Debates of April 23rd, 2002

Supply

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the question to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment is as follows: the hon. member for Battlefords--Lloydminster, Health.

[John Bryden, Liberal, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot, ON]

Mr. Speaker, part of this motion prohibits materials that appear to describe children engaged in sexual activity. I wonder if the member opposite supports that part of the motion?

What would she do about the famous book by Vladimir Nabokov called Lolita published in 1955 which has been deemed certainly one of the more famous works in English literature? It involves the affair between a middle-aged man and a 12 year old. If she would like me to read passages from Lolita , she would certainly agree that the author certainly writes in a way that appears to suggest sexual activity among children. Would she ban Lolita ?

[Cheryl Gallant, Canadian Alliance, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and talk about the existence of child pornography in literature. Bringing it up to current times, right now there is a book called The Perils of Protecting Kids from Sex by Judith Levine, a New York-based journalist who argues for the lowering of the age of consent in some cases, as has been done in the Netherlands where children as young as 12 take part in sex if they do so without coercion.

This is exactly why we are bringing the motion forward. We have already lowered the age of consent to 14 and here we have people pressing for the age to be lowered even further. Literature such as this provokes and encourages children to partake in these activities that are detrimental to their health.

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not pleased to rise and debate on this motion. It is appalling that the normalization of the sexual exploitation of children should be a matter of public discourse in what purports to be a civilized country.

The reason I asked to speak on this is that last week I participated in an evening briefing session organized by my learned colleague from Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge in which leading experts from criminal law fields, from police forces, from psychiatry and from law enforcement gathered to brief parliamentarians from across party lines on the odious disease of child pornography in our society.

Before I attended that session I, like most Canadians, was under the impression that there were a small number of perverts who were willing to exploit and use images of children and record images of children for their own bizarre sexual purposes. I thought this was a marginal, very contained situation and not an epidemic. However what I learned at that session frankly still shakes me when I think about it.

Police from the Metro Toronto police department presented us with a case for example in which they are dealing with a single prosecution in Toronto. A federal government employee, incidentally, has been charged with possession of over 400,000 images of children being raped, abused and assaulted in the most grotesque and horrific ways imaginable.

To bring this reality home to us so that we were no longer simply thinking about this issue in abstract terms but understood the very concrete human reality of it, the police showed us some of these images, which I regrettably will never be able to scrub from my mind. There were pictures of children as young as under one year of age being violently assaulted in the most grotesque ways possible.

We heard of images that showed six month olds being sexually assaulted. In fact the chief psychiatrist of the Ontario Provincial Police told us that he had seen images collected by Scotland Yard in the United Kingdom of infants with umbilical cords still attached being assaulted by pedophiles. The depth of the evil which lies at the heart of this kind of assault defies belief.

They also showed us written words and printed sketches, works of the imagination, which Mr. Sharpe would have us believe, and in fact Mr. Justice Duncan Shaw of the B.C. court would have us believe, constitute acts of the imagination with artistic merit. What I saw were grotesque renderings of the violent destruction of innocent children, sometimes images of young babies being ripped apart in sexual motifs, much of it, I would add parenthetically, surrounded by explicitly Satanic or cult images, suggesting that indeed there is some sort of supernatural element in this kind of debased human evil.

What I learned from listening to the police officers that night was that they do not have the power to enforce what laws we have in this country against the abuse of children in the collection of these images and their broadcasting. Just in one cache there were 400,000 images. That means tens of thousands of children being abused just to provide the images in that one case. The police service told us that they cannot even manage that prosecution because the law, to which we are seeking to propose an amendment in this motion, requires that they present every single image as evidence before court to secure successful prosecution.

That is practically impossible even for our largest municipal police service. I ask members to imagine what this does to members of the police service who day after day have to look at and process these images in order to present them in court. One of the very simple, concrete, practical solutions or remedies being proposed by the police services is to allow a certain selection of images to be presented.

What we also heard was that in Toronto alone they know of 400 consumers of the most vile sort of child pornography and believe that roughly a third of these people are actually involved in the assault of children. I see that the member for Ancaster--Dundas--Flamborough--Aldershot is exasperated hearing about this. I am too. I do not know why he finds it amusing. The fact is that right now in Toronto there are 400 unprosecuted cases dealing with pornography and police do not have the resources or the tools in the criminal code to properly prosecute those cases. That is a scandal.

