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

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely, I do believe in prevention. However, I believe that prevention for certain criminal offences is more difficult than for others. We can prevent theft by taking certain steps as citizens to discourage people from taking things from our houses.

When it comes to people who prey on our children, they are pedophiles. In my past and present experience, I have talked to psychiatrists who treat people with pedophilia, and there is no real cure for it. How do we prevent a pedophile from engaging in what we consider to be an aberration and a terrible act against the most vulnerable in society?

Most of these pedophiles are what we would consider to be very intelligent, meaning that they know how to gain trust in order to get at their prey, which is our children. They put themselves in positions of authority, so we as a society have brought in measures to make sure we check the criminal background of people like teachers and boy scout leaders, anyone who has access to young people. We could say that this is prevention, somewhat.

The real prevention is letting the people who are pedophiles know that if they commit this crime, there will be consequences and they will be serious consequences. Additionally, if they do commit the crime and go to prison, we will do everything we can. We cannot necessarily cure them of that problem, but we will give them the tools with which to do so, through counselling and having psychologists and psychiatrists do their best to treat them, so that they can subdue these tendencies they have.

However, that takes a long time. That is why we are bringing in this legislation.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his intervention and speech today. Obviously, his law enforcement background and his work here in this chamber have done a lot in fighting these kinds of issues.

He explained that we have an environment in which people are becoming more and more comfortable with bringing it up when someone has mistreated a child or they have suspicions of that. Because the Conservative government has taken such a hard stand on making sure that people do serious time for violence and sexual assault crimes, there may be a temptation to go offshore. There are provisions in this bill that would also deal with those kinds of things.

Does the member believe that the government, by introducing this bill and some of the provisions in it, is protecting not just Canadian children but also children outside of our borders?

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, absolutely. As I mentioned in my speech, we would be able to provide the Canada Border Services Agency with the ability to access the sex offender registry, put an obligation on the people who have been convicted, and say that if they are going to travel outside of this country, we can keep an eye on them.

We know that there are certain countries in the world where pedophiles like to go. I will not mention the countries in particular because we do not want to create some problems, but I think most of us know that there are certain Asian countries and other places in the world where it is easier to get access to young children. We are co-operating with those governments, and we want to be able to make sure we can keep an eye on those people leaving Canada.

We need to protect children not just within our country. We have an obligation as citizens of the world to protect those vulnerable citizens, those children, throughout the rest of the world. That is what part of this legislation would do. As the member just mentioned, it would give the tools to the Canada Border Services Agency that it needs to keep track of people who are disposed to want to cause terrible harm to young children.

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.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise on debate on the tougher penalties for child predators act.

Although members of the House do not always agree on the best approach to tackle challenging societal problems, I am confident we can all agree on the need to act to better protect children from the heinous crime of sexual exploitation.

Since 2011, children accounted for approximately half of all victims of police-reported sexual assault in Canada. Clearly this is unacceptable, and clearly it is incumbent on us to do everything in our control to better safeguard children from a crime that leaves an everlasting impact. The government strongly believes that further measures are warranted in this regard and that is why it has brought forward this legislation.

The tougher penalties for child predators act is a comprehensive piece of legislation that would allow us to better protect communities and children from convicted sex offenders, both in Canada and abroad. The changes we have proposed in the bill would allow us to move ahead on two different fronts, one that is supported by the Department of Justice and one that is supported by Public Safety Canada.

The first element, broadly speaking, addresses penalties for child sexual offences through amendments to the Criminal Code. The second deals with changes to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, which I will get into in a few moments.

As we heard from the Minister of Justice, when the bill was first introduced our government proposed a number of enhancements that would allow us to ensure that penalties for child sexual offences would better reflect the long-lasting damage inflicted on young victims and further hold offenders accountable for their actions. Members of the House will not be surprised to hear me reiterate our government's firm belief that the punishment should fit the severity of the crime. I trust that members agree with me that, when we speak of the crime of sexual exploitation against children, this is a particularly important principle of living in a law-abiding society. There is no question that children are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse and exploitation, so now is the time to act.

The other set of changes we are proposing is with respect to the information available to law enforcement about registered sex offenders and, of course, to the public.

As we have heard, the bill contains proposed amendments to the Sex Offender Information Registration Act, amendments that would enhance our knowledge about the whereabouts of registered sex offenders when they travel abroad, as well as increased offender accountability. The act is the governing legislation for the national sex offender registry, the existing federal database that houses the names of convicted sex offenders across the country. As members may be aware, this database is administered by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and is accessible to police forces countrywide through a provincial-territorial registry centre. It is a vital tool that allows police to obtain a list of convicted sex offenders living or employed in a geographical area, when required for preventive or investigative purposes.

