Debates of Nov. 15th, 2010

Motion in amendment

[Daniel Paillé, Bloc, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague. I was listening to what he said about the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles and I am trying to find a word to describe this member's behaviour.

So, I wrote down five words and I would like my colleague to tell us which of them is most appropriate. Is it “incompetent”, “insignificant”, “ignorant”, “dishonest” or “lying”?

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know. I think that he may have just got carried away. Sometimes the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles does not behave like a parliamentary secretary, as was the case during the interview that aired on GO Radio X FM in Abitibi-Témiscamingue.

I can tell him that this interview has made the rounds. If he wanted to take the populist approach and tell us that we are worthless because we are not taking care of our country's children, he dropped the ball. And I hope that he heard how I picked it up during the three subsequent interviews I gave to all the media in the region.

I find that the parliamentary secretary sometimes goes too far. This is one of those times. In my opinion, he should choose his words more carefully in the future and, more specifically, verify the accuracy of what he is saying, which he clearly did not do.

I remember speaking to this chamber about Bill C-22 for 20 minutes and being questioned by him during the 10-minute question period following my speech, so something is amiss.

Not only is the Bloc Québécois in favour of Bill C-22, but it also insisted, through its revered House leader, that this bill be brought back quickly so that it could be implemented quickly.

Perhaps the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles and parliamentary secretary should choose his words more carefully and verify his sources in the future.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Before I go to a second question, I want to remind all hon. members that they ought to use parliamentary language in the chamber when they are referring to their colleagues. What one is not allowed to do directly, one is also not allowed to do indirectly simply by listing out a laundry list of words that are not considered parliamentary language. I would ask all members of this chamber to show the respect for their fellow members that is their right in this place.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians should really be interested in the fact that what we are debating is a short title.

However, what we should really be debating is the motivation of the government to take a bill, which has a title that very clearly states it requires the reporting by Internet service providers of matters relating to sexual exploitation of children, and change it to the short title of protecting children from online sexual exploitation.

I do not understand how a government can get away with suggesting that a bill does something that it does not. That is the issue, and this is not the first time. It happens virtually every time. These bills continue to be recycled and continue to be changed.

I do not believe the government is really serious about this bill or about any of the other justice bills. It simply wants to give the illusion that it is doing something it is not. Maybe the member would like to comment on that.

[Marc Lemay, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very interesting question and I would respond with a quote. Maybe they should call it the “protecting children from the Bloc, the Liberals and the NDP” act.

I am searching for the right words in order to respect the Speaker's decision, but that is exactly what he said. They want to appeal to the people by saying that they are fighting crime and doing everything they can. That is not true. The Bloc Québécois supported Bill C-22, formerly Bill C-58, from the very beginning. Four years ago we were saying that the police have to be given the tools to deal with 21st century crime.

The short title of the bill is “Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act”. It does not do that, and I especially do not want our Conservative friends to use this misleading title to spread unwelcome propaganda.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to the proposed amendment by the government, which is a pretty straightforward one. All it does is put back the short title to Bill C-22.

In committee, the opposition parties, after analyzing the bill, unanimously came to the conclusion that the short title was just a piece of propaganda on the part of the government with really very little, if anything, to do with the content of the bill. For that reason, the committee voted to delete the short title. From a procedural standpoint, quite frankly, it does not make any difference in terms of the bill going through.

All opposition parties, as well as the government, are supportive of the bill. It is one that should have gone through the House years ago, but with the calling of prorogation and other stalling that the government did on its crime bills, it sat for years, and I mean that literally, before it came forth.

It is not a significant amendment in deleting the short title in terms of the content of the bill and the bill going forward. What it does is ask the government to get serious and stop playing partisan politics, especially with issues of online child pornography, with this. It asks the government to stop its propagandizing, to be honest in terms of its legislation and to stop using these silly titles.

This is not the first and probably not the last time that I will take some offence to this as a lawyer who practised in the courts. In court, as a practising lawyer, as an advocate for our clients, we obviously refer to legislation that is before the court on whatever issue we are dealing with. Historically in the courts we have used the short titles rather than the long titles to refer to the law. Just imagining myself in the court room using some of the short titles that the government has used, both in this bill and in other bills, I would be embarrassed as a practising lawyer.

