Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I also thank him for the fact that he did not question my beliefs concerning children. I myself have two six-year-old children. One of them has chicken pox and is here in my office. I thank my assistant, Patrick, for taking care of him during these few minutes, because he cannot go to school since he is contagious. That being said, I wanted to thank him publicly.
Indeed, nothing is more precious than our children. I talked about balance. However, it was not quite clear whether we were talking about sexual exploitation or child pornography. When I was talking about child pornography, the idea was to be very careful not to abusively accuse some legitimate artists who may write a novel, for example, Lolita . We know about the novel Lolita , some novels or some texts that may be quite legitimate and, in a wider context, whose narrative describes sexual acts between minors. As the text does not generally have a sexual purpose, it would not be considered child pornography.
When I was talking about balance, this is what this was about. I was absolutely not talking about balance in the case of sexual exploitation of children, these poor children who are abused by some quite despicable people.
This is why I suggested in committee that we have minimal penalties to fight against this and to punish as harshly as possible people who prey on these vulnerable human beings that are our children.
I hope that, when I introduce a bill on minimal penalties for people who sexually exploit our children, which I will do in the near future, I will have the support of the member who is asking me questions.