Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank the hon. member for Wild Rose for his question. One of the first things that must be done if we are to retain the idea of public good in this bill is to make it more specific. A number of witnesses, some who were more liberal in their interpretation of child pornography and some from the other side, said it was too broad. No one is sure what it means.
Police officers appeared before us, saying that from their front line position, they did not know how they should interpret such a broad concept as “public good”. We need more direction. The Toronto police were among those who told us that, and it affected me deeply.
Another example of what could be done would be to permit the introduction in evidence of a certain number of images of child pornography, rather than the thousands of images that can be found in a computer. When someone is prosecuted for drug possession—say, a tonne of cocaine—the entire tonne of cocaine is not brought into court. Samples are brought in. The same thing could be done with the pornographic pictures.
Something else that is essential to help the police is to know what happens to an encrypted file, that is, supposing someone has encrypted their pictures. The police are unable to open them. We should include in C-20 a specific infraction that if the owner or user of the computer does not give the encryption key for the file, he may be charged with another criminal offence. All of this would be to help police track everything to do with child pornography, using electronic means among others.
For these three examples, I will be moving a number of amendments in committee. This is a bill that we in the Bloc Quebecois take very seriously. As a father of young children, as the hon. member for Wild Rose pointed out, I am particularly sensitive to this issue. Having seen what can be found on the Internet, I think we must deal very severely with these child pornographers.