You probably raised it at the public safety committee because it's a public safety issue. If you're asking in general, of course a sex offender registry can be useful to police and police forces. We've come a long way in this country in the last 20 years in terms of getting the message out and assisting people on that.
I gave you the one example of cooperation that is now taking place between various countries. I was at a conference two years ago, and the Russian delegate pointed out that they had publicized some information with respect to a potential sex offender and Canada was one of the few countries that wanted to get further information.
I know my colleague the public safety minister takes this very seriously. This is the direction we have to go. We need greater cooperation inside and outside of Canada to deal with this.
If you go back 16 to 20 years ago in this country when we looked at child pornography, the traditional view was an abuse that took place to a child, with somebody selling it to somebody else. We very quickly found out in the late 1980s and early 1990s that there was no money being transferred, which was one of the indicia of the crime. Many times these things were produced offshore and outside of Canada.
To try to catch up with what was happening in this area necessitated changes to the Criminal Code that have made it a crime to possess child pornography. Never mind whether there was any money being transacted, and never mind whether it was made inside or outside of Canada; that's irrelevant. Somewhere there were children being abused, and we had to take steps on that.
I think we've come a long way, but we have to continue to make progress in this area.
Thank you for your comments.