberal Party supports the bill. We also support the work that the RCMP has done.

One of the things we have to look at is the early childhood period. We need a better way to reach these children so when they are abused, they have a safe place to go to talk about it so the perpetrators can be arrested and the children can be taken out of that situation.

As I said before, only 30% of children disclose that they have been sexually abused before the age of six, which means that 70% of children who are sexually abused prior to the age of six never tell. They endure years of abuse unknown to anybody. We can deal with this by providing opportunities.

I will give the House a real life example of the impact of this.

I worked in a jail where two sisters around the age of 14 had been picked up for prostitution. Their mother, who I knew because I had treated in the detox unit and in emergency, had a substance abuse problem. She was prostituting her two little girls to raise money to pay for her drug abuse problem.

I told the two young women that they would wind up dead if they did not stop, and they laughed it off. A year and a half after that one of the girls was found dead in a ditch in northern British Columbia. After that, I was walking through the pediatric ward doing my rounds and this girl looked familiar. She was still a teenager and she had a very bad stroke affecting half of her body. Because of the environment she was in, she had been exposed to drugs. I do not know what happened to her after that, but what a profoundly tragic end to two little girls who could have had a full and complete life if it were not for the situation they had been in.

If we take a look at the broader scope, there is child sex tourism. This is a situation where we have adults from the west going to countries, generally third world countries but sometimes a lot go to eastern Europe, where laws are lax and interest is limited in terms of child abuse. Adults are going far away to Southeast Asia, eastern Europe, areas of extreme poverty, and they are using the very unstable situation to fulfill their warped and twisted sexual appetites.

The victims of this are literally millions of children. In fact, it is estimated that in India, there are 1.2 million child prostitutes. In Thailand, a favoured destination of pedophiles, 40% of the prostitutes are children. If we look at the cycle, sometimes individuals go into rural and impoverished areas that are in the grips of deep poverty. They tell parents that if they bring their sons or daughters to them, they will ensure the children get jobs and the money will go to the parents. They tell them that their children will do domestic work or some other legitimate form of activity. Instead they take the children and use them as sex slaves.

The children have no hope and no future. They are horribly abused. They suffer from malnutrition. Sometimes they get pregnant early on. They acquire HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. They die an early death. They are victims of extreme violence. They are often gang raped and no one hears about them. They are silent victims in this ever-growing epidemic.

Bill C-22 is an effort to try to deal with this.

We all see cases from time to time that come to forefront when individuals are caught. However, the number of people who are engaged in these behaviours, westerners who go abroad to engage in the sexual abuse of children, and who are actually caught is very small. Only a tiny fraction of these parasites are caught.

It speaks to the failure internationally of countries working together and collectively to address this. Too many times, domestic police forces turn a blind eye. In many of these impoverished countries, children have no rights. They are not really seen as being worthy of the protection of whatever legal rules they have. As a result, children are treated as little more than chattel. This leaves an environment that is ripe for this kind of dramatic sexual abuse and the horrible situations these children endure.

It occurs all over the world, as I said. It is very common in eastern Europe. It is very common in parts of Africa and certainly in Southeast Asia, but we are not immune from this here. Individuals acquire children and bring them to Canada and the United States. Children are abused in our country and we do not even know about it. The Internet is a route to doing that. When people are aware of the type of child pornography on the Internet, it is not a victimless crime. It is very much a crime, period, and the victims are the most underprivileged people in our society.

There are also a number of other very interesting endeavours taking place. The RCMP has, again, been at the forefront of it. It is trying to do a scan to determine the extent of the problem. It is trying to get a better handle on who does this so the people can be identified. It is trying to do a better job of understanding why people would try to go down this route in the first place and how they can be identified before they start to wrack up the number of victims.

Victim identification is also another challenge. Canada has not done a very good job on this. This is certainly something that needs to be addressed and dealt with.

All of us are very pleased that this issue has been brought forward, unlike the gun registry, which dominated the beginning of this Parliament. It is not even, by any stretch of the imagination, an issue that should be consuming Parliament in any way shape or form. There are thousands of other important issues that affect Canadians, such as jobs, money in their pockets, health care and myriad of other issues. This, at least, is an issue that is important.

It is also important to understand that the RCMP is working in an area that has received short shrift. When there is a disaster, in times of extreme insecurity, such as what occurred in the Tsunami in Southeast Asia, what is occurring in Pakistan today and what occurred in Haiti during the earthquake, children are extremely vulnerable. People lure children, taking them into sex slavery and prostitution. Like vultures they descend into these environments and try to find children who are lost, orphaned and found on the streets. At a time of insecurity, when the rule of law has been shattered, they go in and try to find children to abduct. This is a huge challenge, one on which compliment the RCMP for engaging in.

Right now the there is a strategy called “Operation Century”, which is an effort to try to prevent children, during the time of natural disaster, from being subjected to these kinds of abuses and from being abducted from their homes to be trapped. It is part of a national strategy in which the RCMP is engaged.

This all started back in 2002 when, for the first time, legislation was adopted and implemented to deal with something that was very new, which was the use of the Internet as a tool to capture children and use them for sexual abuse and to commit violent acts against them.

