First, I would like to thank you for your presentations. It was truly very interesting, especially since the issue has been examined from various angles, including information. I see here many professionals, starting with Mr. Hanger, who has already presented all of that, Ms. Kohan, who appears to know the justice committee well, and Mr. Comartin, who knows a lot about the subject.
Personally, I was only recently elected. I am a bit like Mr. Frizzel, who said he has been impressed, for a year, by the scope of this problem. As a new member of Parliament, I don't have all of that baggage and I am not familiar with all of the disputes between the parties or all of the negotiations. I have not reached that level.
I am a mother. I have a 14-year-old son. For a number of years, I have been a member of the Quebec Bar, so I am a lawyer. I never imagined that the problem described this morning was so far-reaching. I hear a lot of talk about the Internet. People didn't talk about the ways in which girls were exploited before the Internet came into being.
As for the Internet, as the mother of a 14-year-old boy, it raises questions in my mind. I had never discussed this with the committee, but this morning, these issues concern me personally, as well as in my capacity as a representative of many constituents and fellow countrymen. How can we protect our children? My 14-year-old son asked me for a new computer for his birthday. Everything I am hearing leads me to wonder whether there are plans to provide any training on this. The question now is how to catch the predators, but we know that we can only catch a very small number of them.
What I said yesterday by way of preamble to the justice minister could be summed up as follows: it's all well and good to criminalize, to raise the age and all of that, but what matters is educating our children. What steps are we taking? You can try to change the whole judicial system, but what is being done to protect them?
Many young people can surf the Internet far more easily than I will ever be able to. The police should inform them and educate them, shouldn't they? Do you have any programs like that? It's all well and good to hunt down predators, but we have to educate young people and explain to them what exploitation is, so that they don't fall into the trap.