Mr. Speaker, I wish to express a sentiment to the member who just spoke. I respect him as an individual, as I respect all members of the House, so I would have to believe that what he said he meant. However it also must be said, and I say this with controlled fury, that talk is cheap.
The member said that the Liberal government is committed to the protection of children and that it will spare no effort to protect children. Give me a break. It is absolute craziness to hear these words come out of the mouth of the hon. gentleman. I respect him as an individual which is why I find it difficult to stand here and contain the anger I have within me that this very fine gentleman would make comments like that when the record of the government shows that to be simply not true.
Let us take a look at the sex offender registry. As a result of a Canadian Alliance supply day motion, the House voted in favour of the government establishing a national sex offender registry. After one full year we brought another supply day motion to the House wherein we asked why the sex offender registry had not been put in place. One full year went by with no national sex offender registry. The government then whipped its members, as is the term in parliament, and had them on their feet to vote against the Canadian Alliance motion to put into effect, what had been passed by this parliament, a national sex offender registry. Less than two weeks after that vote, it declared it would establish the sex offender registry.
The government talks and talks but does nothing about so many serious issues. I ask the Liberals: What was the difference in time? What was the difference in the occasion where they had one full year to put the national sex registry in place and they did not? We prompted them to do it again on the basis of the unanimous consent by the House of Commons and then 14 days later, having thought there was a sufficient amount of time for Canadians to forget, they slipped it in and said that they might just get around to doing that.
On March 26, Mr. Justice Duncan Shaw of the British Columbia supreme court released his reasons for a decision regarding the child pornography charges brought against John Robin Sharpe. In his decision, Mr. Justice Shaw convicted Mr. Sharpe of the possession of pornographic photographs of children but acquitted him on charges related to his personal writings that described violent sexual relations between adult men and young boys. The judge characterized Mr. Sharpe's writing as “Sado-masochistic scenes of violence and sex, directed at boys generally 12 years of age and younger”. He found that “The scenes portrayed are, by almost any moral standard, repugnant”.
However it was Justice Shaw's opinion that these writings did not actively induce or encourage sexual activity between adult men and young boys and therefore, even though it “arguably glorifies the acts described”, he stated that the material did not meet the definition of child pornography. He went on to conclude that even if it did constitute child pornography, this graphic and violent material was not criminal because it had artistic merit.
This is a gigantic loophole that the Liberals are permitting to stand where young children are being exploited by the animals in our society. What are they doing about that case?
The whole issue of innocence by reasonable doubt which would apply to a murder, a bank robbery, or any other offence that is being judged before a court is applied to the question of artistic merit. One person said that there just might be some artistic merit, that if we were to take a couple of sentences from the drivel and the filth that Mr. Sharpe has put out about these 12 year old boys there just might be a little bit of artistic merit.
Sharpe walked. He walked because of the same law with respect to innocence because of some small doubt. He walked because of that application of the law.
The judge made these findings in the face of evidence provided by a psychiatric expert who deals extensively with sex offenders and child molesters. The expert testified that the material produced by Mr. Sharpe was much worse than other child pornography he had ever seen before. He noted that it celebrated these abnormal sexual relations and that it conveyed the idea that sexually related violence directed at young boys by adult men is enjoyable.
Mr. Justice Shaw dismissed any moral evaluation as a consideration in determining whether something has artistic merit. He stated that his determination of whether this graphic and violent material had artistic merit must be made on a totally amoral basis.
Unless we apply moral values, who says that sex between children and adults is wrong? That is a moral judgment. The law is a moral law. Otherwise the law simply does not stand. It does not apply. There is no basis for the law.
Of course it is absolutely unconscionably repugnant that adult men would have sex with small children. I cannot imagine any decent human being in the world, let alone in Canada, who would say otherwise, but that is a moral judgment. How can we say that a moral value cannot be applied to something that is totally immoral by any standard?
In my opinion the reasoning of Mr. Justice Shaw is totally misguided. Morality is the basis for law in every society, including our Judeo-Christian society in the west. His reasoning demonstrates a lack of understanding as to why these laws are enacted in the first place.
Simply put, it is through our criminal laws that our society has imposed moral disapproval for the exploitation of children by adults. To try to understand or justify the prohibition against the violent sexual exploitation of children in an amoral context is futile. No wonder the judge believed he had no alternative but to acquit Mr. Sharpe of these serious charges.
If the bill for all of the legal reasons the Liberal member talked about is deficient, why is the justice department not doing something about it? Why is the justice department studying and studying? Why is the justice department not doing something to protect Canada's children? I do not understand this.