There is a national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. The strategy was first launched in 2004 under then Prime Minister Paul Martin, and it extends to this day. I am very happy that the House has chosen to take this.

I hope all of us can agree that this is about our most vulnerable citizens, the children of our country and children from afar. Children deserve to have a life free of these kinds of abuses and violence, sexual abuse and exploitation to which some are subjected. No children should be subjected to that.

I think all of us support the RCMP's efforts to prevent it. We must work together to implement the legal tools that it needs to deal with an every-changing complex issue, which is the use of the Internet to exploit children.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I recognize the hon. member has completed his remarks and used the time allotted. There will be 10 minutes for questions and comments following his speech, but I think in light of the time, it is almost 11 o'clock, we will proceed with statements by members. He will have the full 10 minutes when debate resumes on this bill in due course.

The House resumed from September 24 consideration of the motion 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.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to be here today speaking on Bill C-22 and also to be here with my colleagues.

My hope is that we have support in this House from every party. I know that Conservative members of Parliament strongly support this legislation. It is the right thing to do for the protection of our children. It is a new and important piece of legislation.

I do not think there is anyone in this House who would disagree with me that the development of the Internet and the World Wide Web has been incredibly positive for Canadians. It is a wonderful tool. However, as with most things that are good for us, there is a potential for abuse, and this is also true with these new and evolving technologies.

While the Internet has provided us with new and easier ways of doing many things, it has also provided new and easier means for offenders to make, view, and distribute child pornography. This has resulted in a significant increase in the availability and volume of child pornography.

The Internet has contributed to the massive growth of the child pornography industry, which is deemed to be worth more than $1 billion worldwide. It is estimated that there are over five million different child sexual abuse images on the Internet.

According to the recent report called, “Every image, every child” released by the federal ombudsman for victims of crime, there are over 750,000 pedophiles online at any given time. Tens of 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.

The continued advancement of Internet technologies makes these crimes not only easier to commit, but also harder to investigate. There is an increasing burden on law enforcement to stay abreast of the changing technologies in order to to effectively investigate the crimes.

Child pornography is a particularly serious form of child victimization. Not only are the children abused and exploited through the making of child pornography; they are further exploited each time these images are shared or viewed.

To refer again to the “Every image, every child” report, I was shocked to learn that between 2003 and 2007 the number of online images of serious child abuse increased fourfold, and that these images became more violent and featured younger and younger children. It is disgusting.

According to the federal ombudsman's special report, 39% of individuals who accessed child pornography were viewing images of children between the ages of three and five, and 19% were viewing images of infants under the age of three. These statistics are nothing short of tragic. I am confident that most Canadians are just as appalled as I am, as each of us are, at this information.

Our government is committed to ending the growing problem of sexual exploitation of children. As part of these efforts the Minister of Justice, of whom I am so proud, reintroduced Bill C-22 in this House. Today we also have the chair of the justice committee in the House, the member for Abbotsford. I want to thank him for being here.

The main goal of this legislation is to help Canadian law enforcement officials detect potential child pornography offences on the Internet. Bill C-22 proposes, in precisely the same manner as Bill C-58 did in the last session of Parliament, that the law require those who provide Internet services to the public to do two things.

First, it will require them to report any information or tips they receive regarding websites where child pornography may be available to the public. They will be required to make this report to a designated agency. Second, it will require them to notify the police and safeguard any evidence, if they believe that a child pornography offence has been committed on their Internet service.

Failure to comply with these reporting duties would, in the case of an individual, a sole proprietorship, constitute an offence punishable by graduated fines up to $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for the second offence, and $10,000, six months in prison, or both, for the third offence and subsequent offences. In the case of a corporation, the graduated fine would start at $10,000 maximum, increase to $50,000 on the second conviction, and to $100,000 on third and subsequent convictions.

The duties imposed by this bill, in addition to helping reduce the availability of online child pornography, would facilitate the identification and rescue of victims of child pornography and assist law enforcement in identifying the offenders who create, possess, and distribute child pornography.

I would like to make it clear that this legislation was carefully tailored so as to achieve its objectives while minimizing the impact on the privacy of Canadians. Suppliers of Internet services would not be required to send personal subscriber information under this statute. The legislation is also tailored to limit access to child pornography and avoid creating new consumers of this material. Hence, nothing in this legislation would require or authorize a person to seek out child pornography.

Before I proceed further, I would like to explain to the House who is covered by this legislation. I am sure most members are familiar with the term “Internet service provider”, or ISP. An ISP provides access to the Internet. In essence, it acts as an on-ramp to the Internet. That is the service it provides. An ISP is one example of a provider of Internet services, but the term is broader than that. A provider of Internet services refers to all those who provide an Internet service to the public, including things like electronic mail services such as webmail, Internet content hosting services, and social network sites.

This bill is an example of Canada's commitment to fighting the scourge of child pornography and protecting children from online sexual exploitation. However, the Internet is a complex instrument. We all know that. Our knowledge and understanding of the full impact of the Internet in facilitating the demand for, and distribution of, child pornography is still evolving. The Internet presents a real challenge to the prevention and policing of this material due in part to the relative anonymity of the parties and instant worldwide access by millions of people.

