As you've said in the question, the reforms proposed by Bill C-2 reintroduce what was in Bill C-22, basically increasing the age of protection from 14 to 16 and maintaining the age of protection at 18 for acts related to the sex trade or prostitution. The Criminal Code already prohibits, since 1997, child sex tourism. In other words, if a Canadian resident or citizen goes abroad and engages in one of the enumerated child sex offences--any of the offences that would apply under the new age of protection--they could be convicted here in Canada for committing that offence abroad, as if the offence had been committed here in Canada.
Right now the way the law works is that if the offence is committed against a person under the age of 14, the existing child sex tourism provision would enable a Canadian prosecution here for that offence, provided that the offender wasn't convicted for that same incident abroad in the country where the offence was alleged to have been committed. Raising the age of consent from 14 to 16 will protect youths here, 14- and 15-year-olds, against sexual exploitation by adults. Similarly, it will raise the age at which the child sex tourism provisions will apply. So for whatever the offence would have been here in Canada, if the new age of protection is 16, for the child-specific offence, the child sex tourism offence would apply to that.
Certainly the justice committee heard testimony from some of the police witnesses about the sophistication of some adult predators, particularly in terms of using the Internet to try to lure young persons for the purposes of committing a sexual offence against them or exploiting them. Again, raising the age of protection will better protect youth against that kind of conduct on the Internet.
Some of those witnesses did say that they have seen, through some of the exchanges the undercover police have seen, references to Canada's age of protection being lower. Perhaps that is an attraction for some predators from outside of the country. Certainly there have been reported cases where somebody has been coming from, say, the United States to meet up with someone they've met on the Internet to follow through on the Internet luring, and they've been caught at the border. That evidence has been provided to the justice committee.