Mr. Speaker, I was going to try to address the need for the change in the age of consent. However, we had a situation in Saskatchewan a few years ago, and I think most members would recall it, where three individuals in their twenties picked up a 12 year old first nations girl, had her consume a fair amount of liquor and, from what I can gather, sexually exploited that young girl. It was quite a controversial case. Through the appeal system, eventually all three were found guilty.
However, I want to point out what happened at the trial of two of these individuals. They had a very good defence lawyer. I know members opposite sometimes take their advice from defence counsel and defence lawyers in designing the laws of the country, and sometimes that is an error. The defence lawyer at a jury trial made a very compelling argument to the jury that the girl looked like she might be over 14 years of age, although she really was 12 years of age. All one has to do is raise a reasonable doubt to get an acquittal in our criminal court system.
Therefore, that is a fairly major loophole in the law. I think any fair-minded person in the House should understand, as parliamentarians of all parties, that we should not create laws that allow that sort of loophole to be exploited by defence attorneys in a criminal court system. Let us take that away from them.
Could the member enlighten us as to why we need to increase the age of consent from 14 to 16? I think I have given every member in the House of Commons one good reason to support the bill, without any doubt, unless they are taking their cues from defence lawyers. Young people in our country need protection and the way the law is right now it is not very good protection.