I recognize the importance of the justice issues in this, and they are very important, and I appreciate what I'm hearing. As well, I'd like to remind committee members that this is also about a community standards issue. We're really talking about children as we define “children” under the UN convention that deals with children. It's under 18. Our current pornography laws deal with children who are under 18. As long as we as a society think of those who are under 18 as children, I think any laws we come up with should reflect the fact that they are children and that as we raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16, we are still dealing with children.
I just want to remind us that not only is it about the justice issues, but it's also about the overall broader issue of raising the community standard so that all adults think of anybody under the age of 18 as a child and continue to treat them as a child.