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

[Anne-Marie Day, NDP, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there are unfortunately far too many sexual deviants in our society, and the problem seems to have increased with access to the Internet. We need youth protection groups, psychologists, outreach workers and psychosocial workers.

We must intervene before, during and after. We have the names of people who are registered or on lists. It is always possible to create support groups to prevent individuals from reoffending or to simply encourage them not to reoffend. They will talk to them or intervene. However, this requires a lot of workers and funding, and this must obviously be done in co-operation with the provinces and with police forces. It is very important that we take action now for the sake of the children who have not yet been victimized by sexual predators.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to provide some input in this very important bill. It is of paramount importance that it pass through Parliament as quickly as possible.

Our government has had a very strong desire to protect children. When it comes to criminal activity such as sexual exploitation against our most vulnerable, our children, we know we must never back down in our efforts to stop these terrible crimes. When one child is hurt or exploited, it is one child too many. As a parliamentarian and a mother of six children, I am convinced that we need to do more to protect our children against sexual exploitation and believe strongly that the legislation before the House today would do just that.

I feel strongly that Canadians all across the country will pay attention to the speeches today, to the responses and to the positions of everybody on this issue. I am sure every member in the House, whether a parent, uncle, aunt, grandparent or friend, would agree that we must ensure that individuals who sexually exploit children are held fully accountable. I hope every member agrees that we must ensure the laws allow our justice system to hand out appropriate sentences that match the seriousness of the crime.

With Bill C-26, the tougher penalties for child predators act, we have an opportunity today to take an important step to protect our children from this crime that occurs far too often. As the statistics show and as was mentioned earlier, there is a 6% increase in sex offences against children. I urge all members of the House to support the passage of this bill without delay. Our children are too important, and it affects every family in Canada in one way or another.

Child sexual abuse is a crime of the most heinous nature. It causes unimaginable devastation to the lives of children. Studies have shown that it profoundly affects victims into adulthood and throughout their lives, and I dare say it affects their families as well.

Children under the age of 18 accounted for more than half the victims of sexual offences reported to police in 2012, and these numbers are unacceptable. They call for the kind of tough and decisive measures our government has proposed in this legislation. The bill contains a number of important elements, some of which fall under the responsibility of the Minister of Justice, including, as the name suggests, tougher penalties for those convicted of child sexual offences, and that is exactly what they should get: tougher penalties.

Legislation would require judges to impose consecutive sentences when convicted child sex offenders were sentenced at the same time for contact child sexual offences against multiple victims or for child porn and contact child sexual offences. With this legislation, both the maximum and minimum penalties for child offences would be increased, as would the maximum penalties for violating conditions of supervision orders. This is well put when 6% more offences are occurring in our great country.

The bill also includes many practical measures at better safeguarding children against sexual exploitation, both in Canada and abroad. Our government often speaks about the need to ensure that law enforcement has the tools it needs to do its job of helping to keep citizens safe. That is certainly a key preoccupation of mine and I am proud of our government's record. It is a record upon which we can further build this legislation.

For the purposes of our discussion today, the tool in question is the National Sex Offender Registry, administered by the RCMP and used by police officers all across the country. It goes without saying that law enforcement agencies need to be aware of the location of registered sex offenders, and that is where the registry comes in. As of January 2015, there were approximately 37,000 registered sex offenders on the registry. Of those, approximately 25,000 have a conviction for a child sex offence.

Clearly, the National Sex Offender Registry is a vital tool for police in that it provides officers with rapid access to information on registered sex offenders who are living or working in a given area and can help police in their work to prevent or investigate sexual crimes.

Members in this House know that our government has made some legislative improvements already to enhance the effectiveness of the registry. In 2011, we ensured that convicted sex offenders were automatically included in the registry and were required to give a mandatory DNA sample to the National DNA Data Bank.

However, we could do more to strengthen its effectiveness as a tool to assist police in carrying out their work. To do that, we need to make some important amendments to the legislation that governs the registry, namely the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. As members know, that act came into force in 2004 and authorized the establishment of the data base containing information on convicted sex offenders across Canada. It includes information such as the offender's name, address, place of employment, and physical description.

Let me describe how the proposed amendments in the legislation before us would improve the effectiveness of the registry, beginning with the enhanced reporting requirements that would be imposed on sex offenders.

