Mr. Speaker, we will soon come to the end of this debate, and we will have to vote on this bill. That is why I first want to assure all my colleagues that, like all the members of the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois believes that child trafficking is a horrible crime that warrants the stiffest sentences for offenders. We are confident that judges feel the same way.
However, the Bloc takes issue with this bill because it targets all forms of exploitation of minors, not just trafficking of persons under the age of 18 years, as the bill's title indicates. When they talk about this bill, the Conservatives always talk about “child trafficking” to justify their proposed minimum sentences of 5 and 6 years.
It is true that children are under the age of 18 and therefore fall into the category of persons under that age, and it is true that child trafficking is covered by the broader concept of exploitation of minors. But child trafficking is probably the worst and most advanced form of exploitation of minors. Many forms of exploitation of persons under 18 are not as horrible as child trafficking. People who engage in certain forms of exploitation do not deserve the same sentence as child traffickers.