My name is Jason Gratl. I'm the volunteer president of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association. My colleague is Christina Godlewska. She's the articled student at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
We'd like to begin by thanking the members of the committee for the opportunity to make representations, however futile it might seem at this point politically. Still, we value the opportunity to put forward some of our concerns and considerations with regard to Bill C-22.
I'll begin with a general comment expressing our concern that Bill C-22 represents a fundamental shift of policy and attitude toward sexuality. In 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada, in the Butler decision dealing with the definition of obscenity, signalled a fundamental shift from the legislation of morality to the legislation of harm. From that point forward, the legislature and the courts were to look for specific types of harm, not necessarily scientifically measurable types of harm, but analytically discoverable harm, such as attitudinal harm—changes in people's attitudes toward each other that are fundamentally anti-social, psychological harm to individuals.
The idea was to rationally connect appreciable types of harm to the type of legislative endeavour underway. To our mind, that commitment to legislating against harm rather than legislating morality is endangered or imperilled by the approach this committee currently seems to be taking.
The existing protections for young people are adequate, in our submission. The sexual predators who exist in the world need to be taken account of, and much has already been done to ensure that those sexual predators are controlled, punished, deterred, and so forth, by the existing criminal law. The committee is well familiar with the crime of exploitation, as well as the restraints placed on persons in positions of trust, power, and authority to refrain from sexual contact with minors. Those go a long way to ensuring that young people are protected.
What we haven't heard before this committee, to my knowledge, is evidence that there is a rampant social problem in relation to a differential age. It's not as though there are a lot of relationships that involve older people and minors. Our concern is that in the absence of some evidence of harm, the rush on the part of the current government to enact Bill C-22 is an unconsidered response to a moral objection, rather than a legislative response to harms that have been shown to exist.
On the change in age and the five-year close-in-age exemption, empirically speaking there's a world of difference between a 12- or 13-year-old child and a 14- or 15-year-old child. Fourteen- and fifteen-year-old children are much more easily mistaken for adults, especially in a festive context—house parties, clubs, and so forth—where there is some concern that people whose proximity in age is greater than five years might mingle. In our view, even if the age is raised to 16, some of those concerns could be answered by a due-diligence defence. That is to say, if an accused person took reasonable steps to uncover the age of the person with whom they intended to have sexual contact, if there's any doubt, that ought to be an adequate defence in law to this offence.
We are talking about drastic consequences to individuals who are convicted of sexual offences—not only potential penal consequences, but inclusion on sexual offender databases and registries. These are consequences that ultimately change a person's life from there on in, making that person subject to extra monitoring, extra prescription, and so forth.
The notion that a person should suffer these consequences, despite having taken steps to discover the age of the person with whom he or she intends to have sexual contact, is to our minds abhorrent and totally inappropriate. We urge the committee to consider adding a due diligence defence to those provisions.
The submission is to the same effect as the notion of a presumptively abusive relationship, which we would support. Sexual contact with a person younger than 16 ought to raise a presumption that a relationship is abusive, but the presumption could be set aside with appropriate evidence.
We're also concerned that the change in age for sexual consent could undermine the access children might have to information about reproductive health, contraception, and how to keep themselves safe when engaging in sexual contact.
We've seen an unfortunate decline in the United States on the commitment to provide information to young people. Especially if there's going to be a shift to legislating morality, we wouldn't want to see that shift take place in the area of reproductive health education as well.
Finally, we support the deletion of any difference in age for anal intercourse and sexual contact other than anal intercourse. We regard that on its face as discriminatory and contrary to the charter.
Those are our submissions.