House of Commons Hansard #124 of the 38th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was religious.
The House resumed from May 20 consideration of the motion that Bill C-313, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (prohibited sexual acts), be read the second time and referred to a committee.
Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Madam Speaker, we have a change of subject for a few minutes with this private member's bill which is once again before House. It is an effort by this party through our member for Lethbridge and in conjunction with our member for Calgary Northeast and me. We have made proposals in regard to raising the age of consent from 14 to 16.
It is fairly good timing to talk about this particular bill, because what I have heard all day about on that side of the House is rights. The Liberals are really concerned about rights, particularly with the issue that is before the House today and which we will be voting on tonight. They keep talking about how important rights are.
I listened to TV just a few moments ago. I was watching the Don Newman show and there was our Prime Minister talking about rights, saying a right is a right. Rights: that is what we are all about, he said, and we are going to protect rights.
I have been here 12 years during which there have been several attempts by this side of the House to have the age of consent raised, because, as members know, when 14 year olds or 15 year olds decide they want to live with an adult, they have the right to make that decision. Guess what, though: the parents of those 14 year olds and 15 year olds have no rights at all in trying to get them out of a possibly very dangerous situation, or a very sad situation, when they are living with an adult twice their age or older.
The parents do not have the rights. I want to express that. The reason they do not have the rights is that time after time this Liberal government has rejected raising the age of consent. The Liberals have done it again with the latest bill, Bill C-2, the child protection act, when they would not amend the bill to raise the age of consent. The Liberals do not allow the parents to have the right to have a say on what to do with a child who is 14 or 15 years old who makes the decision because the age of consent law allows it. That is pretty hypocritical, if you ask me, Madam Speaker.
We talk about grandparents' rights. I know that every member in the House has had to talk to grandparents who have had trouble with access to their grandchildren because they do not have that right under the divorce and separation laws, which the government has had the opportunity to fix time after time. It has refused to do that. The Liberals do not want to give the grandparents the right.
The Liberals talk about rights all day long. They talk about how important it is to protect the rights. I have never seen once, anywhere, that marriage was a right, but I sure have seen a lot of cases where not only it is a right to protect our children, it is essential. It is a responsibility. We are not allowing these parents to take care of their responsibility because they do not have the right to do it. There is something wrong with this whole big picture.
Child pornography is another “right”. We have to protect them with artistic merit because the courts say so; some judge sitting somewhere in some courtroom made a decision that there could be some artistic merit. The right of protecting the children, the children's right to be safe from that evil stuff, is not fully protected because the government believes they should not have that right. It continually gives defences to the people who are engaged in this activity.
I am really sick and tired of hearing people continually rising on that side of the House and talking about the rights, the rights and how important the rights are. I can point to dozens of things that we have seen over the last 12 years on which the government has refused to give the right to certain individuals who should have that right, particularly when it comes to protecting our kids and those most vulnerable.
I have been in education for 30 years. I have been dealing mainly with children through the teenage years. I can tell members that there is a big difference between a child who is 14 and a child who has reached the age of 16. There is a lot of maturity in those two years. The age of consent should probably be even higher, and the children older, but if these people would just come to their senses we would settle for 16.
The Liberals do not recognize the fact that there are parents across the country who are fit to be tied because they have absolutely no way to get their children out of these situations they are engaged in, which in some cases are extremely dangerous. The Liberals have something wrong with their heads.
We have brought this before the House time and again. Who rejects it? Who votes against it? It is the people who are professing “rights” all day and all week long on another issue. It is double-talk, it is hypocritical and it is absolutely a shame that it continues day after day.
Indians on a reserve do not have a right to an ombudsman, Madam Speaker. You do. Everyone in this House does and every Canadian does, but for those living on a reserve there is no right to an ombudsman. A bill was brought before the House that would have given those people that same right, that same equality. Who rejected it? The Liberal Party rejected it. Many of the NDP rejected that same proposal.
Myron Thompson Conservative Wild Rose, AB
It makes us wonder. What in the devil are we are talking about? The Liberals are in here saying, “We are the party of rights, we are the party of equality, we are the great ones, we are the wonderful ones”. But time after time they reject the very commonsensical rights that ought to have been in place long before this.
I am not even going to talk about the spousal rights of the Indians on the reserves. It is pathetic. The government is not doing anything about it. When the Liberals have the opportunity, they reject it. They vote against those rights.
