Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague for Winnipeg North for the intent and thrust of the bill.
The introduction of a private member's bill in the House is the start of a long and torturous journey before the motion may become law and it may be amended before it gets there. What we are talking about today is the general intent of what we should be striving to achieve, for the kind of society which we want, what we find decent in our society and what we intuitively recognize and know as wrong and indecent.
Earlier we had a very difficult circumstance to wrestle with, the infamous killer cards. About this time last year we were being inundated with petitions from outraged Canadians from coast to coast asking why we allow this kind of trash to be distributed in Canada. There has not been one word spoken about it in recent times because Canadians, by and large, are pretty decent people. We recognize something which has no value. If it has no value it will not be supported and the normal market forces will cause the demise of whatever should not be around. That is exactly what happened with killer cards. They have fallen from the national agenda.
The point is just because that happened does not give us the freedom to say it is a perfect world and we do not have to worry about people who would spread hate and spread propaganda and sow the seeds of dissension and hurt in our society.
That is what this bill is all about. That is the intention. It is the general intention we support.
I do not believe it is possible to legislate morality. I do not think it is possible to legislate good taste. I do not think it is possible to write legislation that will keep hate propaganda or distasteful things we do not like to see off the information highway.
We should make our general intent very clearly understood so when the courts are adjudicating on a particular issue they know full well where Parliament stands representing the citizens of Canada.
We should stand shoulder to shoulder against the pernicious spread of hate propaganda and things that would hurt our society. We also have to stand shoulder to shoulder in protecting freedom of speech. Here we have these two conflicting ideals. How do we go about rationalizing and resolving these two conflicting ideas?
We have to use the whole notion of responsibility. We have to ensure anyone can get on to the information highway. We cannot prevent it in any event and so why bother trying? The information highway has grown from a year ago of 25,000 networks to 70,000 networks. The growth is exponential.
We should think of the information highway as the world's largest library with no librarian and no index. To try to put a handle on it will not work.
We should be working toward ensuring that when our courts have to make a decision based on the freedom of access to Internet that it comes back to personal responsibility. We have to ensure that everyone who gets on to the information highway recognizes they will be held accountable and responsible for what they do, just as it is done in our daily lives today.
All of us have and enjoy freedom of speech. It is part of of our culture. It is us. We also recognize that with freedom comes responsibility. We have the responsibility to use that freedom responsibly. That means I cannot go into a crowded movie theatre and yell "fire". I cannot do that with impugnity.
I can go outside and yell "fire" and people would think I am a nut. If I did the same thing in a crowded movie theatre where my actions put other people at risk I would be considered a criminal.
That is the distinction and the whole notion of personal responsibility. That is why it is so important this debate take place and that the intention of Parliament is very clear to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court at least in recent years needs some clear direction.
I do not think our Supreme Court gets up every morning wondering how to best represent the people of Canada. In my opinion in recent years the Supreme Court has been getting up in the morning wondering how to push the limits of tolerance of ordinary citizens to the expansion of these charter ideals until it drives everybody crazy.
This debate is of extreme importance. It should not be taken lightly. We are not, at least I think I speak for most people in the House, in any way constricting the right of freedom of speech. We are sending a very clear message that one had better be prepared to accept responsibility for what one does.
Earlier my hon. colleague and friend from Portneuf mentioned that the Internet is by and large self-policing. Those who have used Internet will notice if anybody does or says something outrageous on Internet it does not take very long before they are overwhelmed by a response from other people on the Internet saying it is not right.
I do not think we should dismiss the potential and strength of self-policing. For instance, when people in a bar having a beer together are spreading these ideas and reinforcing each other's ideas it is very different than putting an idea across the Internet and being responded to by an avalanche of people saying: "You're crazy, you're wrong", just as my hon. colleague from Portneuf mentioned.
We need to put this into perspective as well. There have been some particularly good articles written about smut on Internet. An article which appeared in the Globe and Mail recently made the suggestion that everybody who was on Internet was an oversexed teenager. That is not the way it is.
That certainly is part of life but I defy anybody to go to a corner store and buy a quart of milk without passing a magazine rack. We do have choices in our lives and we have to make them. We can either stop and buy a smut magazine or we can pass them by. It is a personal choice and a personal responsibility.
Using the same analogy, these magazines are now, as a result of pornography laws in Canada, not displayed where kids can get at them. They are displayed high up and many of them are covered. What do we do in a situation in which we have the expansion of the information highway through which young people are far more familiar with the mechanics of it than we are?
This poses a fairly difficult problem. How do we go about keeping our children from scanning some of these very offensive things like Deathnet and others and still keep this freedom of information and freedom of speech alive? It is kind of like a lockout. Parents have to take responsibility for their children. It goes back to personal responsibility.
I think of the people in Edmonton waging this lonely but very valid and important war. Their son committed suicide and their concern is that his suicide was as a result of depression which was enhanced because of his addiction to listening to CDs of Nirvana and death music and that sort of thing.
It is part of our society and it is incumbent on us as members of Parliament to do what we can to get at root causes of problems and try to make the extra effort so that we keep our society the kind of society it is by and large today, the kind in which we want our children and our families to grow up.
Again I congratulate the hon. member for Winnipeg North for bringing this to the House. It will be a difficult and torturous journey but it is certainly worth it.