Obviously, reporting requirements are very important to ensure that police have up-to-date information on the whereabouts of registered sex offenders, including when they travel outside of Canada. As it stands today, registered sex offenders are required to report in person to registry officials on an annual basis and within seven days if they change either their addresses or legal names. They must also notify registry officials within seven days of a change in employment or volunteer activity, including the type of work they do.

All registered sex offenders are required to report the dates of absences of seven days or more for travel either within or outside of Canada. These are critical reporting requirements from the perspective of both accountability and public safety. However, they do not go far enough. At present, these offenders are only required to provide specific destinations and addresses for travel within Canada. Here is where it is obvious that there is a need for increased accountability and reporting.

Canada is one of many countries on the international stage that is gravely concerned about child sex tourism. Our determination to protect children from sexual crime does not stop at our borders. It extends to children everywhere. That is why, with this bill, we are taking measures to increase the reporting requirements for sex offenders who travel abroad and are imposing even more stringent requirements on those who have committed these crimes against children.

Registered sex offenders with a child sex offence would be required to report, in advance, international travel of any duration. This would now include a requirement to provide the address or locations where they will be staying and the specific dates of their travel.

As for other registered sex offenders, that is, those who do not fall into the category of child sex offender, their reporting requirements would be as follows.

They would have to report any trips of seven days or longer, again including the dates and addresses or locations where they would be staying. They would also be required to report their passport and driver's licence numbers. Of note, the new reporting obligations would apply to those currently in the registry and those convicted after the legislation comes into force. Taken together, these changes would have the effect of ensuring that police have better information regarding the whereabouts of travelling sex offenders.

Another critical part is information sharing. The next element in the bill I will highlight is how we would provide for the exchange of information on certain registered sex offenders between the officials responsible for the registry and those at the Canada Border Services Agency, CBSA.

As members have heard, under the current legislative framework, there is no specific legal mechanism for this information to be shared at the present time. While the current legislation allows registry information to be shared in certain circumstances, including to police services, there is no such authority for sharing with CBSA. This gap in information sharing obviously inhibits our knowledge about the travel of sex offenders. It is a gap that needs to be addressed.

Given its responsibility for management of our borders, CBSA can and should be one of the authorities involved in receiving and providing information that assists in monitoring the travel of sex offenders.

With this bill we would close the information gap by providing the authority for officials at the registry to regularly disclose information to the CBSA about child sex offenders who are assessed as a high risk to reoffend. The bill would also allow sharing of information between the RCMP and CBSA on other registered sex offenders on a case-by-case basis.

I would note here that the RCMP would implement a risk assessment process to determine those child offenders who present the highest risk to reoffend. The experts in the police forces are the people to do this.

Upon receiving a list of these offenders, the CBSA would then ensure that the sex offenders' names were placed on their lookout system. Border officials would also be authorized to collect travel information from these offenders upon their return to Canada and to share it with National Sex Offender Registry officials, including the date of departure and return to Canada and every address or location at which they stayed outside of Canada.

This type of enhanced information sharing would achieve two very important outcomes. The first is that we would better enable authorities to investigate and prevent crimes of a sexual nature. The second is that we would put the authorities in a better position to address any potential breaches in the reporting obligations of the offenders.

These are reasonable changes that just make sense. If we are going to keep a closer eye on the travel habits of sex offenders, it only stands to reason that our border officials and National Sex Offender Registry officials need to be able to share the information.

The final element of the bill is one that would allow us to further deliver on our commitment to Canadians to protect our communities from sex offenders. This is very important to our government, because Canadians want and deserve access to information they feel could protect their families. They feel that they need to have this information, and that includes information about potentially high-risk individuals who live in their communities. That information should be easily accessible and available to all Canadians, and this bill would pave the way for that.

The proposed public database, the high risk child sex offender database, would be separate from the National Sex Offender Registry, which is accessible only to police. This new high risk child sex offender database would be searchable by the entire Canadian public. It would include information about those high-risk child sex offenders who have already been the subject of a public notification in a provincial or territorial jurisdiction. They would be well known anyway to the public.

Our government believes that it is only right that Canadians have the ability to access this type of information with a few simple clicks on the computer. After all, knowledge of the presence of high-risk child sex offenders in the city would empower parents to take appropriate precautions to protect their children.

