Mr. Speaker, I have a few comments on this bill. I will share my concern and also the disappointment that my colleagues in the Canadian Alliance and I have today in the failure of the government to properly act on behalf of the children in our country. The government continues, in a way that can only be described as mystifying, not to do all that can be done to protect our children.
The bill has been described as timid and indeed it is. When those who would violate children are far from timid, the response from the government is not a deterrent at all. It is complex and cumbersome. It will make it more difficult to prosecute sexual predators. Police forces around the country who are committed to protecting children and whose years of training have provided them the ability to protect the most vulnerable in our society will not have the tools they need to be there for children.
We said earlier today and will continue to say that children have to be protected from abuse at the hands of all predators. We shake our heads and wonder that the Liberals fail to prohibit all adult-child sex, leaving children exposed to unacceptable risk. We join Canadians across the country in asking the question why.
We raised the issue of this defence called artistic merit significantly enough that it finally got through. I can remember in the early days of discussing the bill when the Liberals continued to defend something called artistic merit as a way of excusing predatory sex between adults and children. I remember hearing in the House so-called responsible Liberal members of Parliament using concerns such as cultural considerations. We asked time and again, whose culture is promoting such a thing as this and whose culture needs to be defended from predatory adult-child sexual relationships? We never did get that answer.
Finally the government backed down and changed the words “artistic merit” to something called the “public good”. I will be looking with somewhat morbid interest to the day when some MP or possibly some member of the judiciary tries to defend predatory adult-child sexual relationships with some kind of defence called public good. If that day ever comes, indeed it will be a sad day.
We asked for higher maximum sentences for child pornography and for predatory behaviour. Those have been received, but judges have the option. There is no truth in sentencing here. A sentence may indeed come down and the public will read about it in the newspaper and think that something has been done. Without truth in sentencing being enforced, the public will not be aware that perhaps the person will receive a conditional sentence or perhaps be allowed to serve out their time at home.
These are ways in which our children are being failed, such as the reluctance to raise the age of consent from 14 to 16 years that we have asked for. As I travel the country from coast to coast there is hardly a time I do not raise this issue in a public meeting. I have yet to have a citizen come forward and say, “Fourteen is good enough. Sexual exploitation between a 50 or 60 year old and a 14 year old is actually okay and we should defend it”. I have yet to run into a person who defends that, except for Liberal members of Parliament.
It is astounding. We are supposed to be governing at the consent of those who are governed. Where were the federal Liberals given the consent of the citizens we govern to keep the age at 14 years for children being protected against adult predators? We want it raised to 16 years. Show us the letters. Give us the evidence showing that the public is demanding that the age at which adults can exploit children be kept at 14.
Twenty years ago we would not have been having this debate in the chamber. It would have been unheard of. That is why we must stand on guard for the children of Canada and not allow these incremental advances that give excuses to adult child sexual predators to be made. We cannot allow that erosion to happen. It already is happening in our society. The language is beginning to change.
It was not that long ago that the American Psychological Association changed the definition. It used to call this type of predatory adult-child sexual relations as being pathological and listed it as a pathology. It has now changed that. It is only listed as pathological if it is really bothering the adult who is perpetrating it. The language is changing.
We listened to some of the arguments. Now it is not being called child-adult predatory sex. It is being called intergenerational sex. Once the language begins to change, the behaviour will begin to change in even greater amounts. Predators will sense a weakening of the will of society itself. However there is no weakening in society but only a weakening among those who are governing. We must not allow these incremental changes to take place.
As one of my colleagues just mentioned, we have heard arguments to the effect that it is all right as long as the child is not being harmed. This is another grotesque example of how we are incrementally lowering the standards which we use to protect children.
There are groups out there that have been arguing for a long time that child-adult sex is actually acceptable and normal. There is a group called NAMBLA, North American Man/Boy Love Association, that argues that child-adult sex is actually acceptable and normal. Heterosexual groups are also making themselves known. They argue that heterosexual relations between adults and children are fine and healthy and should be encouraged. Those groups are out there now making arguments and we are starting to slide backwards into the abyss from which those arguments come. We cannot allow that to happen.
Look at the arguments of those groups that I mentioned and the direction of the psychological associations. I predict, and I hope this prediction does not come true, that if we do not draw a firm line as we are suggesting, the day will come when people will stand in the House and say that this is a bona fide sexual orientation and that it should be protected under sexual orientation legislation. That will come upon us because it is being talked about already by other groups outside the House.
One of my colleagues quoted Solomon, one of the wisest men on the face of the earth and also the most loving man who walked on the face of the earth. That man said to his own colleagues, “Let the children come to me. Do not harm them; do not be abusive; let them come to me”. That man also said that for anyone who caused one of those little ones to stumble, it would be better for that person on the day of judgment to have a millstone wrapped about his neck and that he be dropped into the ocean than what would actually come upon him. That was said by the most loving person who ever walked on the face of this earth.
We cannot allow the continual erosion of the standards we use to protect our children to happen. We must draw the line. I appeal to the governing members of Parliament to change their minds on these issues which we have addressed and to raise the standard back to where it should be so that when we sing our national anthem we can truly say to our children that we stand on guard for them.