Now we are going to give them another chance. Collectively, my good friends from Lethbridge and Calgary and I are working together on this. We want this bill passed for the sake of the parents who are struggling with their kids and trying to save them from these very situations that they need not be in. We can do it.
But what about our Prime Minister? This is so good that I just have to reiterate it. Our Prime Minister was on TV a minute ago saying that a right is a right is a right. He was asked the following question on the Roy Green show: “Why doesn't your government support raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16?” Here is his answer. I am going to read it again for members. It is worth quoting. He said:
Well, this is an...this is an issue that...that, you know, that...that Parliament is in the process of debating. These are...these are very important social issues, and I think that what we've got to do is allow the debate to allow it to unfold. One of the...one of the ways in which the changes I wanted to bring Parliament is to give parliamentary committees the ability to go out, to reach out and discuss all of these issues. And again, the whole question of the parliamentary...you know, the democratic deficit, is something that the House leader is working so hard on.
I listened to that along with many people in radio land. The Roy Green show played the answer and held a quiz for all the people listening. If they could guess what the question was, they would win a big prize. Nobody could guess. That was from the Prime Minister who said that a right is a right is a right and that the Liberals are the defenders of rights. That was his answer about raising the age of consent. If people do not believe it they can get the tape and listen to it and really get a shock.
That is not the way we deal with the problems of our nation.
Parents have gone to the police to say their 14 year old daughter is living with a 36 year old man, that she gave consent and she will not leave. The father went into the house to remove his daughter but was charged with trespassing. He was interfering with the law. He was infringing on the rights of the old man who was living with his 14 year old daughter. He was arrested, charged and convicted. Thanks, Liberal government, that is what has been given to us.
If people have not guessed by now, this is a desperation speech, because we have given this speech over and over again and the Liberal government, over and over again, refuses to do anything about it.
This private member's bill gives the government the opportunity to raise that age of consent. This would help parents who desperately want to meet their responsibilities, instead of being arrested, going to jail and charged with trying to do what is right for their child.
I say shame on members forever if they do not support the bill. If they are so interested in rights now is the time to do something about it and fix it.
Ken Boshcoff Liberal Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON
Madam Speaker, I rise today to join in the debate of Bill C-313, an act to amend the Criminal Code, prohibited sexual acts.
Bill C-313 has as its purported objective enhanced protection for young persons against sexual exploitative or predatory conduct.
As I understand the arguments advanced in support of the bill, it seeks primarily to better protect some youth, namely 14 and 15 year olds, against sexual predatory conduct by adults and it is premised on the belief that our existing laws and proposed reforms do not adequately protect youth against this kind of conduct.
The Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, April 2005 Juristat, “Children and Youth as Victims of Violent Crime”, recently reported that children and youth accounted for 61% of all victims of sexual assault reported to police and that half the sexual assault victims under the age of six were assaulted by a family member. Sexual assaults against children and youth were committed by strangers in only 5% of these reported cases, with the majority of the victims aged 14 to 17.
We must remain vigilant to ensure that our criminal laws are current and responsive to all forms of sexual abuse and exploitation of children and youth, and so I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this debate.
Would Bill C-313 better protect children and youth against this type of sexual abuse and exploitation? We should recall that under the existing Criminal Code protections against sexual assault, any non-consensual sexual activity, regardless of age, is a sexual assault. It is also important to understand that all of our existing prohibition against sexual assault, including the child specific sexual offences, apply to all sexual activity ranging from sexual touching, such as kissing, to sexual intercourse.
The Criminal Code does in fact protect children and youth against sexual exploitation, specifically it already prohibits sexual exploitative or predatory conduct toward children and youth under 18 years where it involves prostitution, pornography or where it involves a relationship of trust, authority or dependency.
As well, the Criminal Code already prohibits the use of the Internet for the purposes of communicating with a child to commit a sexual offence against that child.
Looking at Bill C-313, we see that it purports to strengthen these protections only for 14 and 15 year olds, only for some offences and only by focusing on the apparent consent of these young persons.
Bill C-313 seeks to provide this additional protection by increasing the age of consent for non-exploitative sexual activity from 14 to 16 years for some but not all related offences. It does not, for example, propose to amend section 172.1, Internet luring, even though such conduct has been identified as some of the predatory conduct that Bill C-313 is intended to better address.
It also does not propose to amend section 810.1 of the Criminal Code, which is a preventive measure that enables the court to prohibit a person from attending places frequented by children under 14 years or from using the Internet to communicate with children under 14 years where there is a reasonable ground to believe that person may commit a sexual offence against a child.