To that end, I can assure members of this House that consultations are under way with the provinces and territories regarding police notifications and the proposed database. We continue to work closely with these partners to develop further criteria to define the high-risk child sex offenders who would be included in the new publicly accessible database

As members can see, our government has developed a clear path forward to better protect the public from offenders with one of the most troubling forms of criminal behaviour we have to face in society. I am speaking as one who has worked with many trafficked victims and many children who have been sexually violated.

There is an impact on a family, and it is not just poor people, aboriginal people, or girls who are out looking for a boyfriend, or whatever people say. What we are talking about is a predatory kind of crime that looks to prepubescent children for the perpetrator's sexual gratification.

This bill would do much to close the gaps out there now. When we see a 6% increase in child exploitation and child sex offences, clearly, in Canada, there is a problem. That is why our government has taken bold steps to protect children. It has taken bold steps to ensure that we do every possible thing to enhance information sharing and communication between police forces and to protect our children from sexual exploitation and sexual crimes.

We would improve the accountability of sex offenders and better protect those who need safeguarding from crimes of a sexual nature. Those are our children.

I have to say that I am very proud to be part of a government that has taken a very clear stand on this. Today it is particularly interesting to hear some of the comments, because we as parliamentarians have to take a very responsible attitude and make sure that the children throughout our country are protected from sexual predators. It is frivolous to vote against or block anything that would do that. Certainly this particular bill would close many gaps. Even now, a lot of children are at risk without these gaps being closed.

I hope parliamentarians on all sides of the House will put aside their partisan concerns. I know that an election is coming soon, but by the same token, Canadians all across the country want these laws. They want their children protected. They want to know where the individuals who have been convicted of sexual offences against children reside.

We cannot heal sexual offences against children. They learn how to be survivors, but the occurrence comes back to them over and over again. The first thing I believe parliamentarians have to do in one voice is protect the most vulnerable in this country.

This is too important for political interference. We need to take the heart of the nation and the heart of the parents and children who are reaching out to the House of Commons today and put these laws into place and ensure that their families are safe.

[Francine Raynault, NDP, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her speech. I remind the government that the NDP is supporting this bill at third reading.

We know that the RCMP already has a hard time keeping criminal records up to date because they do not have adequate resources. How does the Conservative government think the RCMP can do all of this extra work effectively without additional resources?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, in this economy, we can always say that we need more money and more police officers. We also need more education. What has happened throughout this Parliament is that our government has educated all of Canada. It takes a nation to stop this kind of thing.

As for the $10 million that keeps coming up, it was not spent by the RCMP. If anyone has ever seen RCMP officers from units like that, it takes a lot to go into a unit like that. It takes training. It takes heart. It is a sacrifice for the family. That money was not spent, but right now in this country, for the first time, we have laws on human trafficking. For the first time, we have put laws in that people are learning about, and more training is coming to the forefront.

I can see that as we move on in this manner, we will have less of this problem, and the resources will be utilized very prudently.

[Adam Vaughan, Liberal, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the most tragic elements of child sexual abuse is the fact that people who are abused are often the people who end up becoming perpetrators. It is a horrible dynamic we have to deal with.

There are three things we absolutely know about high-risk sex offenders when it comes to children. First, most of those who victimize have been victimized themselves. Second, the most serious offenders are almost automatically listed as dangerous offenders nowadays, but they also have a history of escalating charges. In other words, they get caught committing relatively minor offences and it escalates, as there is not progressive punishment.

Finally, preventing repeat offenders is the most effective way of protecting children. Fundamentally, the most important step a government can take is to stop repeat offenders from repeating.

With all of this in mind, why did the government cut the most important, successful, and effective program that stopped offenders from reoffending? If we know that as a matter of science, why on God's earth would we stop the most effective program from being present in our communities and protecting our children? How does the government square that directive?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to ask how the members across the way square the fact that they voted against increased penalties for sexual offences against children when Bill C-10 was here in this Parliament.

Our government has been, as the first in many governments, focused on the victims, focused on the families first. There is a limited amount of resources. We have other programs that do address these other issues as well. However, when we talk about what is important, how in the world can anybody vote against protecting children?

It is a deterrent when people have increased penalties. It is a deterrent when the communities are looking at how they can keep their communities safe. We have people in schools and churches all across this nation who are gathering and talking about how they can have neighbourhood watch and how they can ensure that they know more about where sexual predators are.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, members across the way laugh about this, and I think that is kind of a sad commentary because the protection of our children is of paramount importance.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, could my colleague comment on those of us who have been involved with policing in our own communities, and the difficulty actually of finding individuals within the policing community who really want to go down this road? As has been mentioned across the aisle many times, they accuse the minister of not spending the $10 million. Frankly, having been on the governance side of policing in my community, the challenges that police face in this category of crime are enormous.

