Bill C-26 (Historical)

Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to
(a) increase mandatory minimum penalties and maximum penalties for certain sexual offences against children;
(b) increase maximum penalties for violations of prohibition orders, probation orders and peace bonds;
(c) clarify and codify the rules regarding the imposition of consecutive and concurrent sentences;
(d) require courts to impose, in certain cases, consecutive sentences on offenders who commit sexual offences against children; and
(e) ensure that a court that imposes a sentence must take into consideration evidence that the offence in question was committed while the offender was subject to a conditional sentence order or released on parole, statutory release or unescorted temporary absence.
It amends the Canada Evidence Act to ensure that spouses of the accused are competent and compellable witnesses for the prosecution in child pornography cases.
It also amends the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to increase the reporting obligations of sex offenders who travel outside Canada.
It enacts the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act to establish a publicly accessible database that contains information — that a police service or other public authority has previously made accessible to the public — with respect to persons who are found guilty of sexual offences against children and who pose a high risk of committing crimes of a sexual nature.
Finally, it makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act

[Mylène Freeman, NDP, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is an extremely good point. Indeed, this bill does not address those circumstances at all. There will be a database of previous offenders, but how would that help with reintegration? That would not seem to do anything to make sure that those people do not reoffend. It is essentially just a warning for the community; it does not address that problem. All of the other things are just stricter penalties, minimums, and raising the maximum sentence.

Those things are meant as deterrents, but when we consider the specific social circumstance of the offenders being people that children know in their social circles and sometimes in their families, there is absolutely nothing to prevent these kinds of situations from happening. That is extremely unfortunate, and it is why we need to make sure that there is good funding for organizations, mental health, and society as well.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise today to speak to Bill C-26 and its very long title. It is a bill that touches on a number of different pieces of legislation, including the Criminal Code and Canada Evidence Act. It would enact a high-risk child sex offender database act as well, and there would be consequential amendments to other acts. We are at second reading here and it seems that we might as well support this bill's passage to committee so that we can hear from some experts on this subject.

As suggested by its title, this act seeks to do a number of things. It would increase the maximum penalties for violations of prohibition orders, probation orders, and peace bonds. It would increase existing mandatory minimum penalties and maximum penalties for certain sexual offences against children. It would clarify and codify rules regarding the imposition of consecutive and concurrent sentences. It would require courts to impose, in certain cases, consecutive sentences on offenders who commit sexual offences against children. It would ensure that spouses of the accused are considered competent and compellable witnesses for the prosecution in child pornography cases. As well, it would increase reporting obligations on sex offenders who travel outside Canada and would establish a high-risk child sex offender database act and other things. It is a far-reaching bill.

What we note about this long list of acts and amendments to existing legislation is that it is more of what the current government has done in the past, more of a turning of the screws in the same direction. We note that the Conservative government in this and previous Parliaments has already implemented new mandatory minimums for assaults where victims are under 16 years of age; it has identified grooming activities as a criminal offence; it has made the use of computers and other telecommunications devices for the purpose of making arrangements to commit a sexual offence against a child an offence; it has amended the sex offender registry already; it has increased the age at which a person can consent to sexual activity from 14 to 16; it has required Internet service providers to report child pornography; and it has increased sentencing and monitoring of dangerous offenders.

Apart from the wisdom of any of this, the problem presented by this bill is that the Minister of Justice has provided information that sexual offences have increased by 6% over the last two years. That statistic is offered by the minister in support of further action in support of this bill. However, at least equally if not more so, that statistic calls into question the approach taken by the current government to date. It seems to suggest that mandatory minimums, longer maximums, increased scrutiny and surveillance via a sex registry and so on may not be effective responses to this issue. This is worrying because of the particular nature of this issue of child sexual assault or child sexual abuse. It is so incredibly harmful and hurtful, leaving lasting emotional and psychological scars on its victims, things that victims have to live with and cope with for the rest of their lives if they can or do in fact live out their lives with the hurt caused.

