Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am relatively new to this. I am, however, a father of three young girls. I was in civic politics for 12 years, so I understand community mores. I understand police forces. We had a municipal force and then we had the RCMP. I lived all that, and I've never heard a police officer, especially one representing a group, use the phrase “We don't have the support of our courts”. I'm going to follow up with that privately through correspondence.
I understand that there was a res gestae here, and an emotional angle and a context, but be assured, Mr. Griffin, I want to follow up with that and not waste time, as we seem to have done a little bit here--wasted a little bit of time on the politics and the emotion. It's an emotional issue; I understand that.
As I understand it, this bill comes here for the first time with a close-in-age exemption of five years. I may be wrong about that, and I'll stand to be corrected, but it makes it very easy, from my point of view, to support. I think we should just bring a consensual motion, forget the rest of the testimony, and pass the bill. That's what I think we should do, and I might bring a motion to that effect, Mr. Chairman.
On some of the facts, Mr. Comartin, who I think was.... I mean, I'll fight the NDP any time, but I think he was unfairly attacked for saying that it would be nice to have some facts. I understand that there's a dark hole there for which you can't get the statistics.
I think it is important to mention that saying that Canada is behind all of the other industrialized countries on this issue is not really true because France, Italy and Germany, for example, which are western industrialized countries, have similar rules and a similar age of consent. We are now about average and we are turning in the direction of the United States and of Australia. That is good, but it is good to state the truth.
I understand that we're right in the middle. I understand that the Criminal Code was enacted at the age of 12 and things change. This is where we are.
I'd frankly like to know this, especially from the police investigating witnesses. The context of this seems to be that we're facing increased danger. I don't doubt that.
As long as my little girls are on Club Penguin, I'm okay. I understand that. I don't have shares in Club Penguin, but I should. I think they take something from my credit card every month.
The point is that it's the Internet and it's computers. What more could we do legislatively for future work to clamp down on it, whether it's a telecommunications thing or resources?
I heard you speak on resources. I know all about resources for the police. I've lived through that too, with the budget, fighting with the RCMP to get more men on the street.
What could we do to crack down on the real source of this, which is the Internet?
I'll start with the RCMP.
My compliments to you. The force was incredibly successful recently on an international scale in this regard.