I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to recognize the great efforts already made by Canada's major ISPs to address the challenge of online child sexual exploitation. Most ISPs have adopted acceptable use policies, which outline the rules for using an Internet account, the conditions of access privileges, and the consequences of violating these rules and conditions. These polices allow the ISP to terminate accounts in the event of unacceptable online behaviour, and we thank them for that.

I would also like to mention that the Canadian Association of Internet Providers has helped to develop standards for the industry, including an ISP code of conduct, to which many Canadian ISPs adhere. We thank the association for that.

A further initiative that bears mentioning is the Canadian Coalition Against Internet Child Exploitation, which was created in 2003 by some Canadian ISPs and police agencies. The main objective of this body is to assist law enforcement officials in their efforts to address online child pornography.

I would like to speak specifically about one important initiative that has developed from this collaboration between the ISPs and the police. It is called Project Cleanfeed Canada and it aims to reduce accidental access to child sexual abuse images, as well as to discourage those trying to access or distribute child pornography.

To achieve this goal, Cybertip.ca, which is the national tip line for reporting online child sexual exploitation, creates and maintains a regularly updated list of foreign-hosted Internet service providers associated with images of child sex abuse and provides that list to the participating ISPs. The ISP's filters automatically prevent access to addresses on the list by blocking these addresses.

Most of Canada's major ISPs participate in Cleanfeed Canada, which results in 90% of Canadian Internet subscribers being protected. There are continuing efforts to reach the remaining 10% of Canadians.

I am confident that Bill C-22 will be a complement to these existing efforts, especially Cleanfeed Canada, by requiring that all providers of Internet services report child pornography websites, which can then be added to the Cleanfeed Canada list.

Bill C-22 will also ensure that all providers of Internet services to the public will be held to the same standard of reporting when it comes to online Internet child sexual exploitation. Some may criticize this initiative as having a limited impact on the business practices of providers of Internet services, who already voluntarily report cases of online child pornography, and in fact, it is true that Bill C-22 was drafted in a way that closely mirrors the current practices of Canada's ISPs. However, I would like to reiterate that this legislation applies more broadly and covers more than just the typical ISP. It applies to all providers of Internet services and its impact will be much broader.

I recognize, and I am sure our colleagues do too, that more is needed to combat this disgusting social ill than just strong criminal laws. The government is committed to a broader approach that is effected to protect our children. That is why, in 2008, our government announced a renewed commitment to work with our partners through the national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet. This is a successful initiative that has played a very big role over the last few years in helping to make sure that the growing number of young people online stay safe and that we take action to crack down on the sexual predators.

The Government of Canada is investing $71 million over five years to help ensure that the national strategy remains the success that it is today. With these great investments, our government is further strengthening our ability to combat child sexual exploitation over the Internet through the work of the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre, which works to reduce the vulnerability of children to Internet-facilitated sexual exploitation by identifying victimized children, by investigating and assisting with the prosecution of sexual offenders, and by strengthening the capacity of municipal, territorial, provincial, federal and international police agencies.

We are also further strengthening the ability of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection to help young people stay safe online through initiatives such as Cybertip.ca, which, as I mentioned earlier, allows the public to report suspected cases of child sexual exploitation they may find online.

Currently, most reporting of child pornography across Canada is done voluntarily. The vast majority of tips come through Cybertip.ca, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week anonymous tip line for reporting of child sexual exploitation on the Internet. Cybertip.ca provides a valuable function for law enforcement across Canada by screening, prioritizing, and analyzing each and every one of the 700 reports it receives every month. The skilled analysts collect supporting information using various Internet tools and techniques, and if the material is assessed to be potentially illegal, a report is made to the appropriate police services.

By providing this service of reports and forwarding only the most relevant information to the police agencies, Cybertip.ca saves valuable police time and resources. This allows police to devote their time and efforts to actual investigations rather than to the time-consuming tasks of analyzing all the incoming reports of child pornography.

Cybertip.ca collaborates closely with many of the Canadian ISPs and international partners and it has a memorandum of understanding with most Canadian law enforcement agencies.

As part of the mandate of Cybertip.ca, it also collects statistics regarding online child pornography in Canada. Each month, Cybertip.ca receives 800,000 hits on its website and 700 reports of suspected child abuse images. Between 2002 and 2009, Cybertip.ca had triaged over 33,000 reports, and approximately 45% of those reports were forwarded to law enforcement. It is very effective.

The material that is deemed not to be illegal is often followed up with educational information. Ninety per cent of the reports received by Cybertip.ca relate to child pornography.

As a result of these efforts, at least 30 arrests have been made, approximately 3,000 websites have been shut down, and most important, several children have been removed from abusive environments.

The work of Cybertip.ca is being bolstered by recent efforts of some provincial and territorial governments. We are thankful for that. The Province of Manitoba enacted legislation on mandatory reporting of child pornography in April 2009. Under this law, all members of the public are required to report suspected cases of child pornography to Cybertip.ca. Ontario has enacted similar legislation, but it is not yet in force. Nova Scotia's mandatory reporting legislation came into force just a few months ago, on April 13 of this year. I would like to extend my congratulations to them and to Cybertip.ca for their efforts in this regard.

