Madam Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate.
I have worked with young children for the first two decades of my working life. When I was a student in high school in Winnipeg I used to volunteer downtown in what we called the community development centres then. I went on to work as child care worker with kids who were by all accounts victims to some of the activities that we heard reference to today. During part of my career as the director of child welfare in Manitoba I had the privilege of being part of a group of people who wrote the 1985 child and family services act in Manitoba.
I had a chance then to work with some of the leaders in this country in the area of child abuse, one of which was Dr. Charlie Fergusson who is known throughout Canada as the exposer of it, a person who, back when no one would talk about this horrible stain in our communities, would talk about it. Charlie kept confronting people with the fact that in our communities children were being treated in these horribly abusive and very destructive ways.
Much of my work was trying to help the victims of child abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse, recover and put their lives back together, to think it through and come to terms with the very terrible experiences they had.
The member from Burnaby asked a member from the Reform Party whether there was a distinction between one kind of child pornography and another.
While I have some appreciation for the arguments that are made by civil libertarians around the general issue of sexual freedom and sexual exploration, I think a legitimate concern is raised when we try to repress too forcefully certain information or certain discussion.
We do as a community draw a line between acts that involve adults and acts that involve children. I have no difficulty with drawing that line. I have no difficulty standing against all kinds of child pornography, all depictions of sexual acts with children.
We as a country have said for a long time that children have and deserve special status, and because of their extra vulnerability we as a country will protect them. I do not think there is a person in this House, despite the rhetoric that has gone down in the last two hours, who truly believes otherwise.
I end up being somewhat saddened to find myself standing one more time on the floor of the House debating a motion that has been brought forward by the Reform Party, in the fullness of virtue and goodness and to proclaim its righteousness, which is simply a kind of cheap political ploy to try to put people on the spot, to try to pick at people's differences and to try to make people feel uncomfortable on what is an extremely important and sensitive issue.
This is an issue that this country would not even have recognized 25 or 30 years ago when I first started to work. One could not even talk about the fact that young girls were being sexually abused by their fathers or by men, who still have difficulty getting laws that make it a criminal act for a man to have sex with a child. Do we debate these things or hear about these things?
What we see from the official opposition is this desire to run in this House in front of the latest outrage in the community and demand all sorts of actions.
The fundamental problem I have with that is that it is not unlike any other lynch mob every time we are outraged by what goes on in the community. If we are to do our job as legislators, if we are to provide the kind of leadership the country expects and deserves from this House and from the system of laws and justice that we have built, then we owe everyone in this country calm, quiet deliberation. We owe it to ourselves and everyone else to let the process work.
The fact is a mistake was made. I believe this judge has ruled in error and I believe that ruling should be overturned as quickly as possible. I also believe there is a process in place for that. There is an appeal process in place and the government has agreed to expedite that appeal. We have reflected our concern about the issues that lie at the heart of this debate.
Beyond that, this is little more than an attempt to grab a headline. I am saddened that we would use an issue that is so fundamentally important to the lives of young children for that purpose.
There are a lot of things that happen in this country on a daily and weekly basis that we do not like such as someone who drives drunk through a stop sign and kills somebody. We are all emotional about those issues and we all hate them. I have two young daughters, four months old and six years old. The thought of this repulses me. However, I also owe it to them to not do what we did in days of old and run down the street with our torches and hang the first person who comes into sight.
We have a system of law and justice that allows us as a country to reflect on these issues and move in a judicious, careful and responsible manner. All we are saying here is that process exists.
Frankly I am also a little saddened by the image of the judiciary that is constantly brought up in this House by members of the Reform Party. I have worked with the judiciary and have sat in these courts many times on these kinds of issues and have watched the judges and the prosecutors struggle with this. I think our court system in Canada serves us very well. When the judiciary does things which calls its wisdom into question it also has mechanisms to correct itself. When it cannot, we should act. If we reach that point on this case or any other, we will act. But we should do it with the kind of judicious consideration, the kind of bringing to bear our intelligence on those issues that produces a solution, not simply to pander to the momentary emotion that we all feel when confronted with an outrageous and despicable crime against anyone in this community.
I would, as I have often done in this House, urge the Reform Party to be a little cautious, take a deep breath. When it comes forward with debate, bring it forward having reflected on it, having thought about the consequences, having thought about the end point.
Does the Reform Party really want us to be using the notwithstanding clause every time the federal government is offended by something that happens somewhere in the provinces? Is that its goal in this? Does the Reform Party want us to be running around every time, immediately upon an action taken that we do not like? Or does it want us to respect the law? We are the law makers. Does the Reform Party want us to respect the laws we create and hold ourselves accountable to?
I am splitting my time with another member.