Mr. Speaker, I am burdened to speak to this bill today, burdened because I hear the Liberal critic will recommend to his caucus, and I presume that means it will follow, that it vote against the bill.
We do not know where NDP members stand, the new partners of the Liberal Party, since there seems to be no one willing to speak on their behalf. The member for the Bloc member indicated specifically that the Bloc would not support it. I do not know whether their members will be given a free vote on it or whether it is one of those whipped votes in that party. That was not made clear by the member who just spoke.
At any rate, I want to speak strongly in favour of the bill.
It is probably unfair to get up and repeat all the words in the bill and some justification for taking the stand I am without giving a bit of my background and without appealing to people to consider the true and deep moral structures that have guided our country for many years and which seem now, in our present day and age, to be rapidly falling apart.
As I have indicated in some previous speeches, I had the privilege of being raised in a wonderful, loving family. My dad had nine brothers and sisters, actually he had 10 but one died in infancy, and they were all wonderful, loving people to their spouses and to their children. Until recently, there has been a very good record of marital fidelity in our family. I have made reference to that in previous debates where I have talked about the fact that my parents were married for 67.5 years. They would have gone a little longer if Dad had not have passed away. The record of all my uncles and aunts is impeccable in this area.
I also grew up in a religious context. We are often told that church and state do not mix. However, I am quite impressed that we bring to the debates our actions, our words, our moral framework, whatever that is. I believe that even those who claim to have no faith in God, or in the Bible or in any of the other religions is a religious decision. It is based on faith. It is something that one chooses to believe, based on the amount of evidence that he or she has gathered.
I have made a lifelong study of the scriptures since I became a Christian at age 20, and it is very meaningful to me. I believe that the good book, as some call it, is a definitive instruction book for how we ought to live. As I have studied it over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the instructions in this book are there for our good. We can take every one of the rules and laws in it and they are all positive for the behaviour of families and of society in general.
That is the kind of the background from which I come. In that I then also take that marriage is designed in order to provide for the best for families and for children and it is to be a lifelong marriage.
I believe also in the basic moral concept that sexual activity is not a game that one plays, like basketball or football. It is a very sacred thing, to be participated in within the bonds of marriage. I think we do our society a disservice by not reinforcing those kinds of boundaries and encouraging our young people, in every way possible, that sexual activity is to be saved for and kept within the boundaries of what is called holy matrimony.
I realize that we live in a society in which those morals have been deteriorating rapidly. We even have in the House a bill that would seek to inalienable change the definition of marriage and thereby attack a very solid teaching that many Canadian citizens, by far the majority, have espoused for years.
In the present context, we find that more and more people are engaging in sexual activity outside of marriage and sometimes by coercing others to do so or at least by seducing them. That is what we are talking about.
I have to share with members a very sad thing that is happening in my community way back in the Edmonton Sherwood Park area. I do not know what the latest count is but around 30 bodies of young women have shown up in my riding east of Edmonton in the last 10 or 15 years. These were young women involved in the sex trade and who were killed by someone. It is not known right now whether it is a serial killer or whether it is several individuals.
My heart is broken. I am so sad about that happening. I am a dad. My wife and I have three children. I might hasten to add, perfect children. Not many families can boast that. My daughter Beverley came along first and then sons Brent and Brian. If I think of my daughter being sexually abused by anyone in the family or outside, that is so foreign to my thinking and if someone else were to do it there is something that swells up inside me that says as a father I have an obligation to protect that young girl.
We had a wonderful open relationship in our family and we discussed these things over the years. I am very happy to say that it is our belief that our children grew up according to those standards.
There are many families in which this does not happen. There are parents who permit their children to become involved in other relationships, sometimes with older people, and there are some who would like to resist it but unfortunately, in our present legal system, do not have the right to do so.
When I speak in favour of the bill, I am speaking as a loving father and, I might add, a loving grandfather. Our youngest granddaughter just had her sixth birthday. We have a grandson who is younger than that. He just turned two a couple of months previously.
I am thinking of my grandchildren: Dallas at 13, Kayla, Noah, Hannah and Micah who are wonderful innocent little grandchildren. For me to think of anyone luring them, getting them involved in sexual activity, taking away from them the ability to retroactively be pure in their marriage, I find that very difficult to accept.
This bill would address the issue of individuals who would lure young people into sexual activity. We are talking specifically of those who are older, who would use prostitutes and, when that is not enough, they lure children either on the Internet or by some other means. They get them involved in sexual activity that is dangerous, as we can see. Sociological studies have shown that when children are involved in sexual activity when they are young, even if they have given consent, they are ripe and open to being lured into the business of prostitution. As I just said, I would not call it a profession, it is a dangerous thing to do.
We need to do everything we can to protect our children. I am saying that if someone were to pick up my young granddaughter, or my daughter at 14 or 15 years of age, and involve her in sexual activity, I do not think there should be a defence. I do not think anyone should be able to say that a child talked them into it. She probably would not have, although there may be some who I think at that age lose their heads.
It is up to us as parents, us as grandparents and us as legislators to provide a protective framework for those young people so they are not subject to this kind of vicious and brutal attack.
I would strongly recommend that all members of the House give careful thought to what we are considering here, to support the bill as I do most enthusiastically for my constituents and on behalf of my colleague from Lethbridge.