With regard to whether or not Mr. Whitmore would offend again, I mean, really; Whitmore is a hard-driven pedophile with a sexual interest in children. I just find it difficult for someone to come here--as much as I respect the view, especially around victims--and to judge someone like Whitmore, who in my view is a hard-wired pedophile who's going to sexually abuse children until you lock him up. He has proven that himself.
Whitmore is also highly manipulative. As you know, it started in Manitoba, where he literally conned a family out of their son. This is a highly skilled individual in terms of lifestyle. He was able to get jobs and to move across the country. He went out to Newfoundland and rented an apartment. He told the Newfoundlanders he was coming back with two boys. He rented a car out there, or bought one, left it there, and then came to Manitoba and started working. He in fact conned the father out of his son. The three of them--the son, the dad, and Whitmore--went off in a car. They were supposed to go camping or something. Then all of a sudden, after a week or so, the father was sent back to the city, at which point Whitmore then used this young boy to help kidnap another young boy.
Really, there are people in society who are hard-wired pedophiles. We have to accept that. In terms of conditional sentencing or anything to do with this kind of individual, this type of bill is just one little piece of what we have to do in Canada to protect children from sex offenders. I'm not saying this is the be-all and the end-all. This is just one little piece. But I don't want this committee to have any naivety at all about what a sex offender wants to do, will do, and too often does do in this society.
In terms of recidivism rates, there is a dark side to these statistics about recidivism rates: basically, children don't tell. Sexually abused kids are not the ones who are represented in these recidivism rates at all. So I also find it very difficult to hear that individuals are not sexually offending again. How do we know? You cannot rely on criminal justice statistics, absolutely not. If you're talking about the hard-core pedophiles—and not everybody who sexually abuses kids is a pedophile, for sure—some of those individuals have hundreds of victims.
In reality, then, although I respect that view, let's be real about sex offenders against children. And let's be real about the type of society we live in, which is highly sexualized. It presents children as available to be abused.