This government is committed to protecting our children. I hope my fellow members in the House understand just how important this legislation is. I urge every member to support this legislation as we work together to protect our future, which is our children.

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

Mr. Speaker, the member will know that 87% of the child pornography sites are in five countries of the world, which leaves about 13% from the other 55 countries.

The member should also know that countries such as Sweden and Germany have actually blocked the sites completely.

The current government, while it has taken years to get this bill this far in the House, is proposing to spend another $42 million having the police chase around after these sites when in fact Sweden and Germany already have the answer: simply block the sites and the problem should be solved.

I would like to ask the member what sort of research the government has done on the Swedish situation and the German situation and report back to us and tell us why we cannot follow the same route.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his interest. As he knows, this is very important.

We are working with all our international partners. My speech a moment ago highlighted the importance of Cybertip.ca. It also highlighted the importance and the voluntary participation of Canada's ISPs.

We are getting it done. However, the technology with the Internet changes so quickly and we need to ensure our police departments have the support they need to protect our children. I hope the member supports Bill C-22. I think he does. The bill would go to committee and could move very quickly into the Senate. We would then have legislation that would protect our children. I count on the member's support as we work also with our international partners.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend my friend from Langley. We used to serve on city council together in Abbotsford. I want to commend him for supporting this very worthwhile legislation that would protect our children going forward.

Despite the comments from the NDP across the way, my colleague knows the Internet really has no boundaries. It is worldwide, and this government is doing everything it possibly can to protect children.

I want to ask my colleague whether he believes the problem of child pornography on the Internet is something that is growing, that it is an increasing threat, or is it something that has been static for a number of years?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Abbotsford brings up a very good point. Is the problem growing? Yes, it is.

We have a responsibility to protect our Canadian children and children around the world, and Canada is doing its part.

As I said, we are working with our international partners, we are working with Canadian ISPs, and we are providing the funding to help the police do their work.

The problem is growing. It is expanding, it is evolving, it is changing, and we need to be right on the front line. This government is providing the funding. With this legislation and the funding, we will be effective.

I support the bill and I hope every member of the House does also.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on a comment by my colleague from Elmwood--Transcona. I do not think I got a full and complete answer to his question.

The context of the member's speech talks about the international concept, the international context that this issue is becoming. He puts a great deal of emphasis on that.

However, we also have a couple of examples brought up by my colleague about the blocking of sites, which is really raising the bar when it comes to this sort of prosecution in this particular area.

On the idea of blocking sites with the examples of Sweden and Germany, what has the government done in that regard? Does it feel that this is a possibility once it reaches committee, that it could address that issue, especially through the ISPs?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, the bill will be going to committee if there is full support in the House, which I expect there will be.

Canada can create legislation that affects Canadian industry. We work with our international partners and we are being very effective with what we are doing here in Canada. However, the Internet is international. I think the figure I used is that there are over 750,000 pedophiles online at any given time. It is a worldwide problem and our children have access to that.

What we are doing with funding and legislation is to protect children. We also want to thank Cybertip.ca and the Canadian ISPs that are doing their part voluntarily. But this legislation will move it into a broader sphere where it will be required to be reported if there is any evidence that there is sexual exploitation of children going on, on their services. That legislation is needed and I count on every member to support it.

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

I am very surprised that the member from the Conservative side would not at least agree that the Conservative government would look at following Germany and Sweden to block these sites and would simply skate around the issue and talk about freedom of the Internet, and so on. When we are dealing with an issue such as this, it would seem very reasonable to me that the government would at least come forward and say, yes, if it works in Germany, if it works in Sweden, we will at least take a look at it in committee. I do not know why he would not say that.

My second question for him deals with the penalties. The member reiterated what they are for individuals: $1,000 for the first offence, $5,000 for the second, and the maximum of $10,000 or six months for a third offence. For corporations, we are talking about $10,000 for the first offence, $50,000 for the second, and $100,000 for the third.

The question is, given that these pornographic sites are largely run by criminal enterprises, does the member not agree that a $100,000 fine is nothing more than the cost of doing business and that these criminal organizations will be happy to pay the fines and keep operating the way they have in the past?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of questions there. I thought I did answer his question that we are working with our international partners, but we are creating Canadian legislation for Canada that will be effective for our Canadian children but will have benefits around the world.

Also, a lot has already been done. I mentioned the $71 million that the government is supporting for the funding of this to protect our children. I hope the member supported that $71 million.

As to what the committee can do, as we all know, standing committees within Parliament are their own masters and they can decide what they want to do with this legislation. If there are ways of improving it in terms of whether a fine of $100,000 for a corporation is adequate, we will let the committee decide. Some of us would think it is not enough, but again, that will be for the committee to decide. We trust that the committee members will do a good job, improve the legislation in any way it can be improved, and return it to the House in a speedy form so that it can go on to the Senate and receive royal assent.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, referring back to a question from the member for Elmwood—Transcona, he may not have been listening carefully to the speech of my colleague from Langley. He actually said that over 3,000 websites dealing in child pornography had been shut down in Canada. Therefore, we are blocking that.

