Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my colleague's speech and want to ask him one question.
Over the years there has been a great demand for this kind of legislation from people and groups who work in areas such as protecting children, preventing childhood exploitation, ensuring victims' rights are protected, and preventing the victimization of children.
I heard two messages from my colleague. On the one hand, I appreciate the acknowledgement that this bill does not seek to criminalize relationships between young children. When this issue has been raised in the past, we have heard specifically from the Liberals, time and again, that we were trying to criminalize sexual relationships between children or young people. That is not what this bill is about.
I would like the member to comment on cases in which individuals come here from some U.S. states or some other country where the age of consent is 16 because they know we have a low age of consent in Canada. I am not talking about teenagers here. I am talking about men in their thirties and forties who come to Canada because our age of consent is 14 years of age. That is what this bill targets. I would ask the member to comment on that.
Also, I would ask him to comment a bit on the importance of what is included in the government bill. I would ask him to comment on the fact that there is a close in age exemption included, one that has existed for individuals under 14 years of age for some time now, and there will continue to be a close in age exemption into the future.