Mr. Speaker, as my colleague from Wild Rose said, it is sometimes a pleasure to enter the debate in the House, but this bill is certainly not a pleasant thing to address because of the subject it deals with. In short, Bill C-20 is about child protection but it does not provide what it purports to do. My party wants to address why we feel that way and why we feel it is an illusion.
Ever since the Supreme Court decision in the case of John Robin Sharpe, Canadians have been waiting for the government to take the initiative and provide some genuine protection for Canadian children. Unfortunately, Bill C-20 fails in the effort and therefore it fails Canada as a whole.
I remember when the John Robin Sharpe decision came down in British Columbia because there was a huge public outcry in our communities. Members have received many letters and have presented many petitions in the House. I have tabled two petitions with over 1,000 signatures. Petitions have been submitted by all members of the House and in both official languages.
Most Canadians do not realize the extent of this plague of child pornography that is among us. I want to share some of the thoughts that have come in the deluge of mail I have received in my office.
Mrs. Hilda Higgs of Lantzville, B.C. wrote that she was appalled that someone could see anything artistic when it comes to child pornography.
Gerald Hall of Lantzville, B.C. quoted Job 9:24:
When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not he, then who is it?
He wrote a second time and said that the minds of our children are too precious to allow misguided individuals like Mr. Sharpe to overturn perfectly common sense laws that are in place to protect society.
Marilyn Burrows of Port Alberni. B.C. wrote expressing concern that the John Robin Sharpe decision would set a dangerous precedent for our children.
Isabel Zenuk of Qualicum Beach wrote that children are our greatest natural resource and that we must work to close the loopholes in our child protection laws.
Dr. Maureen Keane from Qualicum Beach wrote and asked that the age of consent be raised and that the artistic merit defence be removed.
Dorothy Thomson from Parksville, B.C. sent a white ribbon and said that child pornography is a heinous crime against our children and our grandchildren and that it must be stopped.
Helen Metz of Parksville, B.C. wrote that artistic merit was a subjective quality, so anything could be judged to have artistic merit. She sent a white ribbon and asked us to close the loopholes in the legislation.
Joan Groot of Parksville, B.C. wrote that it was unbelievable to think that child pornography could have any artistic merit, and that this could not be the Canadian way.
In spite of the member who spoke earlier, I thought I heard her making some allusions that we had to consider art in this. I hope I misunderstood her, aside from the fact that I was a little distracted at the time with other matters.
Denzil and Rose Merriman of Nanaimo, B.C. wrote that children are a precious inheritance and should be cared for and looked after, and that the idea of child pornography had artistic merit was utter nonsense. I wholeheartedly agree.
Carol Rae of Errington, B.C. called the office to say that we must do something to prevent another Sharpe decision. She was worried that the new legislation would not stop child pornography. I share her concern, as do many members on this side of the House.
The government has brought in the public good defence as a legal defence instead of artistic merit. Most Canadians would have a hard time understanding that any depiction of an adult abusing a child sexually could have any artistic merit.
It is time for our artists to have a reality check. It is time for the House to deliver such a reality check with very clear legislation that removes such defences and makes child pornography, as the member for Wild Rose said, eliminated in our society. We can do it. We have the ability to do it. We need to do it to protect our children.
Most Canadians are not aware of how pervasive this problem is. I do not think all members in the House have any idea.
Some of us were here when members of the Toronto police came to the Hill. They apologized for having to subject us to the protrayal of such graphic images. Their officers, after dealing with this stuff and looking at it, sometimes have to go on leave because of the sickness they feel after seeing those images.
Some members here who viewed those images had to leave the room. Some could not bear to look at the images. I am still haunted by some of the images we saw brought forward by the Toronto police, by what is out there on the Internet, what people are feeding on and what is being spread in our society, hundreds of images through computers and through other means, and yet the courts want to say that there is artistic merit in some of this. We need to get this stuff out of our society. It is poisoning the minds of our citizens and it is leading to abuse of our children. It needs to be stopped.
One of the most glaring failures of the legislation is the proposal that the legal defence for child pornography has been sufficiently narrowed to prevent harm to children through using the so-called “public good” defence.
In the Supreme Court case involving John Robin Sharpe, the chief justice remarked in paragraph 70:
“Public good” has been interpreted as "necessary or advantageous to religion or morality, to the administration of justice, the pursuit of science, literature, or art, or other objects of general interest.”
The glaring problem is that asking whether or not a piece of child pornography has artistic merit is the same as asking whether a piece of child pornography is necessary or advantageous to the pursuit of art. The answer is very likely to be the same in the courts.
The concerns of my constituents are very likely to be borne out, that justices can look at the images that John Robin Sharpe had as artistic merit, they are likely to be approved under this public good defence.
The government wants us to believe the same legal procedure for defence will result in a different verdict and that children will be protected. I call that smoke and mirrors. It is not good enough. We need to close the loopholes, not change the names they go by.
If the Supreme Court found that pornography had artistic merit, it certainly could find that child pornography was necessary and advantageous to the pursuit of art. The defence is the same, why would the result be different? There should be no defence for child pornography.
The age of consent is another glaring disappointment in the proposed legislation. It fails to raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16. That is for sex between adults and children. It is hard to fathom why the government refuses to make this much needed amendment to the criminal code. The police chiefs are asking for it. We have young girls at 14 years of age who think they know everything about the world. We were young once and we thought we knew a lot, but at that age they are children. They have not had enough life experience to resist the luring and the abuse that adults expose them to. The fact is that 14 year olds are being abused. We need to raise the age of sexual consent.
Whereas Canada was once recognized as a global leader in combating the sexual exploitation of children, the international group, ECPAT, the End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism and which is now called End Child Prostitution, Pornography and Trafficking, released a report in November 2000 stating that Canada's regressive age of consent laws, flawed legislation and an overall lack of planning by the federal government are turning Canada into a venue for sexual exploitation of children.
The report, titled “Looking Back, Thinking Forward”, also criticized Canada for increasingly becoming a hot spot for sexual tourism. Predators are coming from all over the world to take advantage of our lax age of consent laws, and Canadian children are paying the price.
Maximum sentencing is another failure. The government proposes increases in maximum sentencing but, frankly, maximum sentences are hardly ever used. We should be raising the minimum sentences so that we send the message to our criminals out there that they will pay a price if they abuse our children.
Police and prosecutors still do not have the tools to deal with child pornography cases effectively or efficiently. Children must be protected from abuse at the hands of all adult predators, regardless of whether that relationship is a so-called trust relationship or not. The Liberals' failure to prohibit all adult-child sex leaves children at an unacceptable risk.
The artistic merit defence needs to be eliminated, not changed into a public good defence. That is a charade. Higher maximum sentences will not be effective. We need higher minimum sentences. The age of sexual consent for adult-child sex must be raised to protect our children.
I hope that members will consider this bill and make the amendments necessary to protect our children. It is time we took action in the House for the good of our citizens, for the good of our children and for the good of our society.