Mr. Speaker, I think that there is a spirit of great camaraderie developing increasingly in this House, and we are better parliamentarians because of it. I will continue in this spirit of frank camaraderie, which makes us all better human beings.
Clauses 490.02 through 490.09 list some extremely important offences. I had got as far as incest, which has been in the Criminal Code since the 19th Century. This cannot, of course, be tolerated.
Then there is child pornography. As I said, the Fraser commission addressed this in 1985, and then there is luring a child using a computer; stupefying or overpowering for the purpose of sexual intercourse; living on the proceeds of prostitution of a person under age of eighteen.
As an aside, in connection with prostitution, in the summer of 2000, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, mandated me along with my colleague, the member for Longueuil, and my former colleague, the member for Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, who as members know is not an independent Bloc MP but an independent MP, to head a task force on the phenomenon of street prostitution. This is not a trifling matter in major centres. For instance, in Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, there are some 100 to 120 sex trade workers in operation from the time the snow melts until October.
We must not show prejudice here. None of us ever knows how life's ups and downs will end up affecting what happens to us. When one addresses the phenomenon of prostitution, one realizes it is not one-dimensional. These are not just women with a drug abuse problem. That is one reality, and certainly a dominant one in the prostitution picture, but it would be wrong, and overly narrow, to try to bring the debate down to that dimension alone.
Incidentally, I would like to share a little secret. I know that everything that is said here is highly confidential. When I was first elected in 1993, one of the first issues I had to deal with, as the member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, was street prostitution. There was a march organized in my riding, where I met with sex-trade workers. You can imagine my surprise to learn that one of the sex-trade workers I met was a former page in the House of Commons. She had worked here. This is not a joke. This helped me understand one thing clearly, and that is that we never know where life will take us. Some people's lives take a turn for the worse and they face hardship. However, that does not make prostitution acceptable for most people.
In the report we tabled, we proposed a whole plan. I am convinced that prostitution must be removed from residential neighbourhoods.
There is quite a selection process to become a page in the House of Commons. One might think that if someone is a page in the House of Commons, that this person comes from a good family, that this person was well off. This person, relatively speaking, is quite well educated. However, despite all this, there I was dealing with a person who was a sex-trade worker. So we see how there are lessons we learn in life that shape us and that help us reconcile ourselves with fate.
In closing, I would like to say that even though we support this bill, our concerns will revolve around the whole issue of protecting privacy. We have in mind the example of what they did in Great Britain, where they set up a registry that is not available to the general public. I will have an opportunity to speak further on this at third reading.