I do not see myself as a practising lawyer doing anything other than protecting my client's interest when I am in the court room. I am not there, nor are the prosecutors and defence counsels in the country, to push the propaganda role that the partisan Conservative government wants to push when it comes to these short titles. We are not there for that purpose. That is demeaning, quite frankly, to our role as advocates.

We are there to deal with serious issues that are before the court, especially when we are dealing with an issue like online child pornography. We do not see ourselves as agents for the Conservative Party of Canada and its propaganda machine. For that reason alone, I have taken some offence to a number of the bills that have come forward with these short titles that are often misleading, and this is another example of it.

The short title the government is proposing to put back in, that we voted out at committee, talks about protecting children from online sexual exploitation. However, the long title, and the more accurate one by far, is Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. The bill, in its entirety, is all about forcing, cajoling and encouraging Internet service providers to report if they identify it. Then, if on request or under warrant, that they provide additional information so it can be tracked. It is a tool that our police and prosecutors have needed for some time.

As I said earlier, for years we have been hearing from them. I know the justice minister regularly has heard from the other provincial justice ministers and attorneys general for this need for quite some time at their annual meetings or semi-annual meetings.

The bill has been before the House in the past. It has been sitting here waiting to be dealt with. Then we had either an election called or, on two occasions, prorogation and the bill just sat.

It is quite clear this is a valuable tool. It is why all the opposition parties are in favour of it. However, to trivialize it by throwing these silly titles in, which are either irrelevant or misleading, is something that we should not as legislators countenance. The government should be ashamed of itself for bringing this back. Had it brought a more meaningful short title back, it probably would have had support from this side of the House. All it did was bring back exactly the same wording, which as I said earlier is grossly misleading as to what the bill would do.

It is really a technical bill. It is one that is absolutely needed. To suggest that somehow this is the be all and end all of sexual exploitation over the Internet of our children is grossly misleading and not one that we should countenance as opposition parties or as the legislature as a whole.

Therefore, we will be voting against the amendment of the government. It does not advance the cause of fighting the issue of child pornography at all.

It was interesting when the parliamentary secretary asked a question earlier of one of my colleagues. In the course of the question there was at least an implication, if not an outright statement, that somehow we would be able to protect children from being abused in Canada. What came out in the hearing, when we dealt with the issue of online child pornography, was there were very few exceptions, and I think we have had three to five cases in Canada, where the child who was abused in the online material was in Canada.

That is why this title is so misleading. The reality is this abuse of the children is not occurring in Canada to any significant degree. Almost all of this material is coming in from international sources. The abuse is occurring in Asia, Africa, Europe and some places in the United States. In those countries when we identify the source, and we will be able to do that much better if we finally get the bill passed, through the Senate and get royal proclamation, it will allow us to help jurisdictions where the abuse has actually occurred.

The point I want to make, and this is why I am taking issue with the parliamentary secretary, is we know that in a number of the jurisdictions, and in fact a vast majority of the jurisdictions where this material is being produced, even if we do share the knowledge that we will obtain as to the source, the police forces, the prosecutors, the justice system will either be unwilling to respond or will not have the capacity to respond.

I think Canadians need to be aware of that. We fight it as much as we can in Canada, but this is an international problem and it is one that we cannot deal with entirely by ourselves. We need that co-operation at the other end and it is not always there. In fact, in a lot of cases it is not there at all.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the word I am going to remember from the member's speech is “trivialize”, because it really is reflective of how the government approaches legislation and how seriously it takes it.

I want to ask the member about the government's responsibility, and in particular the Minister of Justice, vis-à-vis ensuring that legislation that comes before this place not only is charter proof, but in fact follows all the rules of the game with regard to being legislatively correct. It would appear to me that there is a vast body of opinion in this place, other than the government members, that the claims of the short title are false and misleading.

How is it possible that the government does not take things seriously enough that even something as modest as a short title is not in proper form?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the question from my colleague from Mississauga South allows me to hammer home a point.

This week is another crime week in the House. If the Conservatives were really serious in stopping the politicization of the Criminal Code, stopping the propaganda war and stopping the use of victims for their propaganda war, which they do all the time, including in this bill, they would be doing a major revamp of the Criminal Code. Rather than dealing with this on a piecemeal basis where they can play these kinds of political games, it would save a lot of time if we had a complete review of the Criminal Code to bring it into the 21st century and do it in one massive approach.