I know the member has a personal relationship with that, and she mentioned it during her speech. I wonder if she could comment further on that. This is unbelievable policing when it comes down to where the rubber meets the road on this issue.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it would take a former police officer to ask a question like that. I thank my colleague.

Having said that, the member talks about the difficulties of policing and being in ICE units. How do police officers sit for hours watching a TV that shows the rapes, and hearing the children's cries? They know that they have to go and find out where those children are, because many of the predators film what they do. How do they go into an establishment and pick up a child when they have finally found her, and take her out after she has been sexually abused for a very long time? When they take the hand of that child, that hand is the same as the hand of their children. I know when I rescued a 14-year-old, her hand reminded me of my youngest daughter's hand when I took it.

Those police officers connect personally with what happens. I know, years afterward, they still hear the cries, the dreams still come. I know my own son talked about it, that when he went to sleep he could hear the cries of the children and he could not get the door down, and that was a recurring dream. That happens to a lot of ICE officers. The policing of this kind of thing is very challenging.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Mr. Speaker, if I am not mistaken, the son of our colleague from Kildonan—St. Paul worked on child pornography investigations. First, if that is the case, I commend his son. It must be a very hard job to have to search through the evidence in these sorts of cases. It really must be very difficult. I applaud his son for the work that he does.

However, I disagree with one of my colleague's comments. I did not understand it. The Conservatives themselves admitted that $10 million was not used. That money should have been used by the police units tasked to investigate pedophilia cases. Our colleague was saying that the money was not spent because—and surely his argument is valid—it is very difficult to find police officers who are willing to participate in these investigations and that those officers then have to be given a lot of training. I understand all that. It must be a long and difficult process. However, what I do not understand and what I would like my colleague to explain is why, rather than sending those millions of dollars elsewhere, was the money not kept and heavily invested in recruiting and training these people, if it is so difficult to get the job done?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very good comment. This government put forth a national action plan against human trafficking for exactly that, for training for police officers. The laws in Canada are very new on human trafficking and some of them are newer on child exploitation and sexual offences. When the member mentions the money that goes into that, our government put lots of money in to try to meet the needs that are out there because the need is greater than what has been addressed today. We need trained police officers.

I also want to point out that public safety did put in $2.5 million to combat child sexual exploitation. Those dollars were used for programming, for awareness and for all those kinds of things as well. It is not only that $10 million, but there are other dollars that have gone in to help on the other side of it too.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I am splitting my time with the member for Laval—Les Îles.

The stats are troubling. One out of three girls and one out of six boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. These statistics mean that right now in Canada there are five million girls who have been sexually abused and 2.8 million boys. That number is too high. That is a statistic that should trouble everyone in Canada.

That is part of the reason why we are supporting Bill C-26 going forward, but we do not believe that the bill goes far enough and I will explain why. Some 95% of child sexual abuse victims know their perpetrator in some way, a statistic from the Badgley commission in the eighties, and 68% are abused by a family member, someone within their family: stepfather, father or an uncle. When we think of these statistics, the problem becomes much more complex.

I am the father of a 10-year-old girl. I have another daughter on the way. She is due to be born in June. These statistics are troubling to me as a father. It is something that is always on my mind. It is always a worry that one day something might happen to my daughter.

New Democrats have zero tolerance for child sexual abuse. I would like to think that zero tolerance for child sexual abuse does not mean that we only get the predator after the perpetrator has abused the child, because that, in effect, is what the bill is addressing. For everything that is addressed in the bill, the sexual abuse has already happened. My hope as a father is that we could get rid of child sexual abuse before it happens, before any child in this country is abused.

There is nothing in Bill C-26 that will stop a child from being abused. I will explain why. The reason is that once the police put a predator in jail, the predator has abused a child. Once a perpetrator's name is in a database, the perpetrator has abused a child already. The abuse has already happened.

My question to my colleague, who may or may not be listening to me speaking about this, is that we have to find the solution to stopping sexual abuse before it happens. We have to reduce this problem that is in our country.

