Mr. Speaker, I would like to pay tribute today to seven Toronto police officers who are members of the child exploitation branch of the Toronto police sex crimes unit. They are: Detective Sgt. Paul Gillespie, Detective Ian Lamond, and Detective Constables Bill McGarry, Kris McCarthy, John Menard, Paul Krawczyk and Steffan Mueller. It was through their sheer hard work that a little girl in North Carolina owes them her life.
As was reported this past weekend, it was through this unit's perseverance that they managed to gather enough information from gruesome child pornography images to find and save this little girl. She is one of fewer than 300 children who have been identified worldwide from an estimated pool of 50,000 to 100,000 victims.
It takes a very special kind of police officer to be able to endure what would traumatize the average person in order to protect our children. On days when we hear the tragic news of Cecilia Zhang, we can find a little solace in the fact that one little girl was saved.