Currently, offenders subject to the registry must comply with a number of obligations with respect to reporting to registry officials. For example, they need to report each year, in addition to anytime they change their address or legal name. Further, they are obligated to notify registry officials if they plan to be away from their main or secondary residence for a period of seven days or longer. They are required to provide the estimated dates of travel, and for any domestic travel, they must provide the address or location at which they expect to stay.

With respect to international travel, registered sex offenders are not currently obligated to report absences unless those absences are seven days or longer. We feel this represents a significant gap in terms of registry officials' authority to obtain complete information on the international travel plans of registered sex offenders.

When it comes to sex offenders with a child offence conviction, they would be required to report any out-of-country absence of any length of time. Again, they would be required to provide specific travel plans, including dates and locations. All registered sex offenders would be required to report their travel dates and the addresses or locations where they are staying for any trips longer than seven days outside of Canada.

We have also proposed a change to address a gap that currently exists with respect to information sharing about registered sex offenders between the officials at the national sex offender registry and those at the Canada Border Services Agency. Some Canadians may be surprised to learn that currently there is no avenue for registry officials to share information regularly with border officials, since they are not a designated police service. In addition, the Sex Offender Information Registration Act currently does not authorize such disclosure. This unnecessarily limits our knowledge of travelling sex offenders.

It stands to reason that those on the front lines, those guarding our borders, could be playing an even more meaningful role in safeguarding our communities than they already do. With this legislation, we could empower them to do just that by giving them the right information. After all, border officials are the ones who will admit convicted sex offenders back into the country. The bill would allow for registry officials to disclose relevant information about certain registered sex offenders to Canada Border Services Agency officials, including the cases of child sex offenders who have been designated as being at a high risk to re-offend.

Such a change would allow them to be placed in a lookout system. This type of information sharing would mean that border officials would then be alerted to travelling sex offenders and that upon those offenders' return to Canada, the officials would then be in a position to collect the offenders' travel information and to share it with registry officials. This kind of exchange could allow for the investigation of crimes of a sexual nature, in addition to addressing any other potential breaches of reporting obligations of the offender. These changes, I propose, would go a long way toward helping us better protect children from this offender group in both Canada and abroad.

Finally, with this legislation, we would allow for the future creation of a publicly accessible national database of high-risk child offenders. Separate from the national sex offender registry, this database would capture those who have been the subject of public notification in a provincial or territorial jurisdiction and would be presented in a searchable format for any Canadians who wish to access such information.

We are pleased with the progress that we continue to achieve in making our streets and communities safer, particularly for the youngest members of our society. The passage of this bill and the implication of its much needed amendments would take us even further in this regard. I therefore call on all members of this place to support the protection of children, on which I have heard many encouraging things today, both at home and abroad, from the horrific crimes of child sexual exploitation.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government has introduced many bills that amend the Criminal Code in a number of ways.

Can the hon. member tell us whether the government has done any studies following up on these successive changes to the Criminal Code since it came to power in 2006?

Can the member tell me about any studies on the positive or negative impact of these successive changes to the Criminal Code and whether or not there are solid results that indicate that further bills to amend the Criminal Code of Canada should be introduced? I would like to hear about these studies.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to studies, I would point out what the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice mentioned this morning with regard to correct jurisprudence.

Through the study of case law, we have seen more and more that both the bar associations and judiciary are bringing to light the fact that in cases of sexual exploitation of a child, there is an initial offence, coupled with the recording of images, disturbing as they may be, which is a separate offence, and then the distribution of those, which is is another offence. Oftentimes, previously lasting last six or seven years, concurrent sentences were given. We believe that every time a child is victimized, both at the actual offence and then from the recording and then the distribution, the child is revictimized over and over.

I am pleased to say to the member opposite that in the studies, the courts have started choosing to impose consecutive sentencing, instead of concurrent sentencing, because the former more accurately reflects the heinous nature of these crimes.

I hope that the member opposite will look at some of these cases and see that they are truly horrific. Hopefully, we can all work together to ensure that people who prey on our children will face the full extent of the law.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is good to be here to debate this extremely important bill.

The crux of the differences here in the House relates to mandatory minimum sentences. I want to ask if the member could help all parliamentarians understand where the government actually sits on mandatory minimums.

