Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for your presentations here and your time today.
I want to say to Ms. Prober, from Beyond Borders, that in 1993, when I first came here, one of my main personal objectives was to do everything I could to get rid of this child pornography and other things that are destroying and hurting the lives of our kids. It has been a constant battle.
I'll be honest with you. For thirteen years I have not been able to understand why grown-up men and women, including judges in the courts who make certain decisions, cannot arrive at something that would really help in that area. But we always seem to run into this idea of having to be careful because it probably won't pass the charter test. In other words, the rights of some people are more important than the protection and the safety of our children. That's the way it has always come across. I don't know how we're ever going to defeat that, but that has to be done sometime in the future, because that is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. And what a shame that it has grown to that extent over these years.
So I really appreciate your work, and you keep it up. I want to state that right off the bat.
I want to say to the Church Council, I'm not sure how you arrive at your decisions and your recommendations regarding Bill C-9. I looked at the list of founding churches, and I happen to belong to one of them. I don't believe that the church I belong to, which is very huge in membership, would agree with anything you said today. I have received a lot of petitions over the years, particularly from certain church groups, that are pronouncing the very things that I think Bill C-9 is promoting. That's the part I want to get to.
When the Beyond Borders lady said you cannot rely on criminal justice statistics alone, I agree with that, but one statistic that you can rely on is the fact that, I know now, after a 2,500,000-person petition tabled in 1994, led by Priscilla de Villiers and a victim's group, and in addition, all the petitions that have been occurring over the last ten years...we're into several millions of petitions demanding that something be done with this justice system. That's from the people who pay for it, and they deserve to be safe under it.
So I'd like to know how you arrive at a decision when I really have a tough time understanding from this list that you have that much support from the group.
James, you're stressing the importance of a voice of the victims. I couldn't agree with you more. The victims are not involved in there enough.
I appreciated David's proposal, but I'll be honest with you. All the people in my riding who signed these petitions, and all that, really wouldn't quite understand where you're coming from. I would suggest that you wouldn't make a presentation like this in my riding, which is heavy cattle country, if you get my point.