In raising the age of consent, Bill C-313 would also expand the existing close in age exception for 12 and 13 year olds to include 14 and 15 year olds. In doing so, it would maintain the existing prerequisite conditions that the other person must be less than two years older and under 16 years of age and that there cannot be any relationship of trust, authority or dependency. The apparent intent with this amendment is to allow close in age peers to engage in consensual sexual activity and yet this peer group exception would result in criminalization of consensual peer sexual activity.
For example, under the proposed exception in Bill C-313, a 15 and a half year old girl could engage in sexual activity with her 15 year old boyfriend but she would be prohibited from doing so on the day of her 16th birthday. Under Bill C-313, what was legal on one day between two consenting teenage peers, would become illegal on the next.
In contrast, the government's response to this issue, which we find in Bill C-2, the protection of children and other vulnerable persons, would provide increased protection against sexual exploitation to all youth between 14 and 18 years of age without criminalizing typical consensual sexual activity.
Bill C-2 focuses on the wrongful conduct of persons who exploit or prey upon vulnerable young persons and not on whether the young person consented to that act. Bill C-2 would do this by requiring the courts to infer that a relationship with the young person is exploitive of that young person by looking to the nature and circumstances of that relationship. The bill would direct the courts to consider specific indicators of exploitation, including the age of the young person, any difference in age between the young person and the other person, the evolution of the relationship and the degree of control or influence exerted over the young person. In other words, Bill C-2 accepts that there are different indicators of exploitation.
The chronological age of the young person is one such indicator. Bill C-2 tells the courts to consider this factor, but there are others. For example, if the other person is much older than the young person, this is likely an indicator that the relationship is exploitive of the young person. Bill C-2 tells the courts to consider this age difference.
How the relationship evolved is another factor. For example, did it evolve secretly and quickly over the Internet. Bill C-2 tells the court to consider this as well.
Bill C-2 is the way we will be able to better protect all young persons against predatory and exploitive conduct, not Bill C-313. For those reasons I do not support Bill C-313.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
Madam Speaker, I feel like a broken record because, as the member for Wild Rose has already mentioned, the Conservative Party has spoken to this issue repeatedly and as recently as yesterday. I spoke against the private member's motion yesterday and I am speaking against Bill C-313 for basically the same reasons.
The first thing I want to say to the Conservative Party is that if it perhaps got its act together maybe we could deal with the age of consent. When it does this holus-bolus, scattergun approach it just does not work and it will not get the support of the rest of the members of the House.
I want to acknowledge the work that its member for Provencher did with regard to Bill C-2. He did some significant work on dealing with the age of consent and introducing amendments that I was prepared to support as a member of the justice committee for my party and in fact did support the amendments. The Liberals and the Bloc chose not to support them and to go on with this methodology that they have used.
I want to touch on this. I do not think the Conservatives get it. They have to get their act together. They can respond with emotion, yell in the House and try to shame the rest of us into doing it, but if they practically dealt with the problem maybe we could reach a resolution.
We really are talking about social engineering. Until the late 1800s, the age of consent in Canada was 12 years of age. We raised that in the early 1900s and have not touched it since then, except playing with it in a few areas with regard to specific offences.
What began happening in the late 1960s through to the late 1970s was that successive governments, mostly Liberal but, quite frankly, some Conservative, at the federal level began to tinker with it. The option they went for was the exploitative dependency relationship.
In the course of the witnesses and evidence we heard on Bill C-2, we heard from a number of police officers and, more important , from a number of prosecutors who dealt with the sections that were based on the relationship being of an exploitative nature.
What they told us repeatedly from both their own experiences and that of other prosecutors across the land was that the methodology, if I can put it that way, in social engineering simply did not work. They could not get convictions. It was just too difficult to prove.
I was convinced at that time by the witnesses, I have to say, and not by the Conservatives on the committee, that in fact we should be looking at using a different methodology.
The basic problem we have of fixing rigid ages, and we heard it from the Liberal member who preceded me, is the risk of criminalizing a large number of our youth. I am going to throw some numbers out because it is something the Conservatives did not do.
We the following are some figures we asked for and received. There are roughly 800,000 youth in the country at any given time who are 14 and 15 years of age. Of them, close to 50%, are engaging in sexual relations. Of the ones who are engaging in sexual relations, roughly 41% of them are engaging in sexual relations with an older person. It does not matter whether it is male or female. This is something that changed from my generation because it tended to be and still is the stereotype we hear from the Conservatives that it is always the male who is the older person.