I am the son of two teachers. When I grew up, chat around the dinner table was always about education and teaching and what was going on in the classroom. However, I married a criminal lawyer who did criminal defence work for 14 years before moving over to the crown side, where she has been for six years. There have been lots of stories brought home about crimes that she has had to be engaged with, either on the defence or prosecution side. They are not happy stories, and for the most part not stories to be talked about around the dinner table.

However, there is a story that I would like to tell that is not related to the many stories I have heard through my wife, but through my own experience as a kid. I had the great fortune of growing up in a lovely, picturesque, and historic Canadian town with a particularly a beautiful downtown in which to live. It is an older and largely more affluent part of the city, filled with old limestone houses, occupied mainly by professionals, doctors, lawyers, professors. As it turns out, it was also the hunting ground of a child sex predator, the choirmaster at one of the local cathedrals. He was a much trusted, highly respected person in the community. He taught music not only through the cathedral but to other kids in town as well. I happened to be a member of one of his non-secular choirs for a very brief time, because I do not have much of a voice.

Things started to come undone for the choirmaster in 1990 when two families in the congregation alleged publicly, in stories in the local paper, that the choirmaster had sexually molested their sons and that the abuse was directly linked to their sons' suicides. Both boys had hanged themselves, one as a teenager and the other as a young man working on his doctorate at an ivy league university. I played tennis with one of those boys as a kid, and I went to nursery school with the other one. It is a small town.

Ultimately the choirmaster plead guilty to charges involving 13 boys over a 12-year period. Over time more victims came forward, making this story much longer and an ever more complicated one. In retelling the story there may be wounds that get reopened, but I want to use the story to the complicated social facts that surround such matters.

The fact that it is a long and complicated story ought to give us all cause to pause and think through carefully our response to this issue. How does someone like this win the trust of both kids and parents? How does a predator like this find support, even from some of his victims? How does he retain the loyalty and support of a significant portion of the congregation? How did he get pardoned, at one point in time? How does he win the support of a new community and congregation?

These are all questions that in the abstract need to be addressed if we are to protect kids from this kind of predatory behaviour. We need to understand better how these things work, because most of this story is about the pain and harm caused to the kids, harm that includes the suicides of two young men full of great promise.

It would seem useful to take this bill to committee so that we can have that discussion and call before the committee witnesses who, based on their expertise and experience, can speak to some of the issues raised in a case like one I referred to today.

Perhaps some parts of this bill will be considered useful by those who testify at committee, but the statistic offered by the minister in support of Bill C-26, that there has been of a 6% increase in sexual offences against children, suggests to me that we ought to be discussing at committee other types of resources to counter the sexual abuse of children, other methods of prevention, other precautions to take, other forms or opportunities for education for both parents and kids.

In the 2011 budget, the Conservatives announced $250,000 in funding over two years as part of the federal victims strategy for programs to protect children. Budget 2012 included $7 million over five years to fund child advocacy centres, as well as limited funding for victims services organizations. This seems paltry in light of the scope and seriousness of the problem.

Can the government tell us whether any of this was effective? We know by way of Steve Sullivan, the former federal ombudsman for the victims of crime, that the circles of support and accountability program was very effective. That is being cut through cuts to Corrections Canada and national crime prevention centres.

In a hopeful moment, a moment in anticipation of a good faith response by the Conservative government, it seems to me that it would be useful to put this bill and other thoughts and ideas before committee for the purpose of looking not only at the bill specifically, but also at the issue more broadly with a view to thinking through what we can do as members of Parliament to prevent further stories like that of the sexual predator I told today, and to prevent the harm that predators like him do to kids, to prevent the kind of pain that would cause two young men to take their own lives.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very heart-rending speech. Obviously, personal experience is what this bill is attempting to address.

The member clearly supported the need for criminal provisions where we can deal with those who are detected. However, as I understand it, he and other colleagues mentioned the fact that we sadly have a rising rate of sexual offences against children.