With the prorogations and early election calls, we have wasted a lot of time on crime bills. If we were to bundle them together in large bills, maybe all in one but certainly no more than two or three, we could have expedited almost everything that the government has put before us two and three years ago.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when we look at what the government is doing here in playing with nomenclature and, as my friend said, trying to propagandize legislation, we see today that it is trying to undo something that was proposed by opposition and the majority of the House.

In light of the fact that the government saw this go through committee without the content or purpose of the bill being changed but to actually have some truth in advertising to ensure the nomenclature of the bill actually reflects the contents, I wonder if the member knows if there were any consultations at all with opposition members as to their proposition.

I say that because the government is clearly playing games if it did not come forward and say that it understands there are problems with the naming of the bill, that it sees the amendment and that the majority of the House does not approve of the nomenclature of the bill, so let us talk so we can find an alternative or compromise here.

Did the government actually came forward and say that it would like to talk to see if we could come to a meeting of the minds before it brought forward what was in front of us before?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the answer for my colleague from Ottawa Centre is no, we did not have that.

The House should be aware that the Liberal member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe did propose an amendment to the short title which was determined by the justice committee chair to be out of order. There was a real opportunity at that point for the government to say to the opposition side that we should talk about this and maybe we can reach a mutual agreement with unanimous consent of the committee to change the short title to one that is meaningful and reflective of the content and substance of the bill.

As the justice critic for my party, I can say that we did not have any of those overtures. I do not believe the other two opposition parties had any overtures from the government. However, there was the opportunity as a result of that amendment moved by the Liberals to open the door and there was no response.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-22 at report stage and third reading.

I have been listening to my colleagues on both sides of the House with regard to Bill C-22 and the considerable comments that have been made about the government's attempt at third reading to bring back its original short title.

I want to discuss very briefly what the bill does because the Liberals support the bill. We think it is a positive step in the right direction. It would make reporting Internet child pornography mandatory for Internet service providers and other persons providing Internet services.

The government took too long to introduce this bill. We lost precious time when the former version of the bill—Bill C-58—died on the order paper when the Prime Minister decided to prorogue Parliament last year.

If protecting children from exploitation, as the government's original short title proclaimed and which the government is attempting to re-establish in the bill, were really a priority for the government, why did the government not only kill its own bill through prorogation but then take four months after Parliament resumed to reintroduce the bill? When it reintroduced the bill, the only change to its previous version, Bill C-58, was the short title.

The long title of the bill, which is An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, is exactly what the bill does. It is the formal title and an accurate title.

However, when one looks over the landscape of government legislation, it is becoming increasingly clear that the government is now instituting a new political ploy, which is to change the names of its bills, those long, boring titles, to political sound bite titles in an attempt to oversell what the bill actually does and what the government is doing with regard to criminal justice.

The long title is precise and accurately describes what the bill does, whereas the government's short title that it put in its bill and which it is now attempting to re-establish in this bill, even though opposition members in committee voted it down, is deliberately misleading. It overstates what the bill actually does.

I want to make it perfectly clear that the Liberals believe this is a good bill, which is why we support it. However, we find it objectionable that the Conservative government is attempting to play political football with the lives of our children. This is too serious an issue for the government to politicize the issue by making a short title, which is nothing but a political sound bite and which overstates what the bill does.

The bill is the right step in the right direction in addressing this issue. We are pleased that the Conservative government has finally given this bill and this issue enough priority to no longer kill it through prorogation and no longer delay reintroducing it. When the government finally reintroduced the bill and moved second reading, it had the full co-operation of all three opposition parties to debate it quickly and comprehensively and get it to committee. In committee, we gave it priority and heard witnesses in a rapid fashion. We heard from the minister and proceeded to clause by clause because the opposition parties, particularly the Liberals, saw the importance of giving priority to this bill, something we did not originally see from the Conservative government.

The bill will not completely solve the problem, which is why the government's proposed short title is not accurate. As my colleague, the NDP justice critic, mentioned, the Liberals attempted in committee to change the short title so that it would accurately represent what the bill would do, which is child pornography reporting.

My colleague, the member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, proposed an amendment to the bill to change the short title of the bill to the child pornography reporting act. Unfortunately, the chair ruled the amendment out of order because we had not amended the content of the bill due to the fact that we were 100% in agreement with the content of the bill. Under the rules, in order to change a short title, even if the original short title does not accurately describe and represent the content of the bill, the chair has no choice but to rule a change to a short title out of order. Therefore, the chair did as he had to do, which was to rule the Liberal amendment out of order.

