Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise and debate Bill C-20 today. I want to say at the outset that members of the Canadian Alliance have spoken out forcefully on this and that is because we reflect where our constituents are at. Many of us have received petitions on this issue. People are very concerned about court rulings that seem to indicate some kind of a tolerance for child pornography in some form.
However, I want people who are watching today to understand that the Canadian Alliance feels it is completely wrong to give any kind of nod of approval to any form of child pornography, any form. I want to underline how pervasive the attitude is, at least among some people, that it is okay to tolerate some kinds of child pornography by pointing to something that was said in this place back at the end of January by a member of the NDP. This is what the member for Palliser said:
Mr. Speaker, in response to the member's specific questions, the position that I take, and I believe would be shared by a majority if not all of my caucus colleagues--
These are his colleagues in the NDP.
--is that if it has not specifically hurt a minor in the production of it, if it is created by people's visual imaginations and if the main purpose of it is not simply about pornography and sexual exploitation, then under the laws people do have a right to their own imaginations and thoughts, however perverse the member and I might think they are.
My concern, which I think is shared by police officers across the country, is that if we open the door a crack to allowing these “artistic” versions of child pornography or what the courts have ruled are stories that may have artistic merit, then really we give the seal of approval to child pornography.
We want to shut that down. We are saying that there is no such thing as child pornography having any kind of public good. That of course is what is at the heart of the debate over Bill C-20 and we want to make it very clear that our party is completely opposed to that notion.
This is such a broad subject and there are so many different aspects to it, but suffice it to say that the Alliance believes that child pornography in Canada today is a scourge. We know that there has been a lot of publicity about this issue recently. There has been a worldwide crackdown by police forces on child pornography.
One of the things that concerns us, beyond the flaws in Bill C-20, is the fact that the police are not given adequate resources to deal with the issue of child pornography. When we had the recent crackdown around the world, which resulted in people being charged in the United States, Great Britain and some in Canada, we found that in Canada we had a woeful lack of resources when it came to having enough people to go out and check on people who initially were caught with child pornography, to check and make sure that we actually had enough evidence to prosecute them.
That is a concern. If the government maintains, and I think that it would, that the protection of children has to be the highest possible priority of a police force and a justice system in Canadian society, then they have to have adequate resources to do that. They need to have good laws and they need to have adequate resources. I am afraid to say that we have neither in Canada today.
The idea of artistic merit as a defence for child pornography, or even now the idea of public good as Bill C-20 states, I think to most people is contrary to common sense.
The government has not just failed when it comes to those issues, but it has failed in other ways as well, which are related to this. Some members already have spoken about the government's failure to adopt legislation that would raise the age of consent for engaging in sexual relations. Right now the age is 14, which I think would strike most people as being too young. We are talking here about relations between adults and children as young as the age of 14 and that is what concerns us.
Last year when we brought this forward as a motion in the House of Commons I was surprised, in fact, very frustrated, that the government voted against our motion to raise the age of consent from 14 to at least 16. The government trotted out all kinds of red herrings that it had not been able to get the provinces onside and that it was working with the provinces. That is a red herring because it is the federal government alone that sets the Criminal Code. The provinces administer it, but it is the federal government that has sole responsibility for changing the laws when it comes to the Criminal Code of Canada. We are concerned about that.
Another indication that the government does not take these issues seriously enough is its ridiculous sex offender registry which it is now proposing to bring in. The sex offender registry would only list people as of now who have committed a sexual offence. They would be the only ones who would be listed.
If somebody had been guilty of all kinds of sexual offences in the past, they would not be listed in the sex offender registry. That calls into question the government's commitment of ensuring that the public's protection is put ahead of the protection of privacy for people who have records as sexual offenders. To me that is simply wrong.
We are concerned that the government is not taking seriously enough what should be the first priority of any government which is the protection of its citizens. Why were governments formed? They were formed to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens and one of those freedoms is the freedom to not be interfered with, sexually. The government has not addressed these issues in a serious enough manner. There have been thousands of names on petitions that have come into the House. These people say they want these sorts of laws strengthened.
For reasons that are not apparent to me, the government drags its heels at every turn and comes up with all kinds of excuses for not doing it. I think that is simply wrong.
I want to make reference to an article that a previous member mentioned that was written by a Winnipeg lawyer who talked about the artistic merit defence and the new legislation, Bill C-20. He argued that the artistic merit defence, or the old legislation governing child pornography, was actually stricter than the new legislation that the government is bringing in. He pointed to all kinds of possible ways that the government could put some strict limits on child pornography to ensure that the next time this law is challenged it will not be thrown out again by the courts.
I would argue that if the government is not prepared to listen to the opposition then it should listen to people like David Matas, a Winnipeg Lawyer. He has provided some common sense suggestions for ways to limit the current definition of child pornography to ensure that we do not have to go through this again and that Canada's young people are protected.
About a year and a little bit ago my colleague from Lethbridge and I went down to the Canada-U.S. border and spent some time with customs officials on both sides of the border. One thing that came up on both sides of the border was how they have to be so vigilant today to ensure that when young people are travelling across the border with an older person, that they are not doing so because they have been lured by older people for the purposes of sexual exploitation. The impression they left with me is that this is not just a problem, it is a crisis.
We hear Toronto police officers talking about the crisis that they are facing now with respect to child pornography. We hear people talking today about the fact that Canada is becoming somewhat of a destination for sex tourism.
This is a serious issue and I am concerned that the government is not taking its responsibilities for protecting young people seriously. We have laid down a number of examples today of how it is failing in those responsibilities. Not only does it have to do with Bill C-20, but it has to do with its inability to summon the courage to raise the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16 and it is has to do with bringing in a sex offender registry that captures on that registry people who have committed sexual offences in the past and not just as of today.
I will conclude by urging the government to consider these remarks and to change this legislation.