The reality is that it is almost exactly equal. Of the 50%, and we are talking now about 150,000 to 180,000 youth, 41% are engaged in a relationship where the age gap between them is more than two years but less than five. We have an additional group of almost 5% who are engaged in a relationship with an individual who is six years or older than they are.
This is where I want to acknowledge the work of the member for Provencher from the Conservative Party. He brought forth an amendment that said we are going to put into the Criminal Code the age of consent by fixing it at 16 from 14, which is where it is now, but we are going to allow a defence to the other youth engaged in the relationship if the age gap is five years or less.
When I saw that, I thought that was a reasoned approach on his part. However, I do not see that in Bill C-313 and I did not see any concept of that in the motion yesterday. Those members just did not do their work. They are quite prepared to criminalize as many as 100,000 youth for engaging in sexual contact. Those are our children. They are not the pimps in downtown Toronto. Those are kids who go to our schools. And they are going to criminalize them.
So when the member for Wild Rose gets up and says, “Shame on you”, I repeat that back to him and to his party. If they got their facts straight and they dealt with this, as they have tried to do, based entirely on emotion, it is never going to go any place. If they did it on facts, if they took a proper and reasoned approach to this, got away from the emotion and feeding their own egos, maybe we could get this problem resolved.
Our party supports the member for Provencher. We could not convince the Bloc or the Liberals to do it, and I blame the Conservatives for that. If they had over the years taken a more reasoned approach, we probably could have brought some of them on side and we could have got that bill, Bill C-2, back to this House with an age of consent and that age differential defence in it. We could have passed it.
That bill, by the way, is before the Senate right now. It may in fact have passed in the last day or two, I am not sure. So we could have actually had it in place. But because the opposition wanted to deal with emotion, we did not get it through.
One of the other things they did not consider was that we still have a problem even if we do fix the age at 16 and we put in the near age defence. We would have a constitutional problem between ourselves and the provinces. One of the territories still has the marrying age set at 15. We are going to have this anomaly if we fix the age of consent at 16. We are going to have people in the north who can get married at the age of 15, but be charged if they engage in a sexual relationship with their husband or wife.
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
It is not nonsense. Again, it is typical that we hear that from the Conservatives. They did not even look at it. That is the law of the land.
On top of that, we have this situation in every province in this country. It is the constitutional right of every province in this country where one can go into court and if the young woman in the relationship is pregnant, one can apply to the court and have a marriage take place under the authority of the court, the parents or guardians. That exists in just about every province. I do not think I checked Quebec, but all the other provinces have that provision.
So again, we could have this anomaly where at the federal jurisdiction we fix the age of consent at 16. I think this one is really quite interesting that we have not dealt with and we are going to have to if we ever get this methodology into play. We are going to have judges who are going to be one day authorizing the marriage and the next day being faced by the prosecutor and the police bringing the same couple before him, one of them, whoever is the older, and charging him or her because of the age not being there as a proper defence.
So there are problems with this. It is not anywhere near as simplistic as we always hear from the Conservatives when it deals with a law and order matter. It is more complex than that because the human scene in this country of course is more complex.
Bill C-313 does not cut it. If the Conservatives went back and maybe spoke to their member for Provencher maybe they could get some amendments at some point. However, as long as they go on a motion, we are not going to get this problem resolved.
Art Hanger Conservative Calgary Northeast, AB
Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak to Bill C-313. I appreciate the fact, with all sincerity, that my colleagues on this side of the House, at least, have offered their support for this particular bill.
I have personally introduced several times a similar bill to raise the age of consent. It is something in the neighbourhood of six times. The member from Lethbridge, of course, was higher up on the order paper in private members' business and was kind enough to put it on his agenda. The member from Wild Rose, of course, has also fought this particular issue since he here in 1993. Both members have concerns for what has unfolded in the streets of our country when it comes to the age of sexual consent.
I have listened to the members on the opposite side, including the member who just spoke from the NDP. This is not the sky-is-falling type of situation he seems to portray in his delivery, although I would have to say that there is a sense of urgency to this matter, given the fact that law enforcement, for instance, has been trying to deal with issues around the age of sexual consent. It has been trying to help the parents whose children have left the nest, if you will, for whatever reason, and are being manipulated, enticed by those unsavoury characters who think nothing of exploiting a young girl, sometimes a young boy, who may be 14 years of age.
