Thank you very much.
My apologies for being late this morning. I've had a streak of bad luck recently, and I hope it didn't follow me into the committee room this morning.
As stated, I work for the National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre. I'm an RCMP member, but I work in the centre, which is part of Canada's national strategy for the protection of children from sexual exploitation on the Internet.
My job, day in and day out, is dealing with the sexual exploitation of children in Canada and internationally. Part of our responsibility at the centre is to remain current on the changing social and criminal environments in Canada so that our prevention and enforcement efforts are aligned and effective. One of our roles is to assist and enable police forces across Canada by developing training for investigators, recommending investigational standards, and identifying legislative and other impediments that get in the way of maintaining safe homes and safe communities.
In this role, we at the national centre are constantly in contact with community members, border officers, social and medical workers, and police investigators across Canada who are responsible for the investigation of Internet-facilitated sexual exploitation. Based on that consultation and my own personal experience as a police officer, l can tell you that raising the age of protection for sexual activity has frequently been identified as a desirable legislative amendment. Based on our collective experience, we believe the current age of protection of 14 is of significant detriment to our efforts to protect children 14 and 15 years old from sexual exploitation. And it is always preferable to prevent crime rather than to investigate it after the damage has occurred.
We believe the amendment being considered today will greatly assist in the prevention, deterrence, and, when necessary, the investigation of adults who sexually exploit Canadian children.
We also support that the proposed bill ensures that consensual activity between young people is not criminalized. This law recognizes that youth will explore sexual development and can legally do so with similar-aged peers. The bill properly leaves the question of sex between teens as a moral issue and not a legal one.
This bill is specifically designed to protect young teens from being targeted by adults who seek out 14- and 15-year-olds as an age group, who have sometimes physically matured but are still developing their emotional maturity. That children are still developing this emotional maturity at that age is recognized in a number of ways by protective laws that already exist. Children aged 14 are not allowed to view movies with restricted adult content. They're not allowed to drive, to get credit, to drink alcohol, to serve in the military, or to sign a legal document. However, under the current law, they can consent to have sexual activity with someone many times their age. So with the exception of sexual activity, teens under 16 years of age are presently prohibited from many activities that involve avoidable risk.
We know there are adults who pay very close attention to what the age of protection is. We go to websites and chat rooms that promote sex between adults and children and that list the age of consent for countries across the world. Of course, Canada stands out there. In one website, they define the age of consent as “the age at which you can touch your special friend without either of you getting into trouble”.
To add to this, the Internet has created a portal for sexual offenders to make contact with our children in what used to be the safety of their own homes and schools. Our experience is that there is an abundance of adults online, at any given time, trying to make contact with a child for a sexual purpose.
During a recent training course we ran on Internet luring, which of course is a huge issue, 20 police officers went online in public chat rooms for one hour. Of those officers posing as children, nine received live webcam video images of masturbation, and over a dozen luring attempts were documented. Many of these officers were approached by adults wishing sex within seconds of going online.
Luring is rampant because of the anonymity of the Internet, which provides offenders from anywhere in the world the opportunity to solicit numerous children at the same time without leaving their own homes, that is, until they make contact and have set up meets. Age, sex, and location are always the first questions asked, allowing offenders to identify viable targets.
Because the age of consent is 14, we often see 13-year-olds being targeted. Offenders will invest months grooming 13-year-olds, waiting for them to turn 14, when they can legally have sex with them. The Internet is such a fertile ground to meet teens, as they are using it more and more for social networking, and that networking, or that use of the computer, is often unsupervised. Parents don't know what is happening, and I'm sure you've probably heard today that a recent survey showed that 25% of children have indicated they will actually meet someone they've met online without telling anyone.
Of course, you've already heard as well that not only is domestic luring on the rise, but Canada is also being touted as a sex tourism destination. Our investigators have been on websites where pedophiles from other countries go goo-goo over Canadian pedophiles who have this law that allows them to have sex with 14- and 15-year-olds. In recent cases in Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and right here in Ottawa, Europeans and Americans have come to Canada for the sole purpose of having sex with a child who is 14 or 15 years old because it's illegal in their countries.
Canada's age of protection is one of the lowest in the western industrialized nations. The United Kingdom, the U.S., and Australia are noted for their aggressive efforts to combat Internet-facilitated sexual exploitation, and their age of protection is no less than 16. Canada has demonstrated a very strong commitment to fighting these types of crimes, so this age of protection bill will bring us more in line with these progressive countries.
A case last week that happened in Quebec highlights the problem with the current age of consent or age of protection. A 15-year-old girl met a 50-year-old man on the Internet. He groomed her and had consensual sex with her. Her parents found out. They turned to the police for help and were angered by the fact that we could do nothing. No criminal charges were possible. We weren't even able to get a warrant to look on his computer to see if he was grooming any other children, because that's simply allowed here.
The bill will also provide more consistency in the law. In a recent case in Alberta, an adult male took a 16-year-old girl to a hotel room, took sexually exploitive photographs of her, and he was quite rightly charged with the production of child pornography. However, had he just taken a 14- or 15-year-old girl in there and had sex with her without photographing it, there would have been nothing we could have done.
In my experience, both dealing with people in a consultative manner and as a policeman on the street, I cannot begin to tell you the number of times that I've been called by parents who are outraged that a much older person is having a relationship with their 14- or 15-year-old child. They are of the mistaken belief that young teens are already protected from anyone who is more than five years their senior. Our experience has been that Canadians believe it is illegal already for a 50-year-old male to have a sexual relationship with a 14- or 15-year-old teen. I don't mean to pick on 50-year-old males.
In conversation with the public and in our dealings with parents and victims, they are often horrified to learn that once you're 14, you're free game. This bill more accurately reflects the age of protection that we believe Canadians will accept and in fact already believe exists. This amendment will impact on the workload of police agencies because we will be able to do something about this problem now, but it will have an even greater, positive impact on our children and our families, so it is very worth it.
If this amendment is passed, the NCECC and its police partners and community partners will work to raise public awareness that the age of protection in Canada has been raised and that Canada is not a sex tourism destination.
Thank you.