Is it possible for a judge to simply adopt the wording of the condition? It is possible, but the condition as proposed by Bill C-54 also says “in accordance with conditions set by the court”. So number one, it's built into the condition.
Number two, you're quite right in terms of looking to what's in section 161 right now, which is only a condition against using a computer system for the purpose of communicating with a young person. That condition was added in 2002 when the Internet luring offence was created, because that offence was addressing the use of the means, the computer system, to communicate with a young person.
But what Bill C-54 recognizes is that offenders use the Internet computer systems for all sorts of reasons. Yes, they use it to communicate directly with a young person, and we catch that already, but they use it also to offend, in their offending pattern, whether it's to access child pornography, for example....
So the idea with Bill C-54 is to require a court to turn its mind to this each time it is sentencing a person who is convicted of one of these child sex offences and to consider whether in that instance, with the offender before them, given the nature of the offending pattern and the conduct before the court, there should be a restriction on that individual's access to the Internet or other technology that would otherwise facilitate his or her reoffending.
Courts right now do this as a matter of practice with, for example, probation orders. What the offender may do in that situation, for example, is to say, “I need to have access to the Internet for my job because my job is this...”. So the court routinely will build into that. Again, often it's under supervision determined by the probation officer--or they can designate another adult who is aware of the individual's offending history--to ensure there's adequate supervision.
Could more be provided to give greater direction to the court? I guess the concern is that the more specific you are, the greater the risk you might leave something out. The intention was to leave this in the hands of a sentencing court to determine what's appropriate in the circumstances, with submissions by the crown in terms of how you better protect the community from this offender and also by the defence counsel in terms of what's needed in that specific instance.