Let me also suggest to that member that what is an even more grotesque distortion of logic is this bizarre notion of artistic merit.

[An hon. member]

Banning books.

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

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.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

I declare the amendment receivable.

[Jim Karygiannis, Liberal, Scarborough—Agincourt, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate my hon. colleague for being promoted from the first row to the third row.

My difficulty with this motion is that we see the group across the way saying that we should lower the legal age for people who are charged with violent crimes from 18 to 14 to 10. That is fine because youth, when they are 12 and 14, especially 14, and when the crime is so violent, they know what they are doing. I am wondering, though, if the youth know what they are doing, do they not also know if they are going to jump into bed with somebody?

My question is very simple. Where do we draw the line as to the youth knowing exactly what they are doing and where they are going? Is it 10, 12 or 14 and are we going to apply it equally to everything that they do?

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I find that question rather hard to grasp, but I want to commend the member for coming to the House for his annual visit.

This is quite bizarre. The member is suggesting that perhaps we should lower the age of the consent to 10 or 12. That is what he just said. He said, is 10 or 12 adequate to make the decision? I guess that is the position of NAMBLA, “...eight is too late”. That is their slogan. That is the point. The point is that there are putatively rational adults in this society who will make an argument in the public forum for reducing the age of sexual consent to eight, so we as the custodians of the laws of the country must make a prudential decision

. I submit that the age of 16 is the absolute bare minimum of physical, mental, emotional maturity for young people to make that kind of decision, but today, to allow an adult, a 50 year old, to engage in sexual activities with a 14 year old, I submit consists substantively of an act of pedophilia and ought to be criminalized because it is exploitation. I am shocked that the member would stand here and propose that a rational argument could be made in favour of such an obscene gesture.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order which has to do with tomorrow's private members' business and we are very close to the last time it is possible for me to do it.

I think, Mr. Speaker, you will find that there is unanimous consent to return to routine proceedings and specifically the presentation of reports from committees in order that I can introduce the report on private members' votable items.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Is there unanimous consent to return to routine proceedings?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a different point of order. I would like to change the seconder on the motion I just put which was received by the Chair, from the member for Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre to the member for Provencher.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Is there unanimous consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

Committees of the House

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if I could explain, this is an order that the debate can proceed tomorrow for private members' business.

I have the honour to present the 53rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs regarding the selection of votable items in accordance with Standing Order 92.

This report is deemed adopted on presentation. It is simply the report that lists the votable items.

The House resumed consideration of the motion and of the amendment.

Supply

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services]

Mr. Speaker, we have had a very important debate in the House today on this issue. I think that among all the speakers I have heard, and I have heard most of the speakers today, there is unanimity within this place with regard to our abhorrence of child pornography and all of those exploitive activities related to our children.

In fact, I note that in some of the work we have done in the House and some of the points that have come out, there are things such as children who witness abuse in our society being as affected as if they had been abused themselves. We hear facts like 25% of our children entering adult life with significant social, moral, behavioural, academic and health problems. We have heard that 28% of the homeless in Toronto consists of youth alienated from their families, of which 70% have experienced physical or sexual abuse.

There is no question that our children are the most vulnerable persons in our society and that all of the efforts of members in the House have been put toward trying to find the appropriate initiatives to address the needs of our children, to protect them from those who would exploit them.

In the previous speech, the member posed to the House an amendment to in fact replace the existing motion we have been debating all day long with another motion that tries to bring it into a more inclusive or a more acceptable form, because admittedly there were some technical problems with it, but I think the spirit and the intent of what the member has raised is very close to being acceptable for the House.

I even tried to propose a motion this morning. I have one in front of me. I would like to read it into the record. It states:

That in addition to all measures already taken, the government without delay embark upon a well thought out, consultative approach to further measures, including such legislation as may be appropriate to protect Canadian children from sexual predators and sexual exploitation, including an examination of the concerns with respect to age of consent and defence of artistic merit, and that such approach include effective consultations with provincial governments and with parliamentarians through the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Again, embracing the spirit and the intent which all members in the House have talked about today, I believe it is a motion that is totally inclusive of all the views of the members. I believe it might be appropriate to ask all members yet once again for unanimous consent to adopt this motion, or to move this motion formally to the House.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Does the hon. member have consent?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

Obviously there is no consent from the mover of the main motion. Therefore the proposal is not receivable.

It being 5.15 p.m. it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

The question is on the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the amendment?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.