Mr. Speaker, I noted that the hon. member ran into the chamber as I was ending my speech but if he had been here to listen to my speech he would know that twice in my speech I mentioned that in Canada for exploitative relationships the age of protection and the age of consent remains at 18.
What we have decided as a government and what Canadians have told us and child exploitation experts have said is that if there is an age difference, if someone is 55 years old and that young person is 14 or 15, then it is exploitative on its face.
We are raising the age of protection for sexual activity to 16. The reason the age is being raised is based on the testimony we heard at committee. What we heard was that the laws that were put in place, whatever merit they had, were not strong enough. The current provisions of the Criminal Code dealing with exploitative relationships or positions of trust or authority are also not strong enough. I was here when some amendments were made to the Criminal Code to protect young people. Even after that, we saw relationships where it was someone much older preying on someone who was 14 or 15 and the police said that there was nothing they could do about it, which is why we have this bill.
Not enough was done in the past and there was a reluctance by past governments to do what had to be done, which was to raise the age of protection to protect young people, which is, very clearly, what this bill does.