I wonder if the member could expand a bit more on whether or not there is a need for the government to also bring forward a compliance strategy when we have reforms to the Criminal Code so that we can also talk about resources and new programs to prevent these kinds of offences. He seems to feel that it is equally as important as punishment after the fact.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a great question. While I support this bill moving forward to committee for review and study, I am happy that I managed to convey in my speech that this bill is clearly missing an entire response to the issue of child sexual abuse. Clearly, prevention is the critical piece in all of this. It is what one would hope for and think of as any response to criminal activity. First and foremost, this fundamentally has to be be about preventing these things from happening and harming and hurting people.

The story I told is a story about irrecoverable loss, not just for the boy and young man who ended up committing suicide, but for all of the victims, and there were many in this set of circumstances. These are things that people have to live with for the rest of their lives. They have to live with the pain and hurt. To the extent that we, as members of Parliament, can focus our attention on ensuring that young people in this country never have to experience these things and that kind of pain and hurt, and not have to live with that for the rest of the lives, surely we must put our minds to doing just that.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to begin my speech on Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

The Conservative government does not have a very good record to start with. We can look at Bill C-10, a piece of legislation that substantially amended the Criminal Code. When that bill passed, the Barreau du Québec said, “Canadian justice is in mourning [and the passage of Bill C-10] is a setback for Canadian criminal law”. Such is the Conservatives' record on changes to the Criminal Code.

If we look at this from a financial perspective, as I was saying earlier, the Quebec minister of intergovernmental affairs announced two days ago that the cost of incarcerating offenders has increased by 11%. That expense was passed on to Quebec without the federal government assuming any of the additional cost, which ultimately was created by criminalizing certain elements that were not criminal before and likely could have been resolved either through prevention or by providing support to the people concerned, to ensure that they did not reoffend.

Finally, we have a different vision of the fundamentals of society than the Conservatives do. We want to live in a safer society, with less crime, and we want to be able to prevent crime before it happens. That is not the case for the Conservatives, who always adopt repressive policies and think that imposing longer prison sentences will resolve the problems associated with crime in Canada.

That brings to mind something that the member for Gatineau often says. When an offender is about to commit a crime, he does not bring the Criminal Code with him to read up on what the maximum penalty will be, whether there is a mandatory minimum sentence and whether the trial judge will be able to have him serve his sentence in the community or not. That way of thinking is is completely absurd and out of touch with reality.

The crime rate is dropping as a result of a number of factors, including demographics. The population is aging so crime is dropping, which makes sense in any society. If we want to reduce crime, we need to invest in prevention and in rehabilitation when a crime has been committed. However, the ideal would be not to have criminals or crime.

With this bill, the Conservatives are falling into the same repetitive cycle of behaviour that they always fall into, which involves a simplistic and very election-minded approach. This approach consists of convincing Canadians that they are going to do away with crime by imposing longer sentences, criminalizing activities that were not crimes before and imposing minimum sentences, or in other words, by not putting any faith in the justice system.

One of the methods used by the Conservatives involves playing on the public's frustration. It is true that we are all sometimes frustrated when criminal convictions are not in line with what we personally think they should be. We may be angry about verdicts that we think are too soft considering the seriousness of the offence. However, the Conservatives always play on people's emotions and hope that they will not have any faith in the justice system.

Along the same lines as imposing mandatory minimum sentences or increasing existing minimums, the Conservatives also discredit the judiciary and undermine judges' ability to evaluate criminals' personal situation and ability to reintegrate into society. They play on people's sense of fear, as they do with other issues, especially safety-related issues.

We will clearly support this bill at second reading, because it contains a number of worthwhile provisions that should be studied. My colleagues on the Standing Committee on Justice will examine the validity of each of these provisions. However, we still need to remember that our objective should be prevention and that the federal government, which is responsible for enforcing and developing the Criminal Code, should also assume the financial costs associated with creating these new crimes.