I think on that particular issue alone this bill should proceed and should not be delayed any more by red herrings that have been thrown into this debate by members on the opposite side of the bench.
I would ask my colleagues to quickly act to protect children of this country. I say “quickly” with a sense of optimism, for once. That certainly does not have its basis on past performance of the government or other members in the House. I have risen in the House on numerous occasions to debate the bill, as I had mentioned before, all with the express purpose in mind of ensuring that our children were protected.
I am not about to get into the legalese, and there have been lawyers speaking on this issue time and time again, about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable on the legal side of things, but there have been judgments made in the courts of this land that take precedence and address all of the concerns that have been expressed here.
The NDP member says that we on this side want to deal only with emotion when it comes to this issue. Well, let us look at it from the other side of the coin here. There is a reality that is happening out there that members on the opposite side have not come to grasp yet.
They have not grasped the reality of what is really happening out there in the world. They are looking at things through rose-coloured glasses, where 14 year old girls often run away, who are being exploited time and time again by manipulative older men, and all in the name of sexual consent. The police cannot touch them and take them out of that very trying situation and bring them back home because the argument, as put forward, is that they consented, so it is out of police jurisdiction and they cannot do anything about it. That is the reality.
This has been the case throughout the years that I can remember and as long as I have been a police officer. Prior to this job, that is exactly what I did for a living. Cases of this matter were brought before the courts. Even when it came to the judgment of police officers looking at two teenage kids involved in sexual activity, the courts already set precedents in the matter.
It does not have to deal with a red herring section that the NDP says is missing in this legislation, a red herring that the Liberals, and now the NDP, are acting upon saying that children who will engage in sexual activity will suddenly be criminalized. The courts have already decided that. Precedents have already been set.
What these members are now saying, to divert attention from the bill and its effectiveness, is that this provision of charging and criminalizing youngsters for sexual activity is not included in the bill and is not going to protect them. That is a bunch of nonsense. I am absolutely surprised as to how the NDP member can even suggest that. I believe that member is a lawyer, is he not? He is a lawyer and should know better. Shame on him because he should know better, as should the Liberals.
This is not new. These red herrings have been thrown into the debate, not by us, not by those law enforcement officers across this country, not by the parents who grieve because they cannot get their children out of the clutches of adult men, but by the Liberals. They have chosen to throw this into the mix, and deflect away from the real purpose of why this legislation is here before us.
I would like to touch on a couple of rather odd instances that I do not believe the Liberal's Bill C-2 legislation for the protection of children will address. There was one situation that came up with a Mr. Beckham out of Texas, a 31 year old man who had lured an Ottawa boy to a hotel room for sex. It just shows where we are at here with our legislation and the fact that the members on that side of the House, the governing party, never intended to ever address.
Under Canadian law, 14 year olds, and everyone knows it because this is what the debate is all about, are qualified to consent to sex, unless they, of course, are with a person of trust or authority, or unless it is anal sex in which case the Criminal Code says everyone involved has to be 18 or older.
That law, the latter part of what I just read there about anal sex, has been ruled unconstitutional by two Canadian courts already. Guess what is going to happen? Do members think that this law will ever be challenged and put into the right perspective by the government? No. The government has consistently gone the other way. It has consistently rejected the common good when it comes to our youngsters, and it will not challenge it.
Canada's basic law regarding age of consent is 14 for non-anal sex, so as not to criminalize most sex acts between teenagers. Now, the law even allows for children as young as 12 to consent to sex in some circumstances. That is the law. Do you see the trend, Madam Speaker? It is going the other way. It is not reaching out to protect those youngsters. It is going the other way and opening the door so more of them can be exploited, as young as 12. I think that is absolutely shameful.
Given that trend, given that concern raised by so many people in this country, and given the fact that the government here has no intention of protecting our children, with all the rhetoric and red herrings, we can tell that the government is not serious about this particular bill. This is the concern we have on this side of the House.
I know this is the concern that law enforcement officers in this nation have. I ask all members in this House to rethink their position, especially on that side of the House. For the sake of our children, support this bill. Get behind it.
Sue Barnes LiberalParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians
Madam Speaker, first of all, I would like to recognize the hard work that does go into private members' legislation. I had the pleasure to work with the member opposite from Lethbridge when I chaired the finance committee and he was a member of that committee. He does hard work and I respect him as an individual. I know that every good intention was put into this legislation.