I thank my colleague from Langley for intervening on this very important issue. The blocking of websites can be a challenge because they have to be identified and they have to ensure they are able to go after those carrying on in that way. Are we having a lot of success with that in Canada relative to the number of sites that are carrying this kind of objectionable material?

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the short answer is, absolutely, we are having great success, but we have so much more to do. There is about a 90% success rate but the 10% is still a huge concern. As I said a moment ago, 750,000 pedophiles are online ready to attack and hurt our kids. We need to protect them against this.

There are a lot of people out there and, as a government, as a functioning Parliament, let us protect our children.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be participating in the debate regarding Bill C-22.

I will say at the outset that, as my colleague also said during the debate in June, we, the Liberals, support the goal of this bill. We will support this bill so that it can be sent to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

I would also like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Davenport.

I would like to talk a little bit about how this bill came to be.

The bill was first introduced in the House of Commons as Bill C-58 in the previous legislative session. When the Prime Minister decided to prorogue Parliament towards the end of 2009, he effectively killed the bill.

When Parliament resumed in March 2010, the government clearly did not see the bill as a high priority because it waited two months before it reintroduced Bill C-58 as what we know as Bill C-22. Then it sat on the order paper for more than a month before the government finally moved second reading. Debate in the House then could have begun in the month of June.

It is interesting that the government did not place as high a priority on the bill as it should have. This should have been the first bill reintroduced. It should have been the first bill to be moved at second reading. We could have had this bill to committee, possibly out of committee, back for report stage and third reading before we broke for the summer. All of that could have been done expeditiously.

I am happy the government has finally moved second reading on the bill and that debate is now happening. The Liberals will be supporting it.

This bill came out of the agreement reached at the meeting of federal, provincial and territorial ministers on the coming into force of reporting requirements for Internet service providers and online service providers with regard to child pornography.

Bill C-22, as I have already mentioned, is identical to the previous bill, Bill C-58. Under current Canadian law, distributing child pornography online is a criminal offence. When there are reasonable grounds to believe that child pornography is accessible through an Internet service provider, a judge can order the ISP to hand over information to the authorities. Judges can also order such content to be removed if the source can be identified.

The purpose of Bill C-22 is to fight child pornography on the Internet by requiring Internet service providers and others responsible for providing Internet related services to report incidents involving child pornography when they are advised of an address that makes such content available to the public or when they have reasonable grounds to believe that the Internet services they are managing are being used to transmit child pornography.

As the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment said, Manitoba passed similar legislation in 2008 and Ontario in December 2008. The United States and Australia passed legislation in 2002 and 2005 respectively imposing such requirements on ISPs. Accordingly, Canada has fallen behind some of its international partners and friends, but the step this government is taking to finally modernize the parts of the Criminal Code that cover the production and distribution of child pornography is a step in the right direction.

As I was saying, the parties all agree when it comes to the need to address the exponential increase of child pornography available online. Statistics Canada indicates that illegal activity related to child pornography increased in Canada from 55 cases in 1998 to 1,408 cases in 2008.

A study conducted by Cybertip.ca revealed that nearly 60 countries were hosting child pornography. Canada hosts 9% of the world's child pornography sites, which is unacceptable. This puts us in third place, after the United States, which hosts 49% of these types of sites, and Russia, which hosts 20%. As many have already said in this House, that is truly unacceptable.

I will not repeat the percentages for pornographic images that involve children. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment provided this information today, and my fellow member of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights already gave them when he made his speech in June 2010. I will also not bother to speak about the fines. I think that topic will have to be studied, and we will have to hear from experts to determine whether the amounts of the fines in this bill are appropriate.

Perhaps we should consider increasing the fines that can be imposed.

The NDP member also brought up a point when he indicated that two countries, Germany and I believe Sweden, have implemented legislation to allow the government to block these sites completely. Are such measures possible here? Could the bill be amended to include such measures?

I think that the experts will be able to tell us whether this is possible in Canada, under our legal framework, because we do not have the same constitution as Germany or Sweden. We always want to ensure that our legislation is constitutional. The experts will be able to tell us whether blocking this type of site is possible under our Constitution and our legal and legislative framework.

I would like to speak about one last point before I conclude.

It is very difficult to determine where the images and websites are hosted, but they can be supported from different locations in the world. As such, oftentimes each photo and each site must be individually tracked, something highly difficult to achieve. Bill C-22 would go somewhere toward solving that, but there is more work to be done.

For one website depicting the sexual exploitation of children, Cybertip.ca tracked it for 48 hours, two days, and the site went through 212 different Internet addresses in 16 different countries. ISPs running the networks to which these computers are connected should be able to suspend service to these computers. This is another point at which the justice committee should look. I hope all members will support sending the bill to committee.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to welcome the member back to the justice committee. She does good work there. I think we have a collaborative committee that looks forward to dealing with the bill.

I want to refer to a comment made earlier today by the member for Elmwood—Transcona. He suggested that the fines to be imposed against corporations that violated the intent of the bill should be increased. This is not typically what we hear from the NDP. Those members typically oppose tougher sentencing laws, but somehow they have now seen the light, and I am glad to hear that.