One recent example was Bill C-36. Unfortunately I did not have an opportunity to speak to that bill because the Conservative government yet again limited the time allocated for members of the House to debate this bill. It was the same thing. Bill C-36 created a criminal offence that had never before existed in Canada's history, in order to give the public the impression that the government was fixing a criminal problem. The problem was one that had never existed before. This bill takes us to the next step in the criminalization of society. The government invented a criminal offence that did not exist before. In a few days, in December, we will see whether police forces enforce this new provision of the Criminal Code that now criminalizes activities that were not crimes previously.

Bill C-36 was one specific example. However, we are seeing the same behavioural pattern here. As was the case with Bill C-36, the government is using children to get the public on board. Of course, the NDP has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to crimes against children. That is a no-brainer, and I think that any Canadian in their right mind would condemn crimes against children. That is a no-brainer. Everyone agrees, and no one opposes virtue. However, the Conservatives always use sensitive issues and bring children into the mix so that their bills will pass. After a more detailed study in committee, the hon. member for Gatineau will tell us whether these provisions are constitutional or not. I leave that to the experts. What I have seen, as someone who is not an expert, is that the Conservative government always wants to criminalize and increase prison sentences instead of focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. Above all, it does not want to assume the related costs.

I will end there and leave it to the experts. It is important that Canadians realize that the government cannot always use children as the justification for getting bills passed. These bills are smoke and mirrors, not a real amendment to the Criminal Code that has been deemed necessary by experts and people who work on these issues.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The hon. member will have five minutes for questions and comments when debate on this bill resumes.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-26, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Canada Evidence Act and the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, to enact the High Risk Child Sex Offender Database Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that my colleague from Saint-Jean spoke today about this bill from the Conservative government.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about my earlier comments on reintegration. I know that he cares a lot about reintegrating offenders in this country and protecting the public and our children from any potential repeat offences.

What does my colleague think about the Conservatives' cuts to public safety within our prisons? Since 2012, the government has cut millions of dollars in this area. Furthermore, more and more rehabilitation and reintegration programs are unfortunately being eliminated because the resources are no longer there to run them.

Could my colleague share his thoughts on that?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Alfred-Pellan for her question.

That is something that we have a tendency to neglect because when we talk about safety and protecting children we tend to look only at the punitive side, and that is the trap that the Conservatives are trying to have us step into.

In fact, my colleague is right. There is a financial aspect to this problem. Increasing the number of people who go to jail, as she mentioned, increases incarceration costs, not just for the federal government in the case of sentences of more than two years, but also for the provinces for sentences of less than two years. We have seen that. An MP asked a question today about the 11% increase in prison costs.

It is our duty to speak out against the cuts made by the Conservatives to federal prisons and the fact that not only are these cuts not warranted, but the federal government is also not investing the money it should in prevention and rehabilitation. These are two things that will allow us to have a safer society.

We cannot live in a society where there are more people incarcerated. We want to live in a society where everyone has their place, where those who commit a crime, however horrible, can reintegrate into society and participate in and contribute again to the economy and our society. That is the society we want to live in.

[Rosane Doré Lefebvre, NDP, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising again to ask a question because I love to hear the hon. member for Saint-Jean. I know that he is very familiar with a number of files and speaks very eloquently in the House. I am pleased that he is speaking to Bill C-26 today.

I would like to mention another topic that is related to Bill C-26 and many other bills as well, unfortunately. I am talking about the fact that there are so many time allocation motions. Debate is often limited for various bills in the House. I am also thinking about committee work, which is very difficult at times, particularly, and oddly enough, when we are talking about bills that have so many important details to discuss with experts.

Can my colleague talk about his experience in committee, namely how it works, and the wish list he is hoping to take to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights when this bill is studied?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Yes, time allocation motions are a problem that we have had in connection with many bills. There have been so many that I have lost track.

In the committees that I belong to, the Conservatives have always tended not to give us enough time to study bills. That was especially true in the case of Bill C-377 at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, but it happens in other committees too.