I currently work on aboriginal affairs as the parliamentary secretary. In the last Parliament, before the election, I was the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Justice. And before I hear the catcalls, yes, I was a lawyer for 15 years in a previous career. I enjoyed that, and I bring that training to this Parliament too. I also taught law at the local university part time and also for the bar admissions.
That is not what this is about. This discussion today is to try to come to grips with the activity of teenagers and differentiating that from criminal activity that occurs as the sexual exploitation of children, which we are all concerned about.
Many times over the last dozen years while I have been in this Parliament I have heard that we have been delaying this. I want to take people back to the point before the last Parliament, when I stood up in this chamber many times, in fact day after day, trying to get what is now Bill C-2, which is the act to amend the Criminal Code, protection of children and other vulnerable persons, and the Canada Evidence Act, through this Parliament then.
This Parliament just passed Bill C-2, which gave major protections on the subject matter we are talking about. It could have been passed in the prior Parliament. I will say what happened here, because I need to refresh, and maybe the people who were not here at that time need to be advised that that bill had basically the same format. Now there have been a few minor changes as it travelled through this time around in committee.
Basically, that bill was subject to a procedural hoist motion, which means it was postponed. It was postponed by the opposition and we did not get that bill. That bill not only had sections respecting the protection of children and child pornography, it had voyeurism sections. It also had really important sentencing sections, and it had the facilitating of testimony for children, so they did not get retraumatized when they had to go through the court system.
We are not in any party of this House immune from what happens to our children. I am a mother. I have a 16-year-old. I have kids in university too. We are all trying to do the right thing. But we cannot take that “I am better than you” position. What we have to do is look at this in an objective way and look at not only the good a piece of legislation can do, but also the unintended consequences that could affect our children for a long time.
That is why I am very much in favour, when we look at criminal activity, of looking at the activity of the person doing that activity and judging that. That is what Bill C-2 did, and it is now in the Senate.
I know what the hon. member's intention was to do here. It was to allow that close-in-age exception for an accused who is 12 or more but under 16. The reality in homes across this country is that we have teenagers who could get into trouble with this bill, serious trouble that will affect them. It will give them a criminal record and it will affect their ability to get into college or university or to get into employment with the government, or a whole pile of other things.
I am not only talking about the trauma of what happens, but under this bill as it is currently written, I want to give members the scenario of what could happen.
Under Bill C-313, a 15-year-old boy could engage in consensual sexual activity with his 14-year-old girlfriend, but on the day of his 16th birthday the boy would be committing a sexual offence even if he kissed his girlfriend. Remember, we are not talking rape here. Rape is rape, and that is a criminal offence and it does not matter at what age. What we are gathering inside this net is something that was not intended.
We have to be very careful, because when you take a net widening in the Criminal Code, you put not only all of those emotional situations on the children involved and the parents, but you have financial implications in the criminal justice system and the social service system. That is what happens when you get that scenario of the charging prosecution.
I used to work with young children in the court system, and it is not easy when they go there. It is certainly not easier on their parents and their guardians. We have to be concerned, and we have to do this in a logical manner.
The member who spoke before me talked about Bill C-2. I will go to Bill C-2 because the section the hon. member's bill tries to get at is in Bill C-2. It is already there. It just passed this House; it is in the Senate. As I said, it could have passed in the last Parliament if it had not been hoisted by the opposition, because they did not want this bill before they went into an election.
Bill C-2 proposes the creation of a new prohibition to better protect youth against sexual exploitation. Under the prohibition, courts would be directed to infer that a relationship with a young person is exploitative of the young person by looking to the nature and circumstances of that relationship, including specific indicators of exploitation. Those indicators could involve a number of things. First is the age of the person. Obviously the younger, the more there is a presumption of exploitation. Next is the age difference between the child and the accused. Obviously the greater number of years between their ages, the child's age and the accused's age, the greater the amount of exploitation that could probably be inferred, especially if it is a person in a position of trust. Another is the evolution of the relationship, how the fact situation in that particular situation occurred. Then there is the degree of control or influence exercised over the young person. These are all elements that the criminal mind has to be apprised of, that the court has to look at, and in actual fact it gives a greater amount of probability of success in the conviction of a true exploitation. It eliminates that situation where you could have young people doing things that maybe as a parent I do not want my 16- or 14-year-old doing, but, ladies and gentlemen, they are doing them, and that is reality.