Would the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine support the notion of perhaps even toughening up those fines to ensure that we get compliance and the protection that the bill seeks to improve for children in our society?

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

Mr. Speaker, I guess today is be kind and gentle and friendly to opponents. I congratulate the member for his re-election as chair to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and I was pleased for that. He has done a very good job as chair. I look forward to working with him and all colleagues from other parties on the justice committee.

I believe the issue of the level of fines should definitely be examined by justice committee members when and if the bill gets enough support from the House to send it to committee. A second area that should be looked at is whether the idea of blocking sites, as Germany does, is a possibility. If it is, is it something that could be added to the legislation? We know sometimes that we cannot go outside of the scope of the bill in committee, but there are a number of issues that the committee should look at and I look forward to that work.

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

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that even the government members are indicating that we are losing ground on this issue, that the number of sites is increasing rather than decreasing. The member pointed out that the United States passed legislation similar to this in 2002, which is eight years ago. Yet only one year ago Cybertip.ca said that the U.S. still had 49.2% of all the sites in the world. Clearly this is not working and the government is proposing to throw another $42 million at the problem, a problem that is increasing.

Therefore, the issue is why do we not look at something that works? Why do we not look at what Germany is doing? Why do we not look at what Sweden is doing? We should not just close our eyes and say that we will fight it the same way the Americans are because clearly it does not work. It is getting worse.

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

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have already stated that I would welcome the House sending Bill C-22 to committee. When the committee looks at the scope of the bill and at the fines that we find as two different ideas, it should also look at what is being done in other countries and what has been successful. The member mentioned the blocking of sites in Germany and Sweden. I do not know whether that could be done in Canada given our Constitution. That would require bringing in experts and I am open to that.

This is such an important issue that we want to ensure we get it right. We also want to ensure we go as far as we can with the technology that we have but respecting our Constitution and our charter.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-22. I think most of us in the House will agree that this is important legislation and an important tool for law enforcement officers to combat the criminal activities that are taking place by organized criminals who are preying upon our most vulnerable, the children of our society.

As legislators, we have an obligation, both domestically with our domestic law and as signatories to international conventions, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which we signed back in 1989 and which came into effect in 1990, to ensure we are doing everything possible to protect children within our society. This is another piece of legislation that is an important tool to do so.

The issue of child pornography has taken on a new importance in this new computer age. We are moving, as we all know, at rapid speed in terms of the new technology being introduced and we need to ensure that the laws are being constantly updated to meet those challenges that are being posed to us by the new technologies being presented to us in society.

The sheer proliferation of child pornography on the Internet poses enormous challenges as well to the laws of enforcement.

Some statistics show that the U.S. accounts for almost 50% of child pornography host sites; Russia is second with about 20%; and Canada, which is a small country by population, is third and accounts for almost 10%. That is not something we should be very proud of. We, as a country, need to do everything possible to ensure that does not take place here in our country. We need to work with our international partners to ensure there are international conventions and tools in place to ensure, internationally, that there is a ban on the hosting of child pornography sites and that we are working collaboratively to stop this situation.

Law enforcement alone does not possess the resources needed to meet the challenges effectively, although their efforts are commendable, but they need those tools and this bill would do that.

We need to place some of this responsibility to combat this issue with Internet service providers. Internet service providers possess the means to assist in this way and they must be compelled to do so. We have heard in this House today several members mentioning that Germany and Sweden have done an excellent job of doing so. We in Canada can be leaders but we can also learn from our partners about how to provide effective tools to combat this.

It is for that reason that I join with my colleagues in supporting this important bill. It is truly distressing to see the large number of cases of child pornography charges being reported in the media. This, unfortunately, is only a small fraction of child pornography to be found on the Internet. More must be done and this bill is a significant step forward.

My community has been directly touched by the scourge of child pornography. On May 12, 2003, 10-year-old Holly Jones was abducted and murdered. Her killer was caught and confessed. He also confessed to being consumed by images of child pornography leading up to the day he abducted this beautiful innocent child. This is unquestionably a direct link between child pornography that this perpetrator viewed and his decision to take the precious life of this young child, Holly Jones.

In 2008, I introduced a bill entitled Bill C-388, which was designed to penalize those who shared child pornography. It is this kind of approach that must be adopted to give law enforcement agencies the tools they need to challenge effectively child pornography at all levels and on all fronts.

It was estimated in a 2003 study that 20% of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and we can assume that this number has increased since that study.

The United States department of justice noted that at any given time there are one million child pornography images on the Internet. Can anyone Imagine how many millions of images are being traded on a regular basis daily throughout the world? One million images of innocent children being victimized on the Internet.

In 2008, a review of the national laws across 187 nations showed that 93 countries still had no specific laws dealing with child pornography. This is totally unacceptable, and we in Canada must show leadership by putting in place laws that are effective and enforced. Effective laws and enforcement must be the basis on which we fight this scourge.

The law we are debating today would help us to assist law enforcement agencies by giving them an invaluable tool. Internet service providers must assume some level of responsibility for the information that moves through their systems. This laws makes Internet service providers part of the solution to this growing problem.

