Madam Speaker, I look around the House today and I do not think there is a single member of parliament in this place who would say that they were in favour of kiddie porn, or in favour of pederasts or any of that type of stuff that would be condoned by these types of activities. For the folks back home, I do not think there is anybody here who would support kiddie porn. If there is, I want that member of parliament to raise his or her hand. No, I did not think so. The question then comes down to what is the best way to deal with the problem.
First, I commend my colleague from Lethbridge for having brought this forward. He mentioned in his speech, and others touched on it, that one of the ways to potentially deal with this issue is to try to regulate the Internet. That is an incredibly unwieldy proposition and is next to impossible. Our ability to try to restrict some website in the United States and somebody in Canada from having access to it is very difficult. Even trying trying to restrict it within the country would be difficult as well. We all know how quickly these things are growing and how much the Internet is taking off by leaps and bounds. That is just one aspect of this. I think that would be very difficult to do.
Another aspect, though, is the whole idea of the forfeiture of property, of seizing the tools of the trade of these people who engage in child pornography. If they are engaging in child pornography and are using computers for those purposes, surely it makes absolute sense to seize the tools of the trade. It would make it all that much more difficult for them to do so. If we take away the computers it probably would go a long way toward stopping their dalliances on the Internet and their spreading of the material. If we take their digital cameras or whatever they happen to use, if we seize their ability to capture visible images, it would go a long way toward ending the dissemination of material.
People who go to great trouble and cause problems by somehow obtaining visual images of the sexual exploitation of minors could be processed under law and convicted for having done what they did. Let us imagine the oddity of their keeping the material and possibly selling it to others or somehow making a profit from what they have done by distributing it to other individuals who share their predilections. That would be not right. I do not think any MP in the House thinks that would be right.
The only point the government brought forward in this consideration is if somebody worked for a company and used a computer there to download or somehow distribute such images. It is a pretty weak case. I put the issue to the people at home who are watching today. It is not a fair analogy or something that would serve as a real roadblock for the legislation to carry forward. It is something that the government's representatives on the streets of the country, the police, say is the right way to deal with the issue.
Surely the parliamentary secretary must be willing sometimes to step aside from his academic or theoretical and abstract considerations with regard to some of these issues and listen to his own deputies, his own people on the street, the ones who deal with pornographers on a day in, day out basis, make it their lives and spend decades trying to hunt down some of these criminals. Surely listening to them makes sense.
If the parliamentary secretary cannot listen to police officers who deal with the criminal investigation of pedophiles or child pornographers, to whom can he listen? Would he take the word of somebody in the Department of Justice, some lawyer worried about some particular nuance, the crossing of a t and dotting of an i with regard to a clause, or of somebody who deals with child pornographers and pedophiles on a regular basis and sees the sick work they do?
Police officers enforce this aspect of the law. They probably have a far better understanding of its reaches and consequences than the parliamentary secretary could ever dream of, and certainly more than whoever it is in the Department of Justice with whom he consults on these matters. I ask him to pay close attention to what police officers have to say in this regard and to give due consideration to the bill.
I would like to wrap up by saying that my colleague, the member for Lethbridge, has done commendable work. It is noble of him to have listened closely to police officers who work in this very area and to have come up with legislation. Once again I applaud the idea that rather than trying to regulate the Internet, which is an incredibly difficult and possibly impossible task, we focus on the tools of the trade of pornographers and pedophiles and go after them instead. He may be able to provide more resources to police officers, those people on the beat that the parliamentary secretary does not seem to want to listen to in this case, so that they can go ahead and do the good work they do.
I ask that the parliamentary secretary and the government do the right thing in this regard.