Mr. Speaker, standing before the House today, I want to inform the House that what we see here is the result of a lot of work by a lot of people dealing with the bill, Carrie's guardian angel law.
I would like to introduce to the House, Carrie Kohan. Carrie Kohan is a fighter. In B.C., Carrie and her two year old child were relentlessly pursued by a pedophile, someone who preys upon children for sexual pleasure, a three time convicted pedophile who, despite his convictions, was out on the street attempting to prey upon children again. She reported him to the police who were powerless because that predator had served his short, full sentence and was, in the eyes of the law, untouchable. As a result of that predation, Carrie did what any mother who had the means would do. She moved her family away to safety.
However she did not stop there. Carrie started a fight; a fight against, not just pedophiles but against the justice system that forces mothers to move or face having their children become targets. Carrie started Mad Mothers Against Pedophiles. Now Carrie is perhaps the best known voice in Canada struggling to protect children from the spreading plague of pedophilia.
The trouble is that her biggest fight is not against pedophiles. It is against the people across the aisle from me today, a party in government that talks a good game about Canadian values, social values that protect the weak from the strong, values that ensure a basic equality and justice and values that ensure that there are governmental systems in place to protect those who need protection. Unfortunately, those values, as high sounding as they are, translate very badly sometimes. Sometimes, as in this case, they translate into protecting convicted pedophiles, even if it means sacrificing some children. That is the road the government has chosen and it has placed the protection of pedophiles ahead of the protection of their victims.
We can look at proof. Some very prominent names have come forward over time and some that are just as serious in their actions against children who most people do not even know about. John Robin Sharpe has been mentioned numerous times and his efforts to bring child pornography into society as an acceptable thing. Edwin Glen Thompson sexually abused his seven year old niece and was spared jail time. There is the case in Victoria of Colin Fuson who was charged 24 hours after being released from jail with a series of sexual assaults on children.
The list goes on and on and culminates with a lot of activity and focus around Karl Toft, a man charged and convicted of 34 counts of molesting 18 boys, a man now eligible, under the government's perverse priorities, for day parole; a man whom experts will agree has a great certainty of reoffending. No one makes any bones about that.
Are those isolated cases? Not at all. The average sentence for child rape in the country is just a few months. The sentence may be a year or two but when we look at actual time served, it is just a few months. One would serve a longer sentence for some thefts than for robbing a child of his or her innocence.
Does the Liberal willingness to release child sexual predators demonstrate a belief that after a short period of incarceration they will have been reformed? Is that the belief? I do not think so, because testimony given recently to the Commons committee backs up what the experts have known for some time, that there is virtually no cure for a pedophile. Once a pedophile, unfortunately, it appears that they are always inclined that way. If released back out on the street they will offend again and again.
I will relate to a personal incident that happened to me when I was visiting one of the prisons. It was pointed out to me that the latest individual who had been placed in the jail was 80 years old. What was he in there for? He was in there for assaulting children.
However that is old news. The government is fully aware of the epidemic of child sexual predation. It is fully aware every time an offender gets released and is back on the street. It is fully aware that there is no basic cure for pedophiles but it will not change the law. In fact, it will not even consider changing the law. That is why my speech is largely a waste of time.
I brought the bill forward to a Liberal dominated committee, a bill that would create a new class of dangerous offender: the serial pedophile. Any pedophile convicted of repeating his crime would be subject to a minimum 20 year sentence. However the committee decided that the bill should not even be votable. The bill was too dangerous to put before the House of Commons for a vote because, if there were a vote, then 301 MPs would have to answer to the media, to their constituents and to Canadians overall. They would have to be accountable for their vote. It is far better to deny a vote. It is far better to let the bill die a quiet death. However that will not happen. It will not happen because the energy behind the bill will not go away.
In response to the Liberal unwillingness to allow the bill to be votable, Carrie Kohan and I have decided to take this issue to the streets. We have founded, along with the Canadian Justice Foundation and the Calgary Police Association, an organization called Project Guardian. The purpose of this organization is to ensure that political pressure is brought to bear from grassroots Canadians on MPs, like those sitting across from me. We will go to every riding in Canada and tell every Canadian willing to listen about the track record of the government regarding the protection of children. We will tell them about the Liberal unwillingness to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16, the Liberal unwillingness to use the notwithstanding clause to make sure no court ever makes possession of child pornography legal and the Liberal unwillingness to keep pedophiles behind bars.
Members across from me do not have to stand up today but they will be accountable in their ridings somehow at some time. They will be accountable because we will make sure there are concerned Canadians in every one of those ridings who will force members to answer for the government record. We will be watching. We will do our best to help facilitate people to keep an eye on the Liberals across the way, just as Carrie Kohan is watching today. She sits in the gallery behind me. She is a mother who just wanted to protect her children and a mother who came here today, despite having a family to raise, despite the sacrifices she has already made fighting the justice system.
Liberal members do not need to vote today because their party got them off the hook by preventing the vote from happening.