Madam Speaker, I want to thank the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca for his very thoughtful comments.
Similar to his background, although I do not have his extensive medical background, I was one of the founders of the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton. I am fully aware that with sexual assaults it is not really the bogeyman in the bush, but in many cases, it is actually within the family or among neighbours. So there is a lot of sensitivity in the issue and we need the sensitivity of the police when they are investigating and following up.
I wonder, though, if the member could speak to a couple of issues. I raised a similar question to one of the member's colleagues. While I think it is laudable that we are trying to beef up the ability to follow up police activity, particularly to intervene in terms of prevention, that raises the question, when it comes to committee, does the member think it would be important to look at resourcing?
We know our police officers are already stretched to the limit. They are now dealing with major gang incidents. We are dealing with Internet pornography and the molestation of children on the Internet. We have extremely complex cases to deal with now and the police are already pressed.
There is also the issue of intelligence sharing. I have worked in the area of international environmental law enforcement and I know how critical it is to get co-operation not just between countries but between the police forces within our country, so between the RCMP and the provincial police officers.
I wonder if the member could comment about the resourcing and whether that would be an important matter to look at when we are approving this bill, or are we simply loading more onto the police without providing the adequate resources? Should there be a commitment by the government at the same time?
Also there is the issue of where it is going to be necessary to report sexual offences occurring outside Canada. As I mentioned previously, in some countries, simply holding hands in public is considered a sexual offence. What kind of system are we putting forward for the intelligence sharing and to validate?
In some cases, new Canadians come here who may have been charged with an offence. Where are we going to draw the line on what has to be reported?