Let us have the courage to do it. We know we have the support to do it.
If there is one thing that I have been able to determine in my visits across the country it is that the individuals in the police departments who are assigned to the child pornography units, who are doing their best to fight it, are crying out and pleading with this government to give them the sources and the resources that it is going to take to set up a national strategy to deal with this once and for all, a national strategy that would reach out to other countries to form an international effort, which is well underway in a lot of other countries already. Let us join their efforts to do this.
There has not been one commitment in the form of the budget, not one commitment in terms of dollars and cents that has shown up in any one of the police departments or any one of the areas of jurisdiction that are making an effort to put an end to this terrible thing that is going on in our society. We could start by committing a certain amount of dollars to that cause. Then we could come together as a group of 301 to ask how we are going to accomplish this, spend a day or two to make sure we get it right, and then go forward with it. This would send a loud message to the predators and the child pornography distributors all across the country: “Folks, your time is coming to an end because it is not going to be allowed”.
Instead, what has happened is that the government has tried to come up with legislation that will appeal a decision made by a court, which allowed pornography to continue because there might be some artistic merit to it. In its wisdom, the government came up with a paragraph in its document that says we will get rid of that and what we will do is put in “public good”. Once again the minister has left in the hands of unelected and unaccountable judges the determination of what constitutes public good.
I can assure the House that the Toronto police department, which has approximately two million pieces of evidence in the form of child pornography, is really going to enjoy trying to go through two million pieces of this to determine whether it has any public good. We can almost be certain that any time a charge is brought against a person for having possession of or distributing that particular item, the person will be able to claim the defence of public good. Our courts will be jammed day after day and we will never get anywhere because we have allowed the courts to leave a loophole. No one will be charged.
The government has come back and is reinforcing that loophole with Bill C-20. I say, close the loopholes, listen to the people who have signed their names on the petitions that have been tabled in the House of Commons. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are begging us to take up legislation that will put an end to the torment and the exploitation of our children across this land. They want it stopped. They have appealed to us to do it because they believe that we are the body of people who can do it.
I have to ask every member in the House of Commons, from every party, whether they would agree that we can do something about this problem. If they do agree, then we must do something about this problem. The last thing I would ask is whether they have the courage to move forward immediately and set this particular item on the table all by itself, not to muddle it with all other social issues but to get it underway and help our police departments across the land to deal with it, to set up a national strategy program and fund it.
Funding is no problem for the government. It found $100 million not too long ago to help out the City of Toronto regarding SARS. I can assure the people in the House that there are police officers who would love to get their hands on $100 million to help them in their fight on child pornography. No one can say for a moment that one is worse than the other, because I can assure members that the number of victims of child pornography far exceed the number of victims of diseases.
I do not think there is anyone here who would not agree that it can be done, so let us do it. We were elected to bring about the will of the people, and I can assure the members who are in here today that the will of Canadians is to stamp out child pornography once and for all, to get rid of it, and to make every effort we can to do it and not muddle it with clauses that leave loopholes.
Child pornography has no artistic merit and does not serve the public good. Every Canadian, except for the 2,500 pedophiles who have been identified, would attest to that to the highest degree.
I find it discouraging that this topic comes up over and over again. In the last six months I do not know how many times I have spoken to this very issue.
I find it discouraging that adult men and women, who are in a position to really do something that will protect our children, cannot come up with an idea or the dollars to do just that but have no problem inventing all kinds of ways to implement a gun registry program, for example. I do not think the almost $1 billion they are going to spend on the gun registry will have much impact on the safety of our children, not nearly the impact that fighting child pornography would have. The police departments would be the first ones to tell us that. The things they see are devastating.
The other problem is that the images we talk about in child pornography are not drawings or sketches. The majority of these images are photographs. These are real people. These are children who are alive and exist, and we do not even have a thing in place to identify who these children are so we could possibly rescue them out of their situation. Whether it be in Canada, in Europe or in the U.S., it does not matter, these children need to be rescued from this horrible plight.
There are countries that have gone to the extent of doing something about that. Sweden sort of set up the initial part of it. Canada was there and observed what it was going to do. It has a program which, generally speaking, is beginning to work. This thing was spread out to other countries, including the United States.
As a result of that program, the police have been able to identify some of the victims and some of the predators. While we sit on the sidelines, not participating in this kind of activity, a project in place in other parts of the world called “snowball” has identified for our police departments in Canada over 2,000 predators who reside in Canada. They know their names and where they live.
We should be participating in this program to help identify the victims, the predators, the distributors and the people who are making millions of dollars in profit off this evil thing, and start to wipe it out. That is an action we could take that would be so positive.