There is another technique the Conservatives use often: meeting in camera. Anytime they want to discuss something and use their majority, but they do not want the conversations to be public and available to Canadian citizens, they go in camera.

My colleague is absolutely right: we have to condemn this situation because we are here to discuss serious bills that will have serious consequences for the lives of people in jail and for the public purse. That is true not only at the federal level, but also at the provincial level.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to this government bill, the short title of which is the tougher penalties for child predators act, which does not make Canadians any safer but does make the penalties longer and more arduous for those who commit these crimes.

I would say at the outset that we support this bill and will be supporting it at second reading in order to study it at committee. We need the ability at committee to determine whether the provisions in this bill would make Canadians safer. We need the ability to hear from experts in the criminal justice system, experts on sexual crimes, and experts in the medical and psychological systems to determine whether this kind of approach is an effective way to deter crime and treat criminals and to make sure that this kind of crime goes down and becomes less of a burden on Canadian society.

Since this Parliament began, we have noted that when the Conservatives become tired of something or when they determine, for some reason unto themselves, that they wish to end debate, they institute time allocation. As this bill was introduced first in February, nine months ago, we hope that time allocation will not be necessary. It is entirely within the government's control to determine when this bill will be debated. The government controls that agenda. To suggest that we have had enough time, when we have only debated it on a couple of occasions since it became a government bill, is a phoney and unbelievable approach, so we hope that will not happen.

Because this is an important measure and issue, we also hope that at committee, there will be lots of time to hear from lots of witnesses who can talk to us about what changes to this bill may be necessary. We also hope the Conservatives will listen to those witnesses at committee and to the opinions of the experts in the field about what needs to change in this bill.

We have also noticed an alarming tendency on the part of the Conservatives to suggest that only changes they agree with are changes worth making and that any changes proposed by any member of any opposition party are absolutely not to be included in any bill. Their tendency in everything, unless there is a clerical error, is that they are right, without any kind of criticism on the part of the opposition parties.

The NDP has a zero-tolerance policy for crimes of a sexual nature against children. That goes without saying. That has been our policy and our practice. What we would rather do is prevent them. Prevention of crimes against children is obviously the most important thing we should be doing. If it can be shown that increasing penalties, which is what this bill essentially does, would somehow prevent crimes against children, that would be great. I would love for that to be the case. I would want to hear what the experts have to say, but up to this point, that has not been the case.

Clearly, we have seen a government whose approach has been to increase penalties, to increase jail time, to introduce mandatory minimums, to introduce longer maximums, and to introduce a period of time spent in jail as a way of protecting Canadians.

All the people who are convicted of these crimes will get out. They will all be released into society. Unless and until appropriate medical and psychological treatment is given to these individuals while in prison and beyond, we will have done nothing to make Canadian children safer by introducing mandatory minimums.

The facts speak for themselves. Since 2006, there have been new mandatory minimum prison sentences for seven existing Criminal Code offences, including assault, assault with a weapon, and aggravated assault where the child is under 16. The government has made it illegal for anyone to provide sexually explicit material to a child for the purpose of facilitating the commission of an offence against that child; made it illegal to use computers or other means of telecommunication to agree with or make arrangements with another person to commit a sexual offence against a child; strengthened the sex offender registry; increased the age of protection, the age at which a young person can legally consent to sexual activity, from 14 to 16 years of age; put in place legislation to make the reporting of child pornography by Internet service providers mandatory; and strengthened the sentencing and monitoring of dangerous offenders.

These are all acts that have been taken up by the government since it came into power in 2006. What is the effect of longer sentences and more minimum sentences and of introducing new crimes to the Criminal Code? The effect has been that the crime rate has actually gone up for these offences.

The Minister of Justice stated, on supplementary estimates, that sexual offences against children has increased 6% over the past two years. According to Statistics Canada, that is pretty much the only category of crime that has gone up in the past years. In fact, in the case of sexual violations against children, luring with a computer rose 30% in 2013. Sexual exploitation rose 11% in 2013.

