Madam Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I take part in this debate. First, I want to thank my colleague, the hon. member for Québec, for giving me the chance to speak on the matter, since she put forward her own motions and private member's bills on this issue in 1994 and 1995.
I commend her and pay tribute to her because it is thanks to her work and interventions that the government was sensitized to this subject and finally decided to act by introducing Bill C-27 we have before us today.
So, as the hon. member for Québec mentioned, the official opposition will support this bill because it is a step in the right direction, although amendments should be passed not only to improve its content, but also to ensure its objectives can be reached be more efficiently.
I want to take a few minutes to deal with the sex tourism aspect of this bill. Obviously, when we think of sex tourism, we immediately think of the moral issue. Personally, I find it unacceptable that adults-mostly men, but I am told that some women are also into this practice-go to foreign countries where the economic situation is always extremely bad and take advantage of it-as I will demonstrate in my intervention-to sexually abuse children aged 10 or even younger sometimes. Again, these are boys as well as girls.
This practice is obviously unacceptable. We must strongly denounce it without beating about the bush. Adults seeking such services must know that Canadians, and Quebecers of course, as well as their representatives do not condone those activities, and this is why, I am sure of it, a vast majority of the members of the House will support this bill.
But beyond the moral issue, there is also an issue of economic rights. We must ask the following question: How is it that in these countries where child sex tourism is practised, the common characteristic is the extreme poverty of the people? Asian and African countries as well as South American and Central American countries and Indonesia all have in common an unacceptable, terrible economic situation where people live naturally under inhuman conditions. I will come back to this in order to link this situation to the bill before us and to measures the government should take in this regard.
I would also like to raise the following issues.
On the subject of sex tourism, I would like to explain what is meant by that, to say who practices that kind of tourism, why it exists and how, finally, we can put an end to it. Bill C-27 gives an answer to the last question by making sure Canadian residents and Canadian citizens will run the risk, with the passing of this bill, of being prosecuted for having taken part in sex tourism activities outside Canada.
I know that the critic for the Bloc Quebecois will propose amendments to make sure that the bill will apply to every person in Canada because, according to the analysis that we, the official opposition, make of it, some categories of citizens could escape the application of the act. It could be the case of political refugees and citizens awaiting permanent resident status or Canadian citizenship. So, my colleague will move amendments.
But let us go back to my first question: What is sexual tourism? As I already said, it is the practice consisting in going out of Canada-of course, it could also be inside Canada-to sexually abuse boys and girls who are generally under the age of 10. I have been told about children aged 6, 7 or 8, which is totally unacceptable according to the moral code we have in Canada, and also according to our Criminal Code.
Who practices sexual tourism? I would say that no particular category of people can be excluded automatically. However, we can easily identify two categories of sexual tourists. First, there are men in general. I am convinced that if data were available or if we could make a precise study of people who practice sexual tourism, we would discover that the great majority are men. I do not challenge this in the least, but it would also seem that there are also a few women.
There is another category of people that is singled out: the paedophiles. When we hear about paedophilia, we have a tendency to associate it with homosexuality. We saw it during the debate on Bill C-33; several members, particularly Reform members and a number of Liberal members, made this connection without any restraint to serve their political cause. Yet we know full well, and I think it is particularly true in the case of sex tourism, that the victims are, once again, mostly young girls.
All the reports I have personally seen on television, heard on the radio or read in newspapers or trade journals lead to the conclusion that the victims are mostly girls.
It does not matter whether the victim of child sexual abuse happens to be a boy or a girl, it is totally unacceptable in both cases. However, I wanted to make this distinction since it is easy, specially for some of our colleagues, to make this connection and to lead the public to believe that pedophilia is practised only by homosexuals when it is absolutely not the case.
Why does sex tourism exist? It is, I think, the basic question we have to ask ourselves. First, I will look at it from the perspective of the client. It has been mentioned that people who practice that kind of tourism in other countries do it knowing full well that our laws prohibit such activities here, in Canada. The Criminal Code is very clear on that. People who do it outside Canada are perfectly aware that it is against our laws and that it is contrary to the moral standards adhered to in Canada. This is also true in most European countries.
They do it because many of these people consider that, since they are in a country where the culture is different from ours, the moral standards are more liberal. I think of a Radio-Canada television report we saw a few weeks ago precisely on sex tourism.
In that report, a French national was interviewed by a reporter who asked him: "Why are you, a French citizen, fully aware of the fact that you could not do in your country what you are doing here"-they were in Dominican Republic-"taking advantage of young girls of 16, 15, 14 years of age and sometimes even younger?" He gave a direct and very blunt answer, saying: "Yes, I am perfectly aware that I could not do the same thing in my country, but here, usage and customs are different and we can do this sort of thing".
It is awful to see people who, I am sure, are intelligent, who are perfectly aware of the moral code and who would deem unacceptable such practices for themselves or their fellow citizens in their own country, thinking that this is acceptable when they are in Dominican Republic simply because they are abroad, and have concluded that customs, usage and attitudes are different.
If I presented the case of a French citizen, it was not to chastize our friends in France, but because it was a French national who was interviewed in the report I am referring to. He could have been from Canada, Germany or anywhere else in the world. It is completely unacceptable.
I truly believe that, before he leaves our country, such a bill will send the client a clear message to the effect that such practices are intolerable both in our country and throughout the world. We will not accept that, anywhere in the world, children be used for purposes of child sex tourism or the sex trade.
I said at the beginning of my remarks that another problem needs to be identified. Even if this bill were to be passed and even if, overnight, we started to prosecute individuals who engage in this sort of activity, I am convinced that the problem will not automatically be resolved. It will be only partially solved. This bill will allow prosecution of individuals, to set an example and to send a message, as I said earlier, to the public, so that individuals will think twice before engaging in this sort of activity, and prosecution of organizations as well.
When one talks about procurers, one refers to individuals whose commercial activities involve promoting, directing customers to countries where child sex tourism is possible. These people will be prosecuted. We shall be certainly effective to a degree, but the problem will be far from resolved. If in some countries, children are sexually abused, it is not a matter of customs or morals, it is essentially and basically for economic reasons.
I can give examples. In La Presse , this morning, there was an article which mentioned that 73 million children in the world work. I am not saying that 73 million children are sexually abused, but that 73 million children are victims of what comes close to forced labour, slavery. Many of these children are, of course, forced to submit to sexual acts. Most of the countries where children work and where there is sexual tourism are located in Africa, Asia and Latin America. For example, if you compare Burkina Faso, where 51 per cent of children work, to Italy, since it is on our list, where 0.3 per cent of children aged 10 to 14 work, you can see there is a significant difference.
The point is that even if we do adopt this bill, with which I agree wholeheartedly and which I will support, the Canadian government must realize that to solve the problem, we will have to help these populations and their governments, whenever possible, to improve their financial situation. These children could be our own, they are not even 14 or 15 yet, not even 10 in some cases, and more often than not they are homeless, with no one to turn to for help, and they have no choice but to do anything they can to survive and eat. This is the type of situation where children become slaves, work in shops for almost no salary at all and find themselves on the streets where they are easy prey for sexual tourists.
This is what I had to say. I say yes, we must adopt this bill, but we must also take other measures.