That said, we do support measures to remove child sexual predators from general society to protect the children they may further abuse. We even went to the point during the debates on Bill C-10 to approach the House leader and the minister responsible to say that we would take all the measures for child sexual predators out of the omnibus legislation and fast-track them through the House right away, make them into law right away. Unfortunately, the other side did not accept that. We thought that the need to pass them was pressing and that is why we proposed that. We would agree with putting these predators away so that the abuse stops.

However, we have to start talking about real action and we have to back up this action with actual funding, because tough words will not solve the problem. We also have to keep an open mind when we discuss this, because child sexual abuse is a wicked problem. It does not have simple solutions.

The statistics I cited at the top of my speech should make members think. Often when abuse happens in a family, the child is unwilling to speak because it may be a father or a stepfather. In the children's minds, they are trying to protect their family in one way, and yet they are trying to protect themselves. It is a very confusing experience for a child.

The Child Molestation Research & Prevention Institute in the U.S. says:

Professionals - physicians and therapists - can never put an end to sexual abuse; neither can the police or the courts. Why? Because they come on the scene too late. By the time they get there, the children have already been molested.

Therefore, the question we should be asking is, how do we prevent child abuse? We need to have frank discussions. The member across mentioned education, but part of the education piece that needs to happen is how to talk within families about abuse. It should not just be talking about the predator being a stranger outside of the family who is somehow going to infiltrate the family to abuse the children. Often the abuser is within the family already. Therefore, we need the tools to have these frank discussions about issues of abuse and issues of consent. As I said, 95% of the people are known to the children and 68% are often a family member.

At the core, sending molesters to jail as a solution to child molestation will always fail our children because in order for a molester to be jailed children will be abused. This is again from the institute. It is the same with treatment. When people who perpetrate child sexual abuse are identified for treatment, they have often already abused the child.

The member across the way also said that what we think of child sexual predators is not always the case. It is not one ethnic group and not one social class. There was actually a study done. It was called the Abel and Harlow child molestation prevention study. It looked at 4,000 admitted child molesters, men from the ages of 18 to 20. They found the following statistics: 77% were married; 93% were religious, men of faith; 46% had college educations; and 65% had normal steady work. After stating that, what does a child sexual predator look like? Physically, it could look like many of the men in this chamber. It is not what we imagine it to be on the outside.

They look like normal men on the outside, but on the inside they have a disorder that has been identified under the DSM as pedophilia. Pedophilia is an awful mental disorder. We do not discuss attacking this disorder enough. Often pedophilia is identified in the teenage years in men. There are signs that appear that can be signals. If we flag them soon enough, we might be able to prevent sexual abuse from occurring. If we could identify in the teenage years the signs of this disorder, then we could actually attack it right at the root.

This is where we have to attack it because then we could actually prevent these men, and sometimes women, from actually committing the sexual abuse. We have to focus on the cause. We have to develop a prevention plan to prevent sexual abuse from ever happening.

Bill C-26 does a wonderful job of looking at what to do after someone has abused a child. We would put them in jail and put them in a database. However, we really need to take action on finding a way to prevent child abuse from ever happening in the first place.

The way we are going to do that is to have a frank discussion. We have to stop portraying this as a stranger that is going to perpetrate sexual abuse on a child. We know the statistics. There have been many studies done. We have to really put the resources toward the root of the problem and start having frank discussions within our families and with our neighbours about the roots of sexual abuse.

We need to start to put our energy into this, so that those seven million children in our country, that I cited as the next generation, will have even less abuse and eventually, hopefully, we can eradicate this problem from our society entirely.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his impassioned speech. As a father of two daughters, as well, I can certainly understand where he is coming from.

He did touch a bit on the crux of the issue. He said we do not know who these people are. They could be any one of us, and certainly, dealing with pedophilia and child sexual assault is multi-faceted.

Why does the member think that serving sentences consecutively and having an increase in maximum prison sentences for sexual offences in Bill C-26 is not going to stop additional attacks on children?

Certainly, we can start at the root of the problem, but this is also going to address repeat offenders. That is also very important. Why does he not think this would address that?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech already, New Democrats are supporting the legislation. I also said that imposing jail sentences does stop the further abuse. I do not think I said anything in my speech that contradicted the fact that we need to stop further abuse.

The crux of my speech was that we have to actually stop abuse before it happens. This bill addresses elements after the abuse has happened. I would like to see legislation put before the House that would actually reduce the prevalence of abuse, get to the root of it, and stop people from abusing, rather than addressing it after the fact and being reactionary after the abuse has already happened.