moved that Bill C-313, an act to amend the Criminal Code (prohibited sexual acts), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Edmonton—Sherwood Park for seconding this motion today. He will also be taking part in this hour of debate. I appreciate him being here on a beautiful Friday afternoon in Ottawa.
I am honoured to rise in the House today to debate my private member's bill, Bill C-313. The bill has a very worthy goal of amending Canada's Criminal Code by raising the age of sexual consent from 14 years to 16 years. The bill embodies a cause that I have inherited from the hon. members from Calgary Northeast and Wild Rose, both of whom have spent tireless hours over the past 12 years in an effort to achieve the protection of our children that this bill calls for. Mr. Speaker, you know full well that they have worked very hard in other aspects of protecting children in Canada.
As I have mentioned, this is not the first time the House has been faced with the opportunity to take meaningful action to protect our children from adults who use legal loopholes to engage in sexual activities with minors. For years the House has been presented with many private members' bills aimed at raising the age of consent and today that call continues. It continues largely because the House has yet to provide an appropriate answer to those calls for protection.
Despite claims by the government and Liberal governments that predated it, Canada's Criminal Code remains ineffective in its protection of our children when it comes to providing deterrents for adults who seek sexual relations with the most vulnerable and impressionable citizens of our society: our children. I use the words “our children” because, whether we have children of our own or not, as citizens and members of Parliament we possess a collective responsibility to provide meaningful protection for the children of Canada as if they were our own.
Although my children are now adults, they in turn have children, making me a pretty proud grandfather. The children of our neighbours, our co-workers, our colleagues and even strangers we pass on the street from all regions, ethnic backgrounds and faiths, are all Canada's children. They are Canada's children and therefore, as Canadians and legislators, they are our children to protect.
As members of Parliament, we are elected to make laws that respond to the various needs and necessities of our constituents. I would state that an essential virtue of this bill is that it affords much needed protection for children in not only my constituency of Lethbridge but every single constituency represented in the House. I look forward to the day when Canadian parents can rest assured that no adult can lawfully pursue sexual relations with their children.
The Criminal Code of Canada, as exists today, provides tacit approval for sexual relations between adults and adolescents as young as 14 as long as the sexual relations are consensual and the adult is not in a position of authority or trust over the minor. The same Criminal Code also excuses adults who have sexual relations with children as young as 12 years of age as long as the adult involved was under the impression that the minor was at least 14 years of age, the sexual relations was consensual and there was no abuse of position of authority or trust. As hard as that is to believe, that is what the law is in Canada.
In short, the laws of this land leave our children, as young as 12 years old, vulnerable to the lowest seductions and manipulations of troubled adults who would seek to rob them of their innocence. Clearly, it is time for the House to provide meaningful protection for our children.
Recent Liberal governments have taken a piecemeal approach to protecting our children from opportunistic adults seeking sexual relations with children. One example of this is the Liberal government's Bill C-15A of 2002 which outlawed the use of the Internet to communicate with a child for sexual purposes. While criminalizing Internet luring was a positive step, it really did not provide meaningful protection against very real threats.
Bill C-15A merely removed a stepping stone from the path. While removing a mere stepping stone from the illicit path is positive, it does not eliminate the destination to which the path winds, and that is sexual relations between adults and children.
The Criminal Code of Canada must be amended in order to establish truly robust and effective protection for our children and it is time for us to take real action against a real problem.
A recent event right here in Ottawa highlighted the need for this very action that my bill pursues. Just two months ago, a 38 year old man travelled from the United States to Ottawa with the express purpose of having sexual relations with a 14 year old boy. This individual's trip to Ottawa was the culmination of an Internet relationship that began in an online chat room several months before.
Because the age of consent in Canada is 14, he was not charged with sexual assault or any child sex crime. Under the current Criminal Code, the only charges that the police and parents could pursue against this individual were two charges of unlawfully taking a person under 16 away from his parents against their will and one count of using the Internet to facilitate this. Unfortunately, these charges carry no minimum penalties and have maximums of only five years.
Ironically, this individual faces heavier consequences in the United States where there are strict laws against adults crossing state and international borders in order to have sex with persons under the age of 16, even if it is consensual. It is shameful that the laws of another nation currently provide stronger protection for our children than do our own Canadian laws.
It is no coincidence that this troubled man travelled to Canada to have sexual relations with a minor. Our ineffective laws lacking deterrence and consequences leave the most vulnerable members of our society, our children, much more vulnerable and unprotected than need be.
There was a case in eastern Canada where another person came from the United States, contacted a 14 year old, was apprehended, was thrown in jail and had to be released because the young person with whom he had come to Canada to have a sexual relationship was 14 and legal. He therefore had to be released.