At that point, as my colleague, the NDP justice critic, mentioned, if the government had been serious about the content of the bill and the objective and aim of the bill and not interested in giving a higher priority to politicizing and attempting to use the issue for political gain on its part, it would have immediately said, “Look. You have a problem with the short tile. Let us work with it. Let us find a short title that we all agree with and we will put it through”.

The government did not do that. It did not approach me, and I am the Liberal critical for justice. I know for a fact that it did not approach my two colleagues who also sit on the committee. We just heard from the NDP justice critic that he was not approached by the government to try to come to some agreement as to the issue of the short title. Therefore, we decided to remove the short title completely.

We are content with the long title because, as I said, it actually states and describes accurately what the bill would actually do.

This is not the first time that the government has added a short title. We need only look at Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (sentencing for fraud), to which the government gave the so-called short title of Standing up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act. The Conservative government's short title is actually longer than the real title. That is ridiculous.

If the government truly wanted to defend victims of white collar crime, why did the government and the Minister of Justice wait 215 days after prorogation in December 2009 before starting debate at second reading of Bill C-21?

This government claims to be the government of law and order.

It says that it is the party of law and order and yet, if we look at virtually every criminal justice bill, the government has played political football. It has either delayed tabling legislation or, if it tables it, it lets it sit on the order paper without moving second reading debate. It has prorogued the House knowing that its bill will be killed and then, when the House and Parliament comes back, rather than immediately re-tabling the bill, the government lets it sit before it actually tables it. The government is not actually interested in defending Canadians and ensuring they are safe. It is more interested in trying to gain political capital with playing with the lives and the safety of Canadians. That is a shame and it is despicable.

We do not like cheap political points that the government attempts to make with victims. We call on the government to stop doing that and it will get the co-operation of the official opposition.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today I will speak to Bill C-22. Most of my opposition colleagues have made very interesting remarks about the government's desire to restore the short title. If I may, I would say that this is pure propaganda to make people think that the government is especially concerned about victims. I am not saying that the bill is bad, far from it. Earlier, my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, the Bloc Québécois justice critic, presented the position of the Bloc Québécois, which is in favour of this bill. The real title, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, describes what is found in the bill. The government added a short title for publicity purposes, which is totally inappropriate in this case.

The purpose of Bill C-22 is to require Internet service providers to report child pornography activities they are aware of, which makes perfect sense. It is amazing to us that it takes a bill to require Internet service providers to do that. It seems to me that, based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, any good citizen has to help out anyone in danger. That could also apply here. Statistics show that Internet service providers are already doing this type of reporting when they discover they are hosting child pornography sites.

Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, is the successor to Bill C-58, which was introduced in November 2009 and died on the order paper. Today, I will have the opportunity to speak about another justice bill. A staggering number of justice bills died on the order paper, and now the government is in a hurry to bring them all back. Yet it is the government's fault because it prorogued Parliament and called elections. It cannot blame the opposition for that. These bills did not move forward because the government scuttled the work of parliamentarians.

Bill C-22 would require persons providing Internet services to the public to report if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet services are being used to commit a crime related to child pornography. Failing to comply with these requirements constitutes an offence.

This bill is aimed not just at Internet service providers, but also at well-known social media, such as Facebook. These media have also become tools for sexual predators who prey on children and those who wish to disseminate horrible images of sexually abused children. The bill must cover all aspects because the Internet is unfortunately one of the tools used by ill-intentioned people and low-life criminals.

The Bloc Québécois is surprised that a law is required to make Internet service providers do the obvious, that is, report people who decide to use their services and their links to disseminate that kind of filth, if I may call it that.

Some provinces have laws, and some service providers are already doing this. Did the government introduce this type of bill just to score political points? I do not know.

In any event, it is better to be safe than sorry. Even though Internet service providers are already doing what they ought to, with this bill we are assured that they will report what is happening right under their noses. They will have no choice because the bill includes fines. Increasing the likelihood of getting caught is much more of a deterrent than increasing punishments, which are often immaterial to this type of criminal.

Given the importance of improving law enforcement's ability to deal with one of the most despicable forms of organized crime, the Bloc Québécois fully supports the principle of the bill. In committee we will look at all the ins and outs of the bill and we would like to pass it as quickly as possible. We are against the amendment to change the title. Whether one title is used instead of another is not the most important point of discussion on this bill.

