Mr. Speaker, I am glad tonight that the Liberals have resolved all the problems of Canadians so now they can create some more with Bill C-41.
I was talking to a fellow today about Bill C-41. He said that the solicitor general will probably have a little bit of a new job as a result of this. He will have to get new signs outside of the prisons now. We will not call them prisons. We will call them institutes for the morally challenged. That is where this kind of legislation is heading.
One of the Liberal members talked about incidental terms, minor terms. Why are we talking about section 718.2? There are so many other good things in this bill. Why are we concentrating on it?
It is truly sad that the Liberal government does not get it. We need a sentencing bill. What we have is a sentencing bill mixed into an omnibus bill that has every other agenda that Canadians do not want. How do we deal with a debate when we want improvements to sentencing but all these other side issues of the Liberal government are involved in it? We vote against it even though there are some provisions that might be good. We have to vote against it because it has some things that are ridiculous.
I note in the bill on page 3 there is an attempt to define things. For instance, there are definitions of accused, alternatives, what a court means. There are all kinds of definitions in the bill. It escapes me as to why the definition of sexual orientation is not in the bill.
If it is undefined, who gets to define it? All of the lawyers in the country who are going to spend an inordinate amount of our money at the cost of victims, once again will define sexual orientation. They are also going to be defining other issues in the bill, issues based on bias, prejudice and hate.
This will come about at the cost of the victim once again running through court case after court case trying to get definitions. I might try to help the Liberal government because I am going to define it tonight. I am going to define sexual orientation.
I get my definition from a number of authors produced in a book by Victims of Violence with which I have had some association in the past. They say that the term sexual preference and sexual orientation are essentially the same thing. In fact, in the index of the recent Sex in America study under sexual orientation'' the reader is directed to seeAttitudes About Sex'', which includes sexual preference. Both refer to the type
of individual a person is sexually attracted to. If pedophiles are ever to hope to be protected by the law, they must first show that pedophilia is a sexual orientation.
I would like to read a couple of quotes in an attempt to define it, because they do not have the courage to do it.
Dr. David Greenberg, a psychiatrist at the sexual behaviour clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, said: "Heterosexuality, homosexuality, pedophilia-they are all just different orientations and an individual may have a number of them".
The first lawyer who comes up on the first case of pedophilia will attempt to define it. Perhaps the lawyer for Alan Winter, a pedophile from my area, will attempt to define it, because the government has not the courage to define it.
Kim Tate, author of Child Pornography , 1990, defined a pedophile as ``an individual above the age of consent who prefers to have sex with children and who fantasizes about them''. That is found at page 104.
Dr. Fred Berlin of the John Hopkins Medical School, in the Focus on the Family newsletter, number 11, November 1992, said that pedophilia is a value judgment and it may be a different kind of sexual orientation.
Do they understand where these folks are coming from? If this government does not define sexual orientation then other people will in the courts. If the government has not the courage of its convictions, why is it leaving it to the courts?
The comment I hear from a Liberal member is that statutes are normally interpreted by the courts. That tells us everything about the reason the Liberal government will not define sexual orientation. It will leave it to the lawyers to do it at the cost of young kids in this country.
Dr. Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute in Washington said: "Sexual orientation is as ambiguous as political orientation".
Why will the government not define it?
Let us go to a quote from the Right Hon. Prime Minister when he was the justice minister. He was asked in the House of Commons on January 21, 1981, what sexual orientation meant. He stated:
It is because of the problem of the definition of those words that we do not think they should be in the Constitution. Do not ask me today to tell you what it is, because those concepts are difficult to interpret, to define and that is why we do not want them in the Constitution. I am not going to venture to tell you what is sexual orientation. I am not interested; and I will not fall into that trap, because we do not want them for the very reason that it is socially and in terms of law it is a very difficult area.
In 1981, before he was Prime Minister, he did not want it. And here we are in 1995 and he does not have the courage to define it. He is going to leave it to the courts.
One only has to have some experience with a pedophile to understand what is going on. In my community, Alan Winter had a foster home. He had over 80 children sent to him by one of the governments in the country. Thirty-one of those people, of whom I have met a number, were all molested by Alan Winter. He got sentenced to 16 years in prison as a dangerous offender but of course the parole board let him out in a little over five years. That is a different story, which will hit the House one day soon.
An hon. member said that has nothing to do with this bill but it has everything to do with this bill. This government does not have the courage to define sexual orientation in section 718.2 of Bill C-41. It is going to get defined, and the very people who are committing unlawful acts of pedophilia are going to use sexual orientation as an excuse. That is what is wrong with it.
Some say this is fear mongering; some say this is homophobic. This is reality. This is what the lawyers out there are sitting on. In fact I have a video of a lawyer in this country saying exactly that: that will be his defence.
Since we have over 80,000 signatures from petitioners from every province and territory in this country saying do not proceed with this area of the act, why is it that the government chooses to ignore those people? Why is it that this government chooses to ignore people by restricting debate and calling closure on this particular bill, on MPs' pensions, on Bill C-68? Why is it?
There is one word this government should remember. It is "retroactive". When we get on that side of the fence, the tables will be turned.