As long as our laws remain complacent in the face of such threats, Canada will remain vulnerable to the cold calculations of those who seek to exploit the innocence of and have sexual relations with our children. We are in real trouble when we have such troubled persons from outside our country travelling into Canada for that expressed reason: to take advantage of our lax laws and to have sexual relations with our children.
The Criminal Code as it stands today is powerless in the face of such brazen acts of illicit opportunism where a minor, who, in the Ottawa case, was suffering from depression, is seduced and manipulated prior to being drawn into actual sexual encounters with an adult.
I will speak of another event here in Ottawa where a 35 year old man was found guilty of having repeated sexual relations with a local 13 year old. He was not found guilty but he was charged. Although this individual has clearly broken the current law that supposedly protects our children, he was simply sentenced to house arrest. During the first 12 months of his sentence he is merely obliged to follow a curfew and to participate in sexual behaviour assessments and treatments if his corrections officer deems them necessary, and that is “if”. The court also required this individual to make a $1,000 donation to the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
That incident illustrates how, even when the laws meant to protect our children are clearly broken, no real consequences are assigned as a deterrent for the guilty individual or others who may follow suit. We have laws that together reflect our society's disapproval of adults having sexual relations with minors but there is no definitive principle or legislation supporting them.
This is the crux of my argument today. This bill is aimed at protecting, not limiting our children and their rights. I invite members to read the bill and join me in its promotion by considering a peer exemption for close in age categories so as not to criminalize teens who are sexually active with their peers. The true aim of the bill is the protection of our children from adults who intentionally pursue sexual relations with minors. With this bill Parliament will send a clear message.
It is time for Parliament to state clearly and with authority that our children are not fair game for those troubled adults and it is time for Parliament to state clearly and with authority that we will support the parents and law enforcement agencies which are the front line defenders of our children by providing them with laws clearly stating that sexual relations between adults and children are not only unacceptable but unlawful.
If the government and this House cannot support the bill, a Conservative government will.
Article 85 of the Conservative policy statement states:
A Conservative government will act to protect children by eliminating all defences that are used to justify the possession of child pornography. A Conservative government would rename the age of consent to the age of protection and raise it from 14 to 16 years of age.
Raising the age of consent from 14 to 16 years of age will empower parents and law enforcement agencies to vigorously protect some of the most vulnerable citizens from the darkest threats posed to them.
We have seen an attempt by the government to address this issue, but it falls far short of what needs to be done. The bill that the government brought forward is Bill C-2 which was tabled last fall. However, it does not address the issue of the age of sexual consent. I will read some comments from our justice critic, the member for Provencher, who stated:
Yet, despite the stated goals of the bill and the lofty promises of the Justice Minister, C-2 fails miserably in many respects. Most notable is its failure to protect a very vulnerable category of children--14 to 16 year olds--from the grasp of sexual predators. Children at these ages can easily become targets of pornographers, pedophiles and Internet sex scams while their parents are horrified to learn that Canadian law fails to provide them with legal recourse.
In most democratic jurisdictions that include the United Kingdom, Australia, most American states and European countries, adults are prohibited with having sexual relationships with children less than 16 or even 17 years of age. In Canada, a child may legally consent to sex with an adult at age 14.
As I indicated before, in some circumstances that can be as low as 12 and still be acceptable in the courts. The member further stated:
Despite persistent calls from provincial attorneys general and premiers, child advocacy groups, police, and countless other organizations, including the Conservative Party of Canada, successive Liberal ministers of justice continue to resist the proposal to raise Canada's age of sexual consent.
The most frequently cited reason provided by Liberals for not raising the age of consent is that it might criminalize sexual activity between young people.
That is why I mentioned the close in age exemption category that could be easily implemented. The member stated further:
The Criminal Code already permits children younger than 14 to consent to sexual activity as long as their partners are less than two years older than they are. The British, who have set their age of consent at 16, also have a close in age category that has not, as Liberals suggest, criminalized teenagers
There are many issues to be dealt with on this subject. Hopefully, when we hear what the other parties have to say there will be some consideration for this. I feel it is important to note that children who are between 14 and 16 years of age are still children. They still need direction and our protection. As legislators and lawmakers in this country, it is up to us to provide that protection while they are the most vulnerable in our society.
I look forward to the debate today and returning for the second hour and going to a vote. I hope that members of Parliament, when they deliberate, will find it in their hearts and thoughts to support the bill and pass it into law, so that we can say that we have taken a huge step toward helping to protect our children.