Thank you very much.
May I say to the minister, not only is it a pleasure to see you here, but I wish you well in your new appointment. I'm going to miss you sitting beside me, but I'm sure you won't miss me. You will be hearing from me. And you'll be glad to hear that I will be very gentle to the new minister in comparison to the past.
There are some things I would like to mention. I think it's great that you are looking at the stats going back to 1970 and that you're looking at the bigger picture of where we're at in this country in terms of serious crime. I really hope we can look at that avenue as being very effective.
I want to mention how pleased I am to see the age of consent being mentioned in your talk. I think you know what that means to me personally, and only this last week, with 14- and 15-year-olds being taken out of the sex trade in Calgary. It's just really good news. We have to start doing something about these children who get caught up in these kinds of messes.
And I'm pleased to hear your comments and views on section 745. I appreciate that.
I'll make this comment. I believe that Bills C-9 and C-10 are a step in a direction that could create a great deal of deterrence, and when you deter crime, then of course you're going to have less crime. I think that's the object of any government: what we can do to have less crime.
The two points I would like you to comment on before any others are two that have bugged the devil out of me for a long time. Number one, having worked with Paul Gillespie and other police forces across the country with regard to child pornography, I am so pleased with their efforts. And I'm extremely pleased to hear that Bill Gates and software companies are coming aboard and formulating international ideas to deal with this evil multi-billion-dollar industry.
I would like your comments on where we're going with child pornography. And may I suggest mandatory minimums should be considered for offenders using child pornography.
Second, one of the things that has bugged me the most is the amount of money we spend on courts. For example--and this is one example of many I've had--about seven our eight years ago, a fellow by the name of Christopher Goodstoney had a head-on collision that killed four young people from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. At his initial trial he pled guilty. He was driving drunk. That was the start of it. Five years and eighteen court cases later, they finally came to the sentencing of Christopher Goodstoney. For the life of me, I cannot understand what causes these lengthy court trials, particularly in these most obvious cases. Yet there are many of them. Could you address that?