We urgently need to do as much as possible to protect the child victims of these acts. This bill will not protect children directly, but it will have a deterrent effect if those who host such awful images are forced to report the criminals. This will go a long way toward helping the police and will contribute to fighting perverse crimes perpetrated by bad people who use children for sexual purposes.

The current child pornography provisions in the Criminal Code prohibit all forms of making, distributing, making available and possessing child pornography, including through the use of the Internet. The Code even prohibits looking at child pornography.

In September 2008, the federal, provincial and territorial ministers responsible for justice met and agreed that Canada's response to child pornography would be enhanced by federal legislation requiring any agency whose services could be used to facilitate the commission of online pornography offences to report suspected material.

Children are currently protected from sexual exploitation through provincial and territorial child welfare legislation. In Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia, all citizens are required to report all forms of child pornography. The new federal bill provides for a uniform mandatory reporting regime across Canada, which will complement provincial and territorial child welfare legislation. This bill is an add-on to the legislation that already exists in certain provinces.

Bill C-22 is simple enough and has only 14 clauses. Under the bill, providers of Internet services—Internet access, email, hosting and social networking sites—will now be required to report to a designated organization, to be determined at a later date by regulation, any information they receive about websites that make child pornography be available to the public. They will also be required to notify the police and preserve the evidence if they believe that their Internet service has been used to commit a child pornography offence.

That change is the whole point of this bill. Companies can no longer bury their heads in the sand and say that they did not know that one of their sites was being used. As soon as they have reasonable grounds to think that their services have been used by this type of sexual predator, they need to report it or they will be fined. I believe all members of the House agree that Bill C-22 needs to be passed as quickly as possible.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the report stage motion before the House is to restore the former clause 1 of the bill that was referred to committee, which states

This Act may be cited as the Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act.

If Canadians were advised that this is what the act actually did, they would be very disappointed to find out that this was not a comprehensive, well thought-out, effective strategy to address sexual exploitation of children. What they would find out is that it is merely, merely, an act to require Internet service providers to report it if they become aware of any misuse of the Internet.

I wonder if the member would care to comment on whether or not the government has been honest with Canadians about this legislation, whether or not the government is in fact showing contempt for Canadians by trying to perpetrate this fallacy that the bill does one thing when it does another thing, that the government is being disrespectful of Canadians and that this is actually being done simply for political and partisan reasons.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not imagine that the member is surprised by the Conservatives' way of doing things, especially when it comes to justice. They often resort to theatrics, grandstanding and, unfortunately, misrepresentation.

Everyone is in favour of the bill itself. That is what the member just said. According to the bill, companies that host Internet sites and social networks, whether it be by email or any other way, will from now on be obliged to report even the slightest suspicion of anything that might be child pornography or anything that might allow people to access child pornography. It is a good thing, but we have to say what it is. The short title chosen by the government suggests that the goal is to protect children from the crimes committed by sexual predators and other such crimes.

As I said earlier, in the end, this will definitely enhance the work of law enforcement officials. It will help. It does not mean, however, that it will eliminate the problem of child pornography altogether, far from it. Accordingly, we should use the real title, and the real title indicates that it is a bill that will allow and compel reporting of such criminal behaviour.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my hon. colleague's statements, and I want to commend him on a well-constructed speech.

I think in this House we all agree that doing everything we can and taking whatever steps we can to protect our children from child pornography, particularly over the Internet, is something that is long overdue and well considered.

I want to ask my hon. colleague a question more to the point of the matter under discussion, which is the politicization of the short titles of bills, which has become a hallmark of the government. The government has shown an absolute marked trend to interjecting partisan considerations into our legislation itself, and that is an alarming trend to a lot of parliamentarians and I think to a lot of lawyers who have to interpret these bills in the courts of our land.

I am wondering if the member might comment as to his feelings or thoughts on the politicization of short titles of government legislation.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. I heard another NDP member say earlier that as a lawyer, he could not imagine going to court and using the Conservative government's proposed title, the Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act. We all agree that it is a lovely title, but it is not what the bill is about.

The real title of the bill is An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service. Earlier, the member said that for a lawyer to go to court and say that he is trying to protect children against exploitation would not be truthful.