We live in a real world where teenage youth in this country are engaging in something every day. It might not be what we want, but it is also not criminal activity--not criminal activity with lifelong criminal sanctions. I think we have to deal with that.
I want to talk about the benefits that were in Bill C-2, which just passed. These were some of the additions that were put in Bill-2. It proposed significant reforms to ensure that sentencing in cases involving the abuse and sexual exploitation of children better reflects the serious nature of crimes. And this was just passed. This work was done. It is complete in this House. It is now in the Senate. It increased the maximum penalties on summary conviction for child-specific offences from six to 18 months. It doubled the maximum penalty on indictment for sexual exploitation of a young person from five to 10 years. That is serious time in our system of justice. It increased the maximum penalty on indictment for failure to provide the necessities of life and for abandonment of a child from two to five years. And it increases the maximum penalty on summary conviction for all child pornography offences from six to 18 months. That is what was done. I do not want anybody in Canada to believe that this House has not been paying attention to these issues.
Why did we do Bill C-2? The Speech from the Throne committed to crack down on child pornography. It proposed criminal law reforms that strengthen child pornography and sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code, and it created a new category called sexual exploitation. In other words, something was added to the Criminal Code that focused on this particular activity that should not be occurring with our children in this country. It facilitated testimony by children and other vulnerable victims and witnesses, those with an impairment of some type, and it created new voyeurism. Those little photo cameras? There is now a criminal offence that goes with those cameras and any voyeurism offence.
I think we have done a good job in Bill C-2. I am very pleased it passed the House this time. I wish it would have passed over a year ago, as it could easily have done if we had not been so interested in delaying it so that another party could claim victory down the road.
I am not going to take anything away from the member who worked on this bill, because I know him and I know what he is trying to accomplish. I just do not think that this bill is complete enough, and it creates as many problems as it could solve in this country.
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
Madam Speaker, I am sorry to see the member leaving, because I wanted to address her remarks.
She will hear them from inside, she says.
What is disturbing on this side is that the hon. member comes forward to extoll the virtues of Bill C-2, which has just passed, which does not deal with the age of sexual consent that this private member's bill, Bill C-313, addresses, raising the age of sexual consent from 14 to 16.
Members on the opposite side simply do not want to deal with that issue. The member makes a great point of talking about how the government has raised these maximum penalties, and she gave a list of all the things it has raised the maximums on. It is hard to find a single case in the last five years where maximum penalties have ever been used for anything. It makes good rhetoric, but there is no substance.
I asked what are the minimums--
James Lunney Conservative Nanaimo—Alberni, BC
So there are no minimum sentences, but the government has put in maximums that are never used.
That is nice language, but it gives Canadians a false sense that we are taking action when in fact we are not. That is what we object to on this side of the House.
We are concerned. I have had petitions come in from concerned citizens in my community who want to see the age of sexual consent raised. This is not about close-in-age relationships. It is not about grabbing those teenagers and throwing them in jail. That is not what it is about. It is about difference in age. It is about the adults who exploit our teenagers. This is a very significant concern in our communities.
We have gangs that are targeting our young girls. They are not even out of middle school yet. They are just at the age of puberty. Some of them are maturing early these days, but they have not had much life experience. We have gangs that are there, older young men with their fast cars, with their drugs, and they are trying to lure those young girls. They will buy them clothes; they will take them out for dinner and treat them like a queen. The same happens with young boys too, as a matter of fact. They will take them and seduce them. Once they have compromised their person and their sexuality, they will then use them.
We have heard examples of that. I will give an example from my own community. A man called who was really upset. He found out his 14-year-old daughter was in a motel room in one of the communities I serve. She was with a 21-year-old man from a neighbouring community, and they met on a chat line. Here is this 21-year old-who has this 14-year-old in the motel room. The man goes down madder than a hatter. His daughter is in there. His young girl was 13 and now she is 14. These are very young girls who are being exploited. The dad is pounding on the door of the motel office wanting to know what room they are in, and they call the police and the dad gets arrested.
Canadians are concerned about this, and my constituents are concerned about it. This man was very concerned. He could not believe this. No one in the community could believe that the man's 14-year-old daughter could be lured in there by someone who she met on an Internet chat line and the dad is the one who is in trouble with the law.
So our communities are concerned. As I said, I have had hundreds of signatures on petitions in my office that I have presented in the House on this issue and banners that have come in from others in other forms trying to get their concern expressed.
In Conservative Party policy we call it the age of protection. It is about protecting our young people from sexual predators.
