Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-437. I must say that I have found it extremely difficult to take a position on this issue because of the distinction that must always be made between the purpose of good legislation, i.e. protecting children, and the means used by that legislation to achieve that purpose, i.e. creating a new system or a new status for those who commit sexual offences against children. If someone is found to be a child predator, he would now have to serve his full sentence, with no possibility of early release or parole.
It is only after long reflection on the fundamental purpose of Bill C-437, which is to protect children, that I declare myself in favour of Bill C-437 in principle—and only in principle. I do not, however, support the means used by this bill to attain the aforementioned goal of protecting children.
To begin with, it is impossible not to be sensitive to the welfare and especially the safety of children, who must be protected against any attempts to commit sexual offences against them and must most certainly be protected from possible attacks by sexual predators.
We have only to look at the dictionary definition of predator, an animal naturally preying on others, and link it up with child to realize immediately the extremely great risk that a sexual predator may pose to any human being, whether male or female, and that this risk is even greater when a child sexual predator is involved because, as we know, a child is defenceless.
Everyone will remember the terrible tragedy which took place in Belgium some years back when child sexual predator Marc Dutroux was arrested for kidnapping and murdering several young children. The public will also remember the 1996 White March in which 300,000 Belgian men, women and children demonstrated against all forms of pedophilia and against those crimes which could have been prevented if a rigorous system of surveillance had been put in place to thwart people like Marc Dutroux.
We do not need to look to other countries to seek out examples of these terrible predators. We need look no further than our own, where we have the recent cases of two sexual predators in Ontario, Paul Bernardo and his wife, and of Conrad Brossard in Quebec, who is alleged to have just recently committed his latest heinous crime against a Trois-Rivières woman. These cases are proof that no civilized society is safe from the hideous misdeeds of these monsters, who must be made incapable of perpetrating any further acts, in order to protect potential future victims.
There are not many means of neutralizing these dangerous beings, who represent a danger not only to society as a whole but also and particularly to potential victims. They can be sentenced to death, as they are in the United States and many other countries, or they can be imprisoned, in countries like Canada where the death penalty has been abolished.
In the latter case, however, the whole issue of the potential rehabilitation of these sexual predators crops up, with the eventual possibility of their being released on parole. That possibility stirs up enormous fears if a child predator is concerned.
Many people are absolutely convinced that child predators are never cured and remain an ongoing danger, because of the phenomenon of recidivism.
That fear is what has prompted the hon. member for Saskatoon—Humboldt to propose Bill C-437, when he learned that notorious child sex offender Karl Toft had just been released. According to the member for Saskatoon—Humboldt, the Saskatoon Regional Psychiatric Centre was forced to accept what the sponsor of Bill C-437 describes as this “pedophile found guilty of 34 sexual attacks on young boys, whose victims could ultimately number in the hundreds”.
The member went on to say:
Studies prove that pedophiles are incurable and are a threat to our children. They belong behind bars. The Liberal government has refused to make child predators subject to an automatic dangerous offender designation when they are sentenced, which would ensure that they remain in prison indefinitely”.
Therefore, even though the goal of Bill C-437 is eminently laudable, the means used to attain this goal pose serious problems and are ill-adapted to the fundamental principles of our criminal law system. In fact, the definition of child predator offence is unclear in that it does not define rigorously enough the seriousness of the sexual offences contemplated and how much criminal behaviour must tolerated before someone is found to be a child predator, with the very serious ramifications that may ensue. The proposed legislative wording seems to allow for the term child predator to be applied retroactively, contrary to the usual custom that legislation not be retroactive. For these two reasons, the bill is not acceptable in its present form.
In addition, this bill creates a special system for child predators. I see no reason to exclude women or men from this form of protection against sexual predators, for their lives surely deserve just as much attention from the legislator as do those of children. We have only to think of the fifty or so women in the Vancouver area who have allegedly been kidnapped and murdered to realize that all human beings, men, women and children, must be protected against predators and that this protection must not be limited solely to children.
It must also be pointed out that proposed section 753.11 in Bill C-437 provides for a dubious and unusual system requiring the Minister of Justice to monitor whether an offender is in breach of an order against him. A simpler and more effective system of administrative monitoring should be provided for, if required.
Finally, we must ask ourselves whether the existing criminal code system is not entirely sufficient to cope with the admittedly very serious situation of child sexual predators, and whether it is really necessary to create this special new system solely for children.