In response to an earlier question from the Liberal member, I said that this is not the first such bill and not the first time the Conservatives have tried to misrepresent things just to make political hay. That is unfortunate, because we are talking about very serious, sensitive and important issues. To really protect children against child pornography, we need to create bills accordingly and give them appropriate titles.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on the report stage motion of the bill. The subject matter of Bill C-22 was before Parliament shortly before the 2006 election when the current government took over.

It is important to note that since January 2006 when the Conservative government took over, the subject matter of the bill and the importance of a bill dealing with the sexual exploitation of children has been before Parliament, and four years later we still have not passed a bill that could have dealt with this very linear approach to a very serious problem but important enough that all the parties are supporting the substance of the bill. It speaks volumes about the commitment of the government to be honest with Canadians about what its priorities are.

I wish the media would do an analysis and look at how the various justice bills have come forward and have died due to prorogation or due to the 2008 election and what happened to them when they came back. We note first that the government has one member speak on a bill and then nobody else speaks on the government side. Government members are muzzled, handcuffed, and have no authorization to even speak in Parliament about legislation that the government has brought forward unless it is approved by the Prime Minister's office or by the Privy Council office. That is the level of participation in legislative debate that we can expect from government members. They cannot speak. They will not speak. They do not ask questions. They do not care to get involved because they cannot. They have been told not to.

We should look at the facts. For a number of bills, the Conservatives have had an election platform of getting tough on crime and they continue to repeat the theme that they are tough on crime. Then they have all these bills, instead of saying there are a number of areas they would like to deal with in terms of the Criminal Code and then put them together in an omnibus bill, which is normally the case, the four, five or six different areas in which they want to toughen up sentencing, identify new offences, or whatever. The Conservatives put them out there, they table them, but we never hear about them again. They just languish there, and then we go along on other business. What happens? As soon as there is a crisis on some other business, the Conservatives come back with crime awareness week. They get their bills back out there to see if they can distract Canadians from the problem they have somewhere else in legislation so that Canadians will say, “Yes, the government is tough on crime; we like that”. However, it never finishes.

When we had the last election and the prorogation, the options of the government were to be able to bring back a bill that would be repositioned at the stage it was left at when prorogation occurred. Did the government do that? No. As a matter of fact, the Conservatives decided the bills would all start again, or they took two or three of them and put them in one bill. That changed the mechanism with which they were working and they had to start at the beginning. Therefore, all the debate, all the work that was done, all the prep work, all the printing, and all the consultations with all the stakeholder groups was basically set aside and we started again.

Here we are, four years later. What was Bill C-58 last time is now Bill C-22, and what is hanging the bill up is the government.

I would like to read into the record what Bill C-22 would do. Every bill, on the inside cover, states in very distinct terms the purpose of the bill.

It says:

This enactment imposes reporting duties on persons who provide an Internet service to the public if they are advised of an Internet address where child pornography may be available to the public or if they have reasonable grounds to believe that their Internet service is being or has been used to commit a child pornography offence. This enactment makes it an offence to fail to comply with the reporting duties.

It is pretty straightforward. Internet service providers, whether they be individuals or businesses, must report if they become aware, and there are some penalties. For individuals, it could be up to $10,000 in penalties. For corporations, it could be $100,000.

It is not a big deal, but why we are here today and what we are debating is a report stage motion to reinstate clause 1. Clause 1 is a short title. If the media were watching, they would say, and a lot of the members have mentioned, that the short title would be used; the courts would often refer to the short title rather than the long title.

The short title that the government put in Bill C-22 is the Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation Act, compared to Bill C-58, the last iteration of this bill, which stated in clause 1:

This Act may be cited as the Child Protection Act (Online Sexual Exploitation).

As a number of hon. members have said already, this bill does not do that, in terms of being the piece of legislation that is going to deal with sexual exploitation online. It is one aspect, one small aspect of activity that one would expect in a comprehensive, serious strategy to address exploitation of children.

Why would the government do that? It goes back to probably the reason underlying virtually everything the government does. It has not been governing since 2006, it has been campaigning. To the government, everything in this place is slogans: “We are getting tough on crime”; “We are going to deal with protecting children from online sexual exploitation”. But the bill does not do it, because there are other jurisdictions. If the Conservatives were serious about it, they would not trivialize it like this. They would not make us go through another debate on this bill about a clause that supports that the bill would do something that in fact it does not.