I have already made the point about Bill C-2, which the member has said has all these maximums. Frankly, it becomes meaningless because maximums are simply not used.
There are many examples. There are exceptions made under the current law for children as young as 12 years old, as long as the person who abuses them is under the impression that they are at least 14 years old. There are so many loopholes in the law that it makes the lawyers happy, but it gets people off without any significant consequences.
My hon. colleague mentioned a 31-year-old man who travelled from the United States to Ottawa for the express purpose of having sexual relations with a 14-year-old boy. Again, it was an Internet relationship.
There are protections in the United States against crossing state borders and against crossing international borders for exploiting young people, but we do not have those protections here.
I know my time is short, but I want to commend my colleagues, the member for Lethbridge, the member for Wild Rose who spoke and had passion about this issue, and the member from Calgary.
We are concerned about this. It is surprising that the member from the NDP would accuse our members of using emotion in this debate. It is an emotional issue. Our young people are being abused by adults who target them for sexual exploitation and we need to take action to stop it.
Rick Casson Conservative Lethbridge, AB
Madam Speaker, I want to thank everybody who took part from all parties. In the first hour of debate NDP members did not speak at that time, but they were able to be here today.
First, I want to thank the member for Wild Rose and the member for Calgary Northeast for the work they have done on this in years past. When the member for Wild Rose speaks, he speaks with a great deal of passion about this issue. He is a former educator. In his other life he was a school principal. He worked with young people all his life. He understands the problems that young people face as they mature and grow. The fact that they can be preyed upon by adults at the young age of 14 is absolutely unbelievable to him as it is to me. I congratulate him on his good work and continued work in this area.
The member for Calgary Northeast was a former police officer. He too has had experience dealing with maybe some of the lesser types in society, people who prey upon young people. He fully understands these situations can exist. He has seen them. He is very concerned with this as well.
One of the members earlier said that a part of what is so troubling about this is when we talk about close in age sex. That is absolutely not what we are talking about here. We have made that point over and over again. We are trying to protect children from adults who prey upon them. For the life of me I do not understand why members opposite cannot get that idea.
Let us not bring in all the convoluted reasons why we cannot do this, such as a marrying law in one of the provinces. That can all be dealt with when laws are prepared. What we are trying to do, and the ultimate focus of this bill, is to protect children. It is obvious that all other parties in the House are against this. When the bill comes back in the fall, as hard as it is to believe, they will not support a bill which would go quite a ways to protect children.
One of the really alarming aspects of what presently exists in our law is that an adult can have sex with a child as young as 12 years old, as long as the adult thinks that child is 14. It is almost unbelievable that this would be part of a law and allowed to happen in a country of which we are all so proud. It is an absolute travesty and it needs to be changed.
Time and time again this party has stood in the House and brought these issues forward. Time and time again they have been thrown out, even to the point where a member from the NDP has said that we always try to simplify the law. Should we not try to make a law that will just simply protect children? That is all that we are trying to do. To bring all these other things into it is just smoke and mirrors and it is very unfortunate.
I am proud to be part of a party, the Conservative Party of Canada, that has in its recently adopted policies, a policy that states that we support what we call the age of protection being 16 years of age. I think when Canadians realize some of the situations that can exist presently under the law, which are being defended by the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc, and when they fully understand that adults can legally have sex as young as 12, they will know there is a party willing to stand on principle. When we become government, we will put in a law that will protect children until they are 16 years of age.
Criminal CodePrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)
It being 6:30 p.m., the time provided for debate has expired.
The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?
Criminal CodePrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)
All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.
Criminal CodePrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)
All those opposed will please say nay.
Criminal CodePrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)
In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:
Criminal CodePrivate Members' Business
The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)
Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, June 29 immediately before the time provided for private members' business.
Criminal CodeRoyal Assent
The Acting Speaker (Hon. Jean Augustine)
Order, please. I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received as follows:
Rideau Hall
Ottawa
June 23, 2005
Mr. Speaker,
I have the honour to inform you that the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada, signified royal assent by written declaration to the bills listed in the schedule to this letter on the 28th day of June, 2005, at 5:30 p.m
Yours sincerely,
Curtis Barlow
Deputy Secretary, Policy, Program, Protocol
The schedule indicates that royal assent was given to the following bills: Bill C-43, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 23, 2005, and Bill S-18, an act to amend the Statistics Act.
The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-38, An Act respecting certain aspects of legal capacity for marriage for civil purposes, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.