I would be very glad to do that.
What we're talking about is the age of consent for sexual activity. It's presently 14 years of age, and our proposal is to move it to 16. I've said to people that this is not just something from the 20th century; this is something from the 19th century, in my opinion. What happens--and you're in the business of talking about and trying to deal with the problem of the exploitation of individuals--is that you get individuals who are sometimes not even in this country. You can be a 40- or 50-year-old from Texas and you start emailing a 14-year-old in Canada, and if you engage in sex with that 14-year-old on a trip to Canada, the police throw up their hands because there's nothing they can do about it. I believe this is absolutely wrong and is a mistake. We don't want this country to become a target for sex tourists who come to Canada because our law is actually out of sync, quite frankly, with the United Kingdom, Australia, and many American states, which sometimes have it higher than 16. We have to bring our laws into that.
What challenges am I having? You heard Senator Carstairs. She said on television last night that she has some concerns, because this might drive certain aspects of prostitution underground. Well, good heavens, if somebody is having sex with a 14- or 15-year-old, I want that to be an offence in this country, and I don't want these individuals to be using the defence of consent.
What we put in this is a close-in-age exemption of five years so that we aren't criminalizing consensual sex between teenagers. We're getting after those adult predators, those 40- and 50-year-olds who are going after 14- and 15-year-olds. I have made the point, and I made it last summer when I didn't get this thing through the Senate, and I made it again yesterday when I was before the Senate, that children in this country are not as well protected as they should be, because that law has not been passed. So I definitely hope it gets passed. I know this had widespread support in the House of Commons, and it's legislation that this country needs and that I would like to see enacted.