The hon. member suggests that we wish to ban books. There have been obscenity laws in this and other jurisdictions for decades banning obscene depictions of this sort, but there has never been a prosecution against a legitimate work of fiction such as that. That is a total red herring and the hon. member should be ashamed of himself for introducing it when what we are dealing with are not pieces of literature against which there has ever been or ever would be a prosecution. That is nonsense. What we are dealing with are the most vile, deliberate depictions of the physical destruction of prepubescent children. This is not literature. This is not art. If that member cannot see the difference between depicting the dismemberment of a year old baby and the literature of Lolita , then he should have his head examined.
I think this artistic merit exemption is so ridiculous on its face. Before the last law was struck down, we heard that depictions of children in stages of undress or pictures of boyfriends or girlfriends at 16 years of age or whatever might be evidence for prosecution. What nonsense. Not a single case was ever brought by the police in such cases. They are not interested in prosecuting such instances. They are interested in prosecuting the 400 pedophiles and consumers of child pornography in Toronto who right now they are not able to prosecute because of the rigidities in the criminal code. They are concerned that those child pornographers and pedophiles sometimes use written expressions of their fantasies in order to normalize the idea of child pornography. We were given very credible evidence and testimony on this issue last week by some of the leading police experts in the country about how this written material is used to normalize these practices.
Therefore I am very strongly in favour of this supply day motion. I hope the Liberals will not find some disingenuous way to wiggle their way out of supporting what I am sure 95% of Canadians support.
I will close by moving:
That the motion be amended by deleting all of the words after the word “That” and substituting the following therefore:
The government introduce legislation without delay to protect children from sexual predators including measures to close the loophole of artistic merit for child pornography and raise, in consultation with the provinces, the legal “age of consent” from fourteen to at least sixteen while maintaining the “close in age” exemption and retaining eighteen as the age of consent in trust and authority relationships.