Under the Department of Justice Act that created the department, there is a statutory obligation, which the Minister of Justice is sworn to uphold when sworn in as minister. He must table on the floor of the House of Commons, for any bill that he brings to this House, the legal opinion prepared by his expert 2,500 lawyers on his full-time staff. He must table an opinion showing that the bill he is bringing to the floor is charter proof, in other words that it is compliant with Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Has the government tabled that opinion? If it has not done so, when will it do so?

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on the subject of mandatory prison sentences, I would suggest that the member consult his own Liberal colleague, the member of Parliament for Mount Royal. When he was the justice minister he brought in more mandatory minimum sentences than any previous justice minister in the history of Canada.

In fact, mandatory minimums have been around since the turn of the 20th century. They are used specifically to reflect society's abhorrence of the heinous nature of these kinds of victimization, particularly of our youth. I would ask the member to also consult with his leader, who has said publicly that he wants to take away mandatory minimum sentences, even when they relate to the sexual abuse of another human being. I would ask the member where in the charter that kind of behaviour is allowed.

This particular bill focuses on protecting children both here and abroad. I hope that the member opposite can see past the ideological barrier that he has put before himself and help us to protect Canadian children.

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.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I should say at the outset that I intend to split my time with the member for Ottawa Centre.

I am glad to be able to participate in this debate on Bill C-26. I said earlier in the question and comment period that I appreciated both the tone and the content of most of the speeches and remarks made today, given the gravity of the subject matter and the obvious unanimous condemnation, by all parties and all members of Parliament, of this sort of activity. There can be no doubt that we genuinely want to do the best job that we humanly can to stop this kind of activity and to do all we can to pass good legislation.

Much of the bill deals with sentencing and I want to start with that in my remarks. We know that sentencing is an art as much as a science. It is a real challenge for judges to achieve the balance of the three things that sentencing seeks to do. In the first case, it is to punish bad behaviour, obviously. The public demands and is justified in demanding that perpetrators be punished. Sentences usually are and should be crafted and measured in such a way as to accurately reflect the degree of public condemnation for the nature of the offence. In this case, there could be no higher condemnation of the public.

The third and perhaps most critical element of sentencing is to deter and stop the practice. Hopefully, the sentence is significant enough that people will think twice before they risk undertaking this abhorrent practice, for fear of the punishment. However, that is where it becomes really sticky with this particular type of offence, because the psychiatric profession considers pedophilia to be a psychological disorder. I am not sure a pedophile, someone who is engaged in child sexual abuse, makes a rational choice of, “I had better not do this or else I am going to go to jail for 6 months, 9 months, 18 months, 10 years”. I am not sure reason and logic enter into it with a person who has this appalling disorder.

That is not to say that everyone who engages in child sexual abuse is a pedophile or has a psychological disorder. Some do, such as the most offensive types of business people who are selling and marketing the product of child pornography. That, I agree, we not only have to denounce and put a significant deterrent in place, but also punish thoroughly and without reservation.

Part of this bill, as I read it, gives the judge greater direction, I suppose, and in fact takes away the discretion of a judge in dealing with concurrent sentencing versus consecutive sentencing. In thinking this through, and staying with the example of child pornography, there is more than one offence associated with the production and distribution of this product, so to speak.

The actual assault on the child, of course, is a crime and warrants a strict sentence; the documenting of it, making a film of it or taping it, is a crime in and of itself; and then broadcasting and publishing the documented assault is a third crime. Therefore, there are really three criminal offences wrapped into the one act, as the law currently stands. I believe it is section 163.1 in the Criminal Code. These could be treated as one single offence and one sentence or three sentences to be served concurrently rather than consecutively.

In my view, and we will see if it gets amended or commented on during the committee stage, I do not disagree that it is reasonable to consider all three of these assaults as warranting their own punishment applied. One might say the same if there are multiple children involved. It could be perhaps 10 separate crimes with 10 individual children. I think the argument is warranted to make it a concurrent and not a consecutive issue.

While I have the floor, I want to recognize and pay tribute to a woman from Winnipeg named Rosalind Prober, who is the president and founder of an organization called Beyond Borders. This organization was founded in 1996, and she has been a tireless champion for the protection of children, both domestically and abroad. Her organization, Beyond Borders, is the Canadian arm of an international NGO based in Bangkok called ECPAT, End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes. It was Rosalind Prober who pushed for the first sex tourism laws in 1996, when Lloyd Axworthy was the foreign affairs minister. At the time, she appeared before committees saying that sex crimes of this nature against children, committed by Canadians, should be extraterritorial. In other words, the laws of Canada should and must apply to Canadian citizens as they travel abroad.