How is it that the Minister of Justice gave the opinion to cabinet that the bill is in good form? It is not. It is misleading. It is false. It is deliberately misleading. The government has deliberately misled the House, deliberately misled Canadians. The government seems to lie so naturally. It really does. It looks so very natural. It does not even flinch anymore. It is too comfortable, because it knows it can get away with it. It is time to call the government on misleading Canadians and misleading Parliament, and to take legislation seriously.

The member for Windsor—Tecumseh has given some very eloquent speeches over the years about the need to do a comprehensive review and amendment of the Criminal Code. We did not need 10 bills to adjust the sentencing provisions related to 10 different offences. We could have had one bill dealing with everything the government wanted to do on sentencing, on house arrest, on parole, on the faint hope clause, everything. If we wanted to deal with it, it could have been in one bill.

It is going to be the same committee, and in fact, by and large, the same witnesses who would come for that omnibus bill as it would be for each and every one of those individual bills. But it does not serve the political, partisan reasons that the government is here today. It is not governing, it is campaigning, and we have to call a spade a shovel. The government is campaigning. It is sloganeering. It thinks people are stupid. It thinks Canadians are stupid. Well, Canadians are not stupid. They deserve respect and we should deal with legislation in a responsible fashion.

Maybe the hon. members would like to participate in the debate and defend the change to something that is so misleading. The government members had better start doing their job, or maybe it is time to look for another job.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard a lot of stupid speeches in my time, but that has to be at the top of the list of the most ridiculous speeches I have ever heard in the two years that I have been here.

The Liberals talk about the length of time it takes to do things. The reality is that the member for Mississauga South was a member of a government that was in office for 4,745 days. What did his government accomplish in that time?

The Liberals are not known for attacking the criminal justice system and attempting to balance it. They are known for their attacks on provincial governments. They are known for their decade of darkness for the Canadian armed forces. They are known for being entitled to their entitlements.

The member talked about slogans. One of the great slogans in the 2006 campaign, of course, was to “throw the bums out who are entitled to their entitlements”. That is what Canadians did. They put a government in office that actually respects Canadians and is actually on the same side as Canadians.

What we have here today is a spectacle of the opposition parties knowing yet again that they are on the opposite side of Canadians. Opposition members are doing everything in their power to make it seem that they actually care about criminal justice matters, that they actually care about Canadians. The reality is that for 13 long years the Liberals did absolutely nothing.

Canadians know for the first time that they have a government that actually respects them and understands what they want, which is a criminal justice system that puts victims of crime first and protects our communities.

Instead of his nonsensical diatribes, that member should come on board and do what is right for Canadians and support this legislation and all legislation that would help the criminal justice system restore balance and put the victims of crime first.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I respect the member's opinion. I have been here for 17 years and I do know good legislation when I see it.

We have to look at the evidence. We are talking about a bill to deal with the sexual exploitation of children. The member wanted to talk about something else.

In 2005, the justice committee looked at this issue. If we look at the committee transcript, we will see that some Internet service providers actually refused to provide information when they were asked. The prosecutor said they refused to provide information.

That was an identification in 2005 that there was a problem to be dealt with. The Conservatives took over in January 2006, very shortly thereafter, and here we are today still without having passed this piece of legislation that would require Internet service providers to provide information.

If the member believes the government is doing the right thing and is serious about criminal activity, this bill should have been passed a long time ago. The government gets an “F” with regard to Bill C-22.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member commented that he has been a member of this House for 17 years.

I would like to focus on the matter under debate here, which is the short title of the bill, and once again, the increasing and disturbing propensity of the government to inject partisan politics into our very legislation itself. There is plenty of time and room for politics in this chamber, of course, but to actually inject partisan hooks and try to slant the legislation in a partisan manner is very disturbing.

I wonder if my hon. colleague, who has been in the House so long, can share with us whether he has seen an alarming trend in this regard since the current government has been elected and whether it is something that has always been a feature of the House or something that has just developed under the Conservative government.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member's question speaks for itself. That is for others to judge.

However, when we have serious issues to deal with in this place, I honestly believe the government looks for ways to milk it. It does not want to pass legislation quickly but wants to drag it through, and if it means proroguing and starting bills all over again rather than reinstating them, then so be it.

