Mr. Speaker, I do not want to belabour this issue but I do want to raise a couple of points about it.
I must say that the Liberals' argument that this debate should collapse and that we need to rush this bill through is typical of the pre-election rush that I have seen on three occasions now since I have been in this place on bills that are not really expected to go through. Even if they pass here, are they expected to go through the Senate? It is unlikely. Are they expected to be proclaimed in law? Not this year. It is window dressing.
I saw it in the last Parliament with an aboriginal bill. We were told that if the bill did not pass all stages that day without debate, without going back to committee, it would be an injustice. I thought it was an injustice all right. It was an injustice to the aboriginal people who had to wait for the Liberals who waited until the last day of Parliament to try to get the window dressing bill through at all stages. They had been in office for seven or eight years and had all that time to get it through but they did not really want it to pass.
What we have in this bill, and this is a common dilemma for opposition members, is a bill that at least recognizes the problems. It is called the child protection act. The name sounds right. Some of the stuff in the bill is good. We have said we agree with it, that we like the direction of it and so on. In this case, it is not the enemy of the good is the perfect; unless we get it right, this bill is not good enough.
Opposition members only get to vote yes or no on this. That is the problem. The Liberals want to push it through saying that we will try to fix it some other day. Over on this side we keep saying that if we do not get it right, then is it the right thing to do to approve it? We cannot say that we approve of seven-eighths of the bill, that it is seven-eighths affirmative. There is enough wrong with the bill that we want it sent back to committee and we want it fixed. I would urge the government to think of that.
I know what the Liberals will say if we vote against it, and we are going to vote against it because of the problems already cited. They will say that we are against child protection, which is utter nonsense. They just will not address the crux of the issue, the tough part of the bill, the part that Liberals cringe over, which is to actually come down firm on something and say that enough is enough. When it comes to child pornography and exploitation of children, we have to say that enough is enough.
I have brought this up in the House before. The government passed a bill several years ago, four or five years ago, about giving us the ability to prosecute people who go to foreign countries to abuse children, in other words, people who go on these so-called sex holidays somewhere and they find children and abuse them. It is incredible but it is true. It is a multimillion dollar business. For window dressing they passed a bill that allows people who engage in that kind of crime to be prosecuted. This is a good idea.
The question which then comes up is how many people have been prosecuted? It is a multimillion dollar business. There are thousands of people apparently involved in it. It is something that needs to be addressed and stopped.
When that bill came through, we warned the government. We said that the child protection act was a good idea but would it actually get the job done? We said, “We are warning you, it will not get the job done”.
How many people have been prosecuted under that bill? None. How many have been convicted? None. Has the sex holiday business been curtailed? No. Has it helped protect children here or in other countries? No.
What does it mean? It means that we put window dressing on it, we pretend to have addressed it and the problem continues. In fact it is worse because we have veiled our eyes from it and said, “We have addressed this. It must not be going on”. Meanwhile, the poor kids in Thailand or in other countries around the world get abused by so-called holidayers on this binge of theirs, instead of addressing it and saying to those people, “If you are a Canadian getting involved in this, we will pass judgment . You will be doing serious time for exploiting children, for abusing them sexually”. But it has not happened.
There are no successful convictions, not one. If there were one, while I might not say it was a job well done, one would be a good start on what should be probably dozens and dozens of charges and convictions. We should throw the fear of the Lord into those guys who want to use children that way.
It did not work because it was not right. That is the trouble with this bill. It is not right. It will not work. That is why Sharpe likes it. He just says, “Perfect, man, this is just what I need and I will use it again”. The lawyers are all lined up. Their charter arguments are in place. The legislation is already being looked through by those people who defend this type of abuser.
That is what is wrong with the bill. If it is not right, if it is not going to get the job done, then we in the opposition have an obligation to critique it and we have an obligation to vote against it. I wish I could vote for seven-eighths of it, but the part that is wrong makes the rest of it meaningless. We on this side of the House cannot approve something on which people could come back to us five years from now and say, “They are using this defence and they are getting off scot-free”.
It is the same thing as the bill that was supposed to get those sexual predators who go overseas and abuse children because the laws are more lax over there. They go over there and practise their ploys, and if members think that those people leave Thailand or some other place where they abuse children, and come back here and spend the next 50 weeks being good boys, I think not. That is when they start practising their ugly crimes against children in our own country. That is when they download pornographic pictures from the Internet, share them, print them, distribute them, exploit children and abuse them. They do not just go for a week's holiday somewhere and then come back and become angels, having gotten it out of their systems.
That was what was wrong with that bill, and that is what is wrong with this bill. It is not right. That is why we should send it back to committee until we get it right. That is why I will be voting against the bill and in favour of the amendments.