Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-22, which has as its principal design to increase the age of consent for sexual relations from age 14 to age 16.
The critics of the bill have characterized it in a number of ways: social engineering run amok; the attempt on the part of the legislature and on the part of the state to enter into the bedrooms of the nation, once again; to discriminate against our youth; and an attempt to impose morality, which is the one that we hear most often, by those individuals in our society who believe youth of ages 14 and 15 should not engage in sexual relations.
If we study the history of the legislation and, in particular, a number of the private members' bills, there is some validity to that last charge with regard to those prior bills. It is not valid with regard to this legislation.
Because it is to some degree an issue of conscience, we as a party will treat the bill as one that will not be whipped, that individual members of our party will vote according to their values and their conscience.
I will be voting in favour of the legislation. If we go to the essence of the legislation, it is says that at this time in our history as a country, as a society, it is appropriate in order to protect our youth of the ages of 14 and 15 from being exploited by predators. The best mechanism for doing that is this legislation.
It has two significant components. We are raising the age from 14 to 16 in terms of consent to sexual activity. We are also putting in what is known in legal terminology as a near age defence, and this is absolutely crucial.
The near age defence will allow individuals, couples, to have sexual relations where the age gap between the two persons is no more than five years. That will not constitute criminal activity. If it is beyond five years, then it will be criminal activity and will call for the sanctions that are provided for in the statute and in the Criminal Code more generally.
To give a quick history, the age of consent originally in Canada until the early 1900s was 12. I know this comes as a shock to a lot of people. We got that age from England, as we took its statutes and as our jurisprudence broadened itself, and we drew the age 12 into Canada. It stayed there until the early 1900s when it was raised to age 14.
There was more tinkering with the legislation and then fairly substantial was work done on the age of consent through the late seventies, into the eighties and early nineties.
The approach at that time was to look at the relationship and to pass legislation that said in effect that this relationship, because it is inherently exploitive, would be illegal. As an example, if the relationship was one of authority to one of subservience, that was exploitive by its very nature and therefore illegal. Therefore, a number of sections were passed during that period of time.
Interestingly, in the legislation we dealt with in the last Parliament, Bill C-2, which was really the child pornography legislation, we took a fair amount of evidence on the age of consent.
What came out from the prosecutors and police who had to pursue the exploitive type of crimes was that the sections were grossly ineffective in dealing with that type of exploitation and in particular with the 14 year olds and 15 year olds. The charges are rarely laid any more because we simply cannot get convictions. That was the word we got from the prosecutors and it is backed up by strong statistics in that regard.
There is a bit more history in terms of legislative attempts. The Reform, the Alliance, even the Conservative members of Parliament primarily but not exclusively have brought forward legislation over the last 10 to 15 years to increase the age of consent. Without exception they did not put in any near age defence. We have to appreciate what we are talking about in terms of numbers.
In the last few years there are roughly 815,000 youth in that 14 year old and 15 year old category. The estimate is that approximately 125,000 of them are engaging in various forms of sexual relations. They would be caught by this legislation. Roughly 2,500 to 3,000 are or have been in relationships where the age gap was greater than five years, moving on from six and above. Those are the numbers.
The legislation that we saw coming before the House in private members' bills would have had the effect of criminalizing some of our youth. We have to appreciate in the legislation that simply raising the age from 14 to 16, would have had the effect of criminalizing 125,000 of our youth. Both parties to the relationship would have been engaged in criminal activity because one of the parties was having sexual relations with somebody who was under 16. That was a real problem and one that I have to say those parties in their various positions did not appreciate.
I finally convinced the former justice minister from Manitoba, who is now the President of the Treasury Board, to move an amendment to Bill C-2. We did it jointly. The amendment would have had the effect of raising the age with the five year near age defence. It took some convincing. I think his staff was fairly instrumental in convincing him but that is a bit of an aside.
I am making this point because I want to take a shot at the Liberals. When the amendment came before the justice committee in the last Parliament, the Liberals and the Bloc both voted against it and the amendment went down. It never got to the House. When I heard the Liberal member from Montreal ranting about delay, the reality is this particular piece of legislation could have been incorporated into Bill C-2. The attempt was made and it would have been in effect now for the better part of two years.
If there is any delay, it certainly lies in the lap of the Liberals and the Bloc for not supporting the amendment at that time. Interestingly, two years later, I think because of a great deal of political pressure, they finally have come on side.
There are still some problems with this legislation. We have heard that today. I am going to quickly go through it. I moved amendments on each one of these in committee, two of which were ruled out of order, one of which the Liberals had also moved. That dealt with the section that is clearly discriminatory, so found by a number of our courts including two courts of appeal, in Ontario and Quebec.
With regard to the discriminatory nature of section 159, which prohibits anal intercourse under the age of 18, male or female, that has been struck down repeatedly. Neither the Liberal Party in the 13 years when it was in power nor the Conservative government currently has seen fit to move to amend the code and take that section out. By the way, I introduced a private member's bill yesterday on this. In any case, it was ruled out of order in terms of amending Bill C-22.
There is another amendment that I moved. We heard a good deal of evidence about the concern of the legislation deterring young people in the age category of 14 years and 15 years from coming forward to get health care if they suspect they have a sexually transmitted disease because their partner may be five or more years older than they are. What I was trying to do in that amendment was to provide a protection within the Canada Evidence Act.
An example is if an individual came forward and said that he or she had a disease and needed treatment. Because provincial legislation requires the doctor or counsellor who is treating the individual to report that the other individual, the older person, has that disease, the younger person may decide that he or she is not going to give out that information and therefore will not get treatment or counselling.
The legislative amendment I proposed to the Canada Evidence Act was to provide people with the privilege that if they gave that kind of information, it could not be used against them or their partner in any subsequent criminal prosecution. Again, that was ruled out of order. I have prepared the amendment by way of a private member's bill, which I will be tabling in the House probably next week.
The final amendment I made was with respect to what I saw as a jurisdictional conflict between the federal government and the provincial government having to do with marriage where the age gap is greater than five years. There are jurisdictions that allow judges, along with parents and guardians, and/or ministers, usually attorneys general, to allow an individual who is younger than the stated age in the legislation, which generally is 16 to 18 across the country, to marry, usually when the couple is expecting a child.
If a judge allowed the marriage to go ahead even though the age gap was greater, the police and the prosecutors could bring that couple back, and the senior person in the relationship could end up being charged with a criminal offence. The judge would have to decide whether to convict that person. There is that anomaly.
I moved an amendment which was accepted by the committee. If a couple has the authority to get married even though the age gap is greater than five years, there is that kind of authority from the provincial government so that it would not be an infringement of this section of the Criminal Code.
In conclusion, this piece of legislation is not based on the imposition of a particular set of morals. It is about protecting our children.
Around the globe roughly 60% of the population lives in jurisdictions where the age of sexual consent is 16 or older. There is no clear pattern. We cannot say that some countries are more liberal or that others are more conservative; it does not seem to follow any pattern.
My analysis of it from some of the countries I have looked at is that we simply base it on facts, not on morality, and we say that at this time in our society we require this type of protection for our youth. That is what we have done here. It is appropriate that we have done so. As I have said earlier, I will be supporting this bill when it comes to its final vote.