That was a breakthrough. That was almost a sea change in the mindset of Canadians, bringing awareness to the fact that sex tourism to exploit children was becoming a growing international problem. I am very proud that it offended the sensibilities of Canadians to such a degree that we expanded our domestic laws to apply to Canadians travelling abroad. It has not always worked. I have a number of examples where even the laws we have in place regarding this have failed to deter some fairly egregious examples, but I will not go into those here today, because there is no benefit.

As Bill C-26 stands, I am glad the NDP's justice critic said at the outset that we are going to support the bill to get it to committee. I think it warrants it. It deserves it. We owe it to our children to pull out all the stops and do all we can to pass the best laws possible to protect them.

I point out that the Minister of Justice, in introducing the bill, when he appeared before the justice committee, pointed out that sexual offences against children had increased 6% over the last two years. This is in spite of a number of measures taken since 2006. This Conservative government, in three parliaments, in 2006, 2008, 2011, implemented the Safe Streets and Communities Act, mandated aggravated assault where the child is under 16 years of age, made it illegal to provide sexually explicit material to a child, and raised the age of protection from 14 to 16 years of age. There are about 10 or 15 legislative changes to the Criminal Code regarding the protection of children and doing our best to stop the sexual exploitation of children, yet the minister claims that there is a 6% increase over the last two years.

We really have to look at the efficacy of the efforts made to date, and it is not unreasonable to question, then, the efficacy of the proposals put forward in Bill C-26, because frankly, everything we have done has failed to stop the escalation of these appalling incidents.

I know I am going to vote in favour of the bill to get it to committee so it can be studied more thoroughly. We owe it to our children. It is one of the most important things we can do in this 41st Parliament.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech this afternoon on a delicate subject.

I would like to ask him a question about the Conservatives' possible tactics in terms of criminal law and justice. I think the English phrase “tough on crime” captures the idea better than the French equivalent, “dur sur le crime”.

Does my colleague believe that the Conservatives are capable of using questionable tactics such as introducing bills simply so that they can turn around and say that they are tough on criminals and show their strength?

There are many documents and some studies that show that the real effect of these bills is not what was intended. The results are not as good as they thought.

Does he think the Conservatives are capable of such political tactics?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Sherbrooke had a valid point. By and large, since 2006, in the previous three Parliaments, we have seen the Conservatives rather cynically exploiting what is a standard neo-Conservative tool across the world, which is the politics of fear. They are building up a straw man and then saying that the only people who can protect us from that straw man is them, because they will get tough on crime. There is an awful problem there. Bill C-26 may be the exception.

Some of the mail-outs into my riding from the Conservative Party show a picture of a man sneaking into a bedroom window with a knife and a mask. It more or less is saying that this junkie will kill people in the night with that knife if they do not vote Conservative, because only the current Prime Minister can protect them from this straw man. The politics of fear are cheap and cynical and only lead to stacking up prisoners in prison like cordwood and passing the burden onto the provinces to pay for those prison cells.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, we will somewhat reluctantly be supporting this bill going to committee as well. There are good points and bad points.

The member mentioned the politics of fear and being tough on crime. I would like the member's view on this. There is another approach that should also be taken. We have the laws and can be tough on crime, but a better approach might be to be smart on crime. It might be finding ways to prevent these issues and these serious activities from happening by giving young people a better opportunity in life through some social programming and those types of approaches.

I have travelled on the issue of human smuggling and have seen the individuals who have been abused, both in the sex trade and the slave trade, and how they happened to fall into that trap through those who would exploit them.

I wonder if the member might provide some comments, from his point of view, on preventive measures and taking a different approach and what it might do for society.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, if we are serious about the efficacy of the bill and if we are serious that the goal is to make our streets and our children safer, then we have to be concerned about this, because if locking up more people and mandatory jail sentences led to safer streets, the United States would be the safest country in the world. It has 2.3 million people locked up in prison, and they still have rampant urban strife, violence, and social problems.

We have to question, first, whether stiffer sentences will stop a pedophile who has a psychological disorder and maybe does not use the reason and logic of penalty versus the action he or she is going to take, and second, whether in other situations and other types of crime, locking people up is really going to create safer streets. There is no empirical evidence to have us believe that.

Some states in the United States are going bankrupt because they are locking up so many people, such as Texas, Florida, and California. They are starting to say that their tough on crime agenda is bankrupting their budgets and not making their streets any safer and that all they have is more people locked up.

If we are serious about efficacy and serious about safer streets and safer children, let us make sure we are doing things right.