I am not the expert who needs to testify at the committee on what these effects will be, but I can see with my own eyes, from the evidence the minister brought to the supplementary estimates and from the evidence that appears to be in the Statistics Canada reporting, that the Conservatives' actions to date have had a negative impact on the number of crimes of a sexual nature being reported by children.

If one bashes one's head against the wall and it hurts, does one keep doing it? Does one actually keep taking the same wrong-headed approach every time, thinking things will be different? Does one keep introducing more mandatory minimums or longer jail terms and think it will be different? That is one of the things we hope to discuss at committee. One of the things we expect the experts will tell us is that it is not necessarily so.

What is necessary, both in prison and after, is treatment, both psychological and medical, of the individuals to properly return them to society, because they are going to be returned to society. It is not good enough to just say that we will keep watching them. That may make the Conservatives feel good. It does not make me feel good to know that individuals who need treatment are not getting it.

I am the father of seven children and the grandfather of four. The four grandchildren are young Canadians under the age of 15. I do not want them facing an increase in child exploitation. I do not want them to feel less safe in Canadian society as they get older. I want them to feel more safe. If the actions of the government do not do anything to make them more safe, then we are doing something wrong.

We have seen the government do other things that make Canadian children less safe. We want to make sure, when we study and debate this bill, both here and in committee, that we are doing things to it to correct the mistakes the Conservatives have made in the past. We want to actually make a world in which children can feel safe and are safe, not one in which the Conservatives can go to a fundraiser and say, “Look at me, I have just increased the mandatory minimums for sexual offences”, if, in fact, the rate of sexual offences goes up.

No one wants to be a victim. No one wants their children to be victims. If we cannot prevent the crimes in the first place and prevent recidivism by treating these people once we have found them, then we have not done our society a justice, and we have not done our children a justice. We will not have corrected the wrongs to our society.

I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for York South—Weston for his reasoned and effective speech on the bill.

Beyond the bill is the lack of resources, under the Conservative government, that actually counter criminal acts, whether it is the abuse of children or others. We have seen the government slash the National Crime Prevention Centre. It has severely cut back on crime prevention programs generally across the country. It has cut back on addiction treatment and on community resources to protect children from abuse. All of these areas where it has slashed resources have resulted, as we have seen and as the Minister of Justice has admitted, in an increase in the overall level of abuse.

The government is now providing another bill, which we will support and certainly will look at. However, beyond that, everything else that would lower the rate of abuse against children has been slashed and destroyed by a government that either does not understand or that thinks that somehow tax cuts are more important for the rich than protecting children.

With all the cuts to crime prevention and the ending of the National Crime Prevention Centre, does the member for York South—Weston think the government has an overall approach that would contribute to doing what I hope we all share, which is lowering the rate of abuse against children?

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly the point. Sex crimes are driven not by greed or financial gain but by impulse, and those impulses need to be watched and controlled and treated. By removing the resources from our communities, from our prison system, and from our corrections system generally, those individuals who could be helped are not being helped. They are not being corrected. Just putting them in jail does not change their behaviour. Announcing to the world that the penalties will be higher is not going to change behaviour. What are needed are more resources than the government has put forward and a return of the kinds of resources that are required to prevent these crimes in the first place.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech.

He talked about the fact that the Conservatives have acknowledged in recent years that incarcerating various types of criminals for longer periods does not reduce crime rates. I would like to know how he interprets that.

Does he believe that the Conservatives are simply thinking that if they leave criminals in prison longer, at least they can delay the day when the criminals come back and reoffend in society in the absence of any help or support, or does he think that this is purely about electioneering and they are using children because they know that people are sensitive to that subject? Is this simply a way to win votes, because they know that everyone is incensed at the thought of children being abused?

I wonder whether he could share his opinion and what he thinks of the Conservatives' strategy. Is it a question of delaying criminals' release from prison or is this an electioneering strategy that exploits people's emotions?