Madam Speaker, congratulations on your new position as Acting Deputy Speaker. It is always good to see women in the Chair. It is not an easy job to do. We are pleased to see you there.
I am pleased to rise in the House today to debate the amendment in Bill C-12 at report stage. The amendment we have put forward would delete clause 7. This clause removes the defence of artistic merit from existing child pornography legislation and replaces it with a public good defence. Our amendment would delete that section of public good defence.
Before I speak further, I want to recognize the work of my colleague, the member for Dartmouth, who has taken on this bill and many other issues in the House, as our arts and culture and communications critic. I think she has earned respect from all sides of the House for the tremendous job she has done in promoting Canadian arts and culture.
We have had to deal with some very difficult issues in the bill in terms of defending the rights of children and to ensure that child sexual abuse does not take place in our society. We also have had to deal with issues of artistic merit and protecting the legitimate areas for artists for true expression. This has not been an easy thing to do. I think we all have an admiration for the work the member has done, in working with the broader community, to ensure that the legislation can be supported. In fact the amendment before us today is as a result of the member for Dartmouth's work.
Protecting children and other vulnerable people is one of our highest duties, both as members of Parliament and as citizens and residents of Canada. It is one that we should not take lightly.
In this age of digital transmission and global communication, visual examples of child pornography have become something that I think we all find horrifying and that we abhor. I agree that any depiction of child abuse that glorifies those acts or is intended to incite people to commit them must be criminalized. For those of us in the New Democratic Party, this is something which we believe most strongly.
The sexual abuse of children is an atrocity, a despicable attack on the most vulnerable members of our society. It is an act of terror, an assault on our society's most basic values of honour, protection and dignity.
Although the NDP agrees with the general intent of Bill C-12 to protect children and other vulnerable persons from exploitation, we have a problem with the vague language of clause 7. We believe weakens the whole bill. Indeed, witnesses who appeared in front of the justice committee, for example from the Toronto Police Association, as well as groups such as the B.C. Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Conference of the Arts, all indicated that they felt that clause 7 was problematic because the language used was vague and contradictory.
In fact, after the previous debate on this issue in November 2003, Pierre Plourde, an LLB candidate in the Faculty of Law at the University of New Brunswick, contacted members of the House. He believes that the amended clause 7 is still unconstitutional and that courts will have to treat the public good defence the same as the existing defence of artistic merit to avoid striking down the entire law. This is clearly problematic.
Many of our colleagues in the House have complained that the original child pornography law was sloppy. The problem we are faced with now is that that this new law will become another sloppy law. It is something we need to fix as quickly as we can. It will not help protect our children from abuse.
A problem that was noted in committee, through the witnesses, was that the bill as it stood would also increase the burden on police forces. I quote from Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Police Service, who appeared before the justice committee in October 2003. He said:
We've seen what happens when police are left to define what is or isn't artistic merit. We'll be fighting about this one for years. Police would simply appreciate laws that are very clear and that will allow us to make better-informed decisions at the time we are required to make them. Wording that is very open to speculation and suggestion and not quite clear makes it very difficult for officers to understand exactly what they're supposed to be doing.
We would agree and say that it is incumbent upon us to ensure that the law is clear.
It is not just artists who face a chill from this legislation. Researchers and health workers will also have to wonder if their work leaves them open to prosecution. For example, psychiatrists working with victims of sexual abuse may wonder what material they can actually publish. With a very vaguely worded public good defence, they could find themselves being accused of creating child porn by referencing events that happened to their patients.
We could have created strong legislation, one that would not be open to charter challenges. I am sure that is something no member of the House wants to see. Again, the amendment is important, and it is important that we try to fix the problem now.
For example, clause 7 leaves it up to the courts to decide if an act or material goes beyond what is considered as the public good. When we discuss measures that limit rights outlined in the charter, the decision should not be left to an unelected, unaccountable body in our court system. We believe that discussion should happen here in Parliament.
The second reason we have asked for this amendment is that this clause does not protect artists. This was a very critical point at the committee, and it is something that has been part of the debate through the passage of the bill. The new defence of public good is too vague and unproven.
We believe it will take years of jurisprudence for the courts to decide exactly how to apply this defence in relation to child pornography laws. Will museums, for example, be prosecuted for holding classic works of art that depict children in sexual acts? Will libraries, which protect the rights of Canadians to read any and all kinds of literature, have to clear their stacks of any books that might suggest teenagers had sex with adults?
Artists need the freedom of an open democracy to create their work. Artists are concerned that the legislation contravenes a basic tenet of our judicial system: one is presumed innocent until proven guilty.
We believe this clause, if it were left as it is, would force an artist to prove that his or her work is for the public good and does not extend beyond it. In fact, Megan Williams, who is the National Director of the Canadian Conference of the Arts, told the committee how artists felt about being guinea pigs of bad legislation. Again, this has had extensive debate both within the arts community and in broader society. She said at committee:
I want to add also that artists do not want to be on the front lines of testing dubiously drafted legislation again.
During the committee hearings, many people brought up the silence around child abuse and how important it is to not return to a time when children and adult survivors of abuse could not talk about it. The chill that this proposed legislation will create cannot be under estimated.
There are other areas of Bill C-12 that we do support and, in fact, overall we support the bill. However, in this area we have a very strong concern.
The proposed bill extends protection for children and other vulnerable people. As we have said, this is clearly something that is very important. However, we cannot support treating all work that deals with children and sex as pornography. It is important that survivors can speak, write or draw about their experiences without facing persecution. It is important that artists can explore not just the virtuous part of our society but also its dark side.
We believe clause 7 should be removed, and thus we have put this amendment forward today, and allow the rest of the bill to go forward.
I hope that the debate today will be something that is respectful. I know this has been a very contentious issue. We put forward the amendment with very good intentions to help make the a bill that is clearer and is something that can be supported by all members of the House.
It was very important that we had the input from different sectors of society: police, artists and others. We believe that the amendment to delete this clause is something that will strengthen the bill.