I am really gobsmacked, Mr. Chair, and quite disappointed, that this Conservative motion is necessary.
When this Supreme Court decision came down last week arguing that a mandatory minimum sentence for the possession and acquisition of child sexual abuse and exploitation material was cruel and unusual punishment, I thought that this could be and would be a unifying moment for members of Parliament and parliamentarians of all stripes. I actually had a moment of hope that the Liberal government would do the right thing here and say that this was ridiculous, and that it would reintroduce the law at the first available opportunity by using the notwithstanding clause, a key part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in this country, to assert that Parliament, as the democratically elected body by Canadians, gets to have the final say on this, not an activist judge.
I'll speak very briefly to why the mandatory minimum is necessary in the first place.
The two offenders who were at the centre of this Supreme Court ruling, each of them, had hundreds of images of child sexual exploitation and abuse material, referred to in the decision as “child pornography”. For one of them, 90% of the images were depicting young girls between the ages of three and six years old, some of which showed them “being subjected to acts of penetration and sodomy committed by adults and minors.” The other offender had hundreds of images and videos as well of children from five to 10 “being subjected to sexual abuse, such as fellatio and vaginal and anal penetration, by adults.”
The judge at the trial stage gave the first offender the bare minimum of 90 days' imprisonment to be served intermittently at his convenience and nine months of imprisonment. The second offender was given a very similar and in fact identical sentence.
Without a mandatory minimum, that sentence, which is already in and of itself offensively low, may have been even lower. That is why a mandatory minimum sentence is necessary, and that is why we are calling on this House to reintroduce this legislation with the notwithstanding clause.
I was a victim of sexual abuse as a child. To my knowledge, there are no photos or videos of that, and I hope that will end up being true.
Child sexual exploitation and abuse material does not exist on a computer screen with only the person who possesses it. There are victims—hundreds of victims—of this. There is a market for this. The government needs to send the strictest possible penalty and the strongest possible message in denouncing this.
This should not be a partisan issue. This should be something that every member of this committee—Liberal, Bloc and Conservative—can support regardless of what the Minister of Justice has said on this: that we call on the House to do the right thing and protect children.
Thank you.