In fact, clause 4 states:

If a person who provides an Internet service to the public has reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence, the person must notify an officer, constable or other person employed for the preservation and maintenance of the public peace of that fact, as soon as feasible and in accordance with the regulations.

Clause 5 goes further to state:

A person who makes a notification under section 4 must preserve all computer data related to the notification that is in their possession or control for 21 days after the day on which the notification is made.

The obligations and duties they must enforce is stated in the law.

I would remind the House that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child requires nations to take the necessary steps needed to combat child pornography. This proposed legislation is clearly a necessary step for us to take in this country.

However, we must remember why we are taking these steps. Children are the victims of child pornography. Innocent lives are devastated by this terrible crime. Psychiatrists speak to the shame and guilt these young victims experience and the profound impact this has on their lives. Most, if they survive, will spend their lives dealing with the fallout of the crimes that have been committed upon them. Their lives are forever diminished and, because of this, any society that does not take effective action is also diminished.

The nature of the Internet lends itself to ever-changing forms of abuse. We are all aware of the recent case in British Columbia where a young girl was assaulted by a group of men at a party. Having had to endure this terrible crime, she also had to deal with the posting of the video of the crime online. This is simply intolerable. The police are to be commended for their quick action in the case but they need help. They need the tools that will strengthen their arsenal for fighting this crime. This bill would ensure in law the responsibility of Internet service providers to be partners in this battle against child pornography.

The scope of this problem is truly astounding. Over the past three years, we have seen charges laid against thousands of people who cross every demography of society. The problem is widespread but there are ways to fight it. One such example is that of Toronto police detective, Paul Gillespie, who recognized the problem of anonymity on the Internet for those who traded in child pornography. He wrote to many organizations and groups, including Microsoft. The result was Microsoft developing a tool called the child exploitation tracking system that allowed police to track the activities of hundreds of child pornographers at one time. This reduced duplication of work and made enforcement much easier.

It is these kinds of initiatives that show we can effectively meet this challenge and that we are dedicated to finding a solution. It is for these reasons that I am proud to vote in favour of this bill. I encourage all members of the House to support this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, the United States has had laws similar to this since 2002 and in the eight years since then, the problem is getting bigger, not smaller. In fact as of 2009, the United States had 49% of the world's sites. The top five countries, that is, the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and South Korea, have 87% of the sites, with 13% in the other 55 countries. The fact of the matter is that Germany and Sweden are not on the list because they effectively block the sites.

The government is spending even more money. It is putting another $42 million toward police resources to fight a problem that is getting bigger. I really do not see that as the answer.

The answer comes from looking at best practices. Obviously, the best practices are not in the United States, but in Germany and Sweden. I would ask the member whether he would agree with that analysis and that we should ask the government to look at the practices in those two countries.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has made a valuable point.

This is just one tool, but an important one, for law enforcement officers to deal with this very important and troubling issue. He is absolutely right that we have to look at best practices in countries such as Germany and Sweden that have a better handle on dealing with this issue. As the member noted, their percentage is nowhere near that of Canada's. Canada is number three, which is very troubling.

Maybe we should be looking not just at resources for policing but also at making sure there is legislation in place that takes account of best practices in dealing with this very important issue. As he mentioned, the U.S. may have similar laws but it has not seen the results that Sweden and Germany have seen. We should be looking at those countries' best practices and implementing them in Canada.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I want to ask my colleague a question on the record, given the fact that he is sitting next to me, which is why I am bringing it up.

He touched upon one aspect in his speech about how the private sector and major corporations are involved given the fact that we are talking about major ISPs, Internet service providers. Some of them have gone to great lengths to seek out and quash this material and certainly seek out the people putting this material online and to prosecute them as quickly as possible. Could he touch upon that issue?

The tenor of his speech also illustrated one good point, which is that we tend to be falling behind. How far are we falling back on this issue compared to the international context?

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague made a valuable point. There is no question that Internet service providers have a major role to play and they cannot escape from their obligations. We have to make sure that law enforcement officers have the tools and that we as parliamentarians provide them with the tools to go after Internet service providers and deal with this issue effectively.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is quite possible I may have spoken to this bill in a previous session of Parliament, because it did not move very fast, as we all know, after it was first introduced. I have synthesized my comments down to seven or eight points and I can go through them very quickly.

My party is supporting the bill for passage at second reading, but that should not prevent us from making constructive comments about the bill's form or content.

The first thing I want to mention has to do with the form of the bill, the title of the bill. Certainly the way it is described, an act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography, is correct; I do not have a problem with that. However, the government has put forward a bill. It has tried to change the title of the bill a little, because clause 1 says that the short title shall be “Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act“. When I first read that short title, I thought it must have something to do with people trying to get children to do something their parents would not otherwise want them to do, but really what the bill is dealing with is child pornography, and if that short title is relied on, there is no indication of that in the short title.

The government in its almost Goebbelsian messaging has tried to squeeze this newspeak title into the bill and it does not describe the bill very well. I hope the committee will take a look at that, because this bill will be a stand-alone bill, as I understand it. It is not an amendment to the Criminal Code. It will stand alone and it will forever be cited as that title, so I think at least we ought to get the title right.

The second thing is that the definition part of the bill refers to an Internet service as:

“Internet service” means Internet access, Internet content hosting or electronic mail.

