The member keeps prattling on about wanting a copy my speech. This is all being recorded and perhaps he should be made aware that in fact he can get a copy when I am finished.
The other point that needs to be raised here with regard to this motion is that there is also about 6% of the age group that are beyond the five year differential. We are also looking at potentially criminalizing those, but the determination was made, and rightfully so, that the age gap of five years was the appropriate one. It reflected the reality of what is occurring in terms of defending it, but at the same time it is saying that once a person moves beyond that five year age gap it becomes a statutory prohibition and will be subject to criminal penalty as a result.
I want to make one additional point that came up repeatedly in the debate in the justice committee around the age of consent. We have already heard from the member from Mississauga that the government's position, supported by the Bloc, was that the exploitive dependency relationship is the one we have to prohibit. I analyzed that from the perspective of asking what in fact is happening now, because various Criminal Code sections now use the same type of analysis and Criminal Code framework to prohibit this type of relationship.
However, we heard repeatedly from crown prosecutors, some of whom prosecute only criminal offences involving sexual activity, and from a number of the police forces that this methodology, this infrastructure of the Criminal Code, in fact does not work. It simply is not a methodology that can be used with any type of reasonable success in our criminal justice system.
As I say, we heard that repeatedly. As a result of that evidence from the prosecutors and police forces at various levels in the country, it seemed obvious that the government had to shift its position. Unfortunately, it was not prepared to do that at the justice committee. Those amendments failed because of the positions of the government and the Bloc in opposing them.
I believe that debate has to continue. Bill C-2 is now waiting for royal assent, I believe. It went through. Perhaps I should point out that it was with our agreement and the agreement of the Conservatives that it was put into play.
What is going to happen now? There will be a review after five years, I believe, and we will then have to come back and find solid proof that what the prosecutors, the crown attorneys, and the police officers were telling us is in fact true: that it is not going to be effective in dealing with those cases where there are exploitation and dependency, the classic of the young person being exploited, oftentimes right into prostitution.
I firmly believe that the system now being put in place is not going to work and that we will be back here in five or six years and will move to what the Conservative justice critic moved at that time, which we supported. I believe that very strongly.
In conclusion, I want to make one final point. The decision of making this move has to be put in the proper context of dealing with the age of consent. The reality is that when we look at other jurisdictions that have moved to increase the age of consent there has not been a significant increase in the number of convictions, even when they were very solid in what the age of consent should be.
What it has some effect on, and perhaps this is the most positive thing we can expect, is that there has been a communication by the legislature of that jurisdiction of its disapproval. I will not say it is significant, but it has had some effect on lowering the sexual activity among our youth.
We heard from psychologists during the course of the committee hearings that most youth, particularly those who are 14 or 15 years of age, are not in a position to properly judge whether they are ready for full sexual activity. By communicating this as a legislature, we have some impact on those youth. Again, it is not significant in terms of overall percentages, but it does communicate from us as legislators the need for them to perhaps have second thoughts about what type of sexual activity they will be engaged in.
For that reason, we believe that the age of consent should be raised so long as we have that defence ingrained.