Mr. Speaker, this is a private member's bill brought in by the member for Quebec.
For Canadians who are watching these proceedings, this is one of the privileges that members of Parliament have. If we see a matter or an issue that deserves a legislated approach or solution and we do not see the government bringing one forward, then we can draft and table our own legislated solution for the consideration of the House.
I commend my colleague from Quebec and all members who take the time and trouble to listen to Canadians, to discern what issues are on their minds and what needs to be addressed and to bring forward legislation and proposals which will address those concerns.
It is very interesting that although very few private members' bills are actually passed by the House, we had an exception this week which encouraged a lot of members of Parliament both from the backbenches of the governing party and also the opposition benches. It is fair to say that very few private members' bills are passed in the House.
There is another very positive side benefit to these private members' bills and the work that goes into them. Quite often they encourage or force the government or bring about a situation where the government brings in its own legislation to deal with the problem that raised by the private member's legislation. As elected representatives we guard and appreciate very much the privilege of being able to bring these initiatives forward.
Bill C-246 is an attempt by one of the members of this House from the Bloc party to address the issue of child sex tourism or sexual exploitation of children. That is an issue which has been more and more on the minds of Canadians. The sexual use and abuse of children is repugnant to Canadians. It is a terrible abuse of the innocence and the trust of young children. There is no question but that it should be dealt with by the full force of the law.
Every Canadian, and we believe every human being, has certain fundamental human rights, one of which is safety of the person, safety from being exploited, abused and degraded. Certainly sexual exploitation of children is one that we should take extremely seriously and that we should address with every possible means.
I commend the member for Quebec for her concern about this issue, her concern about children, not only in Canada but across the globe and her attempt to deal with this situation.
As the previous speaker pointed out, the government, possibly as a result of the member for Quebec's initiative and the raising of this concern, has chosen to take some steps to deal with this issue in a bill that we will be debating soon, Bill C-27. It came out after this private member's bill. It covers most of the same issues. Again, we commend the government on doing that.
Unfortunately there are some reasons why this bill is not one that I can support. Although its intent is good and although we recognize that it deals with a very important issue that needs to be addressed, there are some real difficulties with the way this bill has been drafted.
I will point out some of the concerns why I will not be able to support this bill even though I am very much in sympathy with the motivation of the member who is putting it forward.
First, it attempts to legislate in Canada for problems in other countries. That is really beyond the jurisdiction and scope of our law. There is a Latin term for it, that it is outside of the scope of the Canadian Parliament to legislate problems in other countries, although we would often like to do so.
My recommendation is that we not just throw up our hands and say there are countries where exploitation of children for sexual purposes is a real problem but that we work vigorously through diplomatic channels to work with the other countries to promote their efforts to clean up this terrible situation. We should be good citizens of the world and good neighbours of these countries that are trying to deal with these issues. We should encourage them, help them and if necessary push them into doing so.
For our legislators to reach beyond our borders to deal with these situations, repugnant though they are, is really not a very effective or appropriate way to try to deal with this.
Another problem is that since the crime that would be created in Bill C-246 would take place in other countries, there is a real problem in gathering sufficient evidence even if prosecution were desired in this country.
There are different police methods, for example, in other countries. The method of gathering evidence in other countries may not be acceptable to our courts. They may violate charter rights or processes that would render evidence invalid. There are a number of difficulties getting the proper evidence from other countries. It would be very expensive to do this.
When people think about the exploitation of children in this way, they would very much like to say that costs should be no object in trying to stamp out these terrible practices. The fact is there are reasonable limits that have to be put on the use of our justice funding.
As members know from some of the debates that have taken place this week, when we were talking about expanding some of the rehabilitation measures in our prisons, when we talk about longer incarceration for violent and dangerous criminals in this country along with other measures that Canadians are asking for, we have to bear in mind there is a finite amount of funding, money and tax dollars to support these things.
To send investigators, to have witnesses coming and to have evidence brought in from around the globe is not as practical as all of us wish it were and would like it to be.
Clause 1 of this bill really wants to go after everyone who has committed an offence by sexually exploiting children outside the country. The previous speaker mentioned the situation that could very well arise when a citizen of another country may be visiting Canada.
Do we capture everybody who crosses our borders who is alleged to have these offences and then prosecute them? To some extent, Canadians are saying we are not being very successful in holding our own criminals in Canada accountable.
If we are trying to make people accountable from across the globe who happen to visit here, we will expand the load on an already overburdened justice system in a way that will make us lose protections and effectiveness in other areas.
We need to be, again, very temperate, very moderate and very balanced in our expectations of how much our system can handle and what our priorities are going to be.
There is another question. These are issues in no particular ranking. I noticed that if convicted under this act, the conviction would only be a summary conviction. In other words, this would be as opposed to an indictable conviction. Summary convictions are thought of as lesser offences.
Considering the terrible and repugnant acts and violations of young children involved with the subject matter of this bill, I am rather puzzled to know why we would go to all this trouble only to have at the most a conviction on a summary basis, which would draw a penalty of two years maximum and very often less, particularly with our early release provisions and that sort of thing.
It seemed to me that if we were going to all this trouble and expense to really want to stamp out this terrible practice by the measures this member is suggesting, we should certainly give the courts a lot more leeway to impose heavy penalties than is in this bill.
A very important political statement, a statement of intent, has been made by this bill. However, in my view the measures set out in this bill will be very difficult if not almost impossible to implement. There are things we need to do to deal with this, but I do not believe this bill is sufficient.