Internet service therefore means electronic mail, and if one goes to the charging section of the bill, it says that “if a person is advised, in the course of providing an Internet service to the public, of an Internet protocol address”, et cetera, that simply means that if a person is advised in the course of an electronic mail. That seems to involve almost anyone who uses electronic mail, email. I am not so sure that it was the intention to charge every person who uses email with the burdens of reporting set out in the act.

This is either a criminal or quasi-criminal bill. It is not clear on the face of it whether this is intended to be criminal or quasi-criminal, and the penalties reflect that. That is an issue that will have to be discussed at committee. Who knows if this might render the bill weaker than the government intended.

The third thing is that the wording in the bill in the definition section in parentheses is not part of the bill. This is the first time I can recall, and I have been here 22 years, a bill saying that the wording contained in the bill is not part of the bill, that it is only descriptive. That is what the margin of the bill is for. The margin is for the purpose of providing descriptive or helpful comments on the bill. If the bill is adopted in its current form, we will have a bill on the books where some of the words in the bill are not part of the bill. I think that is bad form. I think it is rather dumb. I am not too sure why we have done it, but it seems to be a departure, and that can be explained at committee.

The next thing I want to say, with reference to my second comment about electronic mail, email, is that the bill purports to criminalize or quasi-criminalize Internet service providers or emailers, those who send or receive email.

Not only would it criminalize them for a specific act or omission, but it would criminalize them for an act or omission involving an email or website where child pornography may be available. It is not where it is available, but where it may be available. It criminalizes a class of people who send email. I am just using the words that are in the bill, but it potentially criminalizes a class of people who send or receive emails involving possible knowledge of child pornography where child pornography may be available. I do not for a moment second-guess the objective of the bill, but I do question that particular process.

One could take from my words perhaps a bit of an implicit understanding about why this is not in the Criminal Code. It is quite possible that wording such as this, a description of a criminal act such as this, would not survive in the Criminal Code where we have very strict tests on precision and such. I am flagging that it is in clause 3.

Clause 4 is essentially placing a burden on other people to snitch on other people. Anyone who has knowledge of somebody else who may have knowledge of such a website is obligated under this statute to snitch, to tell the police, and failure to do so would result in liability.

I do not think we have snitch laws in this country, but we are about to get one now if this bill passes in its current form, in my opinion. I know the committee will want to look at that, or maybe get some witnesses in from East Germany, because I know East Germany had a wonderful array of laws that required citizens to snitch on other citizens. We will take a look at that at committee. I know my colleagues will do a good job of that.

The next point is really a jurisdictional one. If this is not to be criminal law, then it has to be based on another federal jurisdiction as opposed to a provincial jurisdiction. That is not set out in the proposed statute. I would like to have that clarified for the record. If it has not been clarified here in debate, and I do not think it has, I would like to see that clarified by the government at committee. The committee should be scrutinizing the precise federal jurisdiction on which this statute is based.

The next thing I want to point out is there are two elements added into clause 11, which are good. I am pleased to see that the drafters of the bill are requiring that for anyone to be convicted of an offence, he or she must have knowingly contravened the act. That is a good thing. We would not want to have people convicted for things they did not know about, especially if one is just sending or receiving an email.

There should be some scrutiny given to the question of the term “knowingly”. Does one have to know about the law? Does one have to know about the alleged child pornography, or does one just have to know about the Internet site? What extent of knowing is required? What threshold of knowing is going to be needed before there is actually an act or omission that constitutes the alleged criminality in this case?

The last thing I want to point out is that the government has the ability to make regulations, and maybe that is the real answer here. Because the government is making regulations, it is obviously not criminal law. We would not allow the cabinet, by making a regulation, to make a criminal law. That would be very rare in our history if we ever did.

There is a regulation section that gives the government six separate regulation-making powers. The last one is a red flag for me. It says that the “Governor in Council may make regulations generally for carrying out the purposes and provisions of this act”.

I ask the question that must be answered before the House finally adopts the bill. Could the government, in making a regulation, create a new element of an offence and thereby make that new regulation an offence under this bill? I say no.

However, I have had some 20 years of experience here on the Standing Joint Committee on Scrutiny of Regulations. I have heard this argument in the House and at committee from the Department of Justice, which feels pressed to make an argument that if the government has the ability in the statute to make a regulation generally for the purpose of carrying out the purposes of the bill, then it has the right to make a regulation that would criminalize certain acts. That has happened before. There has been some push back by the House of Commons and it may be in relatively good balance now.

Categorically, I could never accept a bill that would allow the government to make a regulation which would criminalize or quasi-criminalize the conduct of any Canadian resident. We must keep our eye on the scope of this authorization to make more regulations under this statute to carry out the purposes and provisions of this act, which is a stand-alone act and not in the Criminal Code. It must be scrutinized.

We must get an answer to this. I do not want to be in a position to accept any answer except no, the government, the cabinet, would not, could not use this clause on its own, or make a law or regulation that would create a new criminal or quasi-criminal offence that would be imposed on our electors.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I declare the motion carried. Accordingly the bill stands referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

(Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to a committee)