This bill requires a substantial number of regulations, which means that the in-force date will not be until governor in council says it is in force. I think it is going to take a long time before the government goes through the process of drafting the regulations and promulgating them and making this bill come into force. The government should have dealt with that. This whole process should have been a lot tighter so that we would have legislation a lot more quickly.

The fact that it is probably going to be another year or so from now before we see this legislation in force shows that the government really is not committed to it. It is just using this legislation for political purposes.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to stand on behalf of the New Democratic Party and speak to this motion.

The matter under debate in the House concerns a recommendation from the committee to return to the House Bill C-22 with the recommendation that we remove or alter from it the proposed short title as proposed by the government.

The title of C-22 is “An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service”. Before I go any further, I commend the government on bringing in the bill, which I think we all support. I know the members of the New Democratic Party do.

The bill deals with the issue of imposing a mandatory responsibility on the part of Internet service providers and other companies that provided services to the Internet that in effect make the Internet function. The bill specifically requires both individuals and corporations, and it will be almost all corporations I think, to report incidents of child pornography on the programs and hardware equipment that they identify. That is a laudable goal and it is something we all support.

I pause and say that it is equally important to protect children from poverty, from homelessness, from having substandard housing and from having increasing lack of access to education of all kinds in our country. I urge the government to spend as much time and effort on those issues as well as on protecting them from child pornography.

The matter under debate concerns the short title. The short title of the bill included in the act says that the bill may be cited as “Protecting Children from Online Exploitation Act”.

There are really two issues raised by the matter under debate. First, it has to do with the politicization of our legislation by the government. Second, there is a fair question to be asked about the accuracy and honesty of the particular title chosen.

I will deal first with the first aspect, and that is the increasing politicization that is creeping into our legislation by the government. I have said that we are in Canada's democratic federal chamber and Lord knows we have an abundance of politics in the chamber as we properly should. This is Canada's premier place of debate on the federal scene and that is as it should be.

However, there is a place for partisanship and a place where partisanship should end. When we draft legislation, the laws of Canada that we publish for all Canadians, that will be interpreted and used by lawyers, our courts and that our citizens are expected to know and conform with, we have an obligation to draft that legislation in a responsible manner. It is not a place for cheap politics. It is not a place for hyper-partisanship.

Using the short titles to inject partisan political messages has been a hallmark of the government. It is done to score political points.

I have done some research, and I will give some examples for Canadians to hear the kinds of short titles that the government has put into bills in the past two years. It has put in the title “Sébastien's Law (Protecting the Public from Violent Young Offenders)”, which is injecting the actual name of a person into an actual piece of legislation; “Standing Up for Victims of White Collar Crime Act”; “Cracking Down on Crooked Consultants Act”; “Keeping Canadians Safe (International Transfer of Offenders) Act”; “Preventing Human Smugglers from Abusing Canada's Immigration System Act”; “Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act”; and “Fair and Efficient Criminal Trials Act”.

What all of these short titles have in common is that they are unprecedented in Canadian history in terms of injecting subjective and qualitative commentary into a piece of legislation itself. Traditionally the title of a bill should objectively describe what the bill does. It should not attempt to persuade the reader of a certain partisan leaning or a certain way of looking at the legislation. It should fairly and objectively describe what the bill does.

The government has gone so far as to actually put in parenthesis what the bill does. So obvious is its hyper-partisanship. It has a bill called “Keeping Canadians Safe, (International Transfer of Offenders) Act”. So partisan is the government to title a bill “Keeping Canadians Safe”, which describes nothing about a bill other than a conclusion that it may want the reader to draw about the bill, that it actually has to put what the bill does in parenthesis, (International Transfer of Offenders), and it has done that twice.

Another bill is “Keeping Canadians Safe (Protecting Borders) Act”. The government tends to be fond of the expression “keeping Canadians safe”. The bill actually puts Canadian police personnel onto boats with American personnel patrolling shared waters like the Great Lakes. Who would ever get that from the title of the bill? This is consistent with what Canadians have come to expect from the government in terms of its hyper-partisanship.

The government has fired civil servants who have done nothing more but to offer their opinions not to the government's liking. It has stacked the Senate with failed Conservative candidates and subservient lackeys of all types. It was caught issuing government cheques with the Conservative logo on them for stimulus at a time when Canadians and communities were suffering. So tenuous is the government's connection with ethics, so hyper-partisan is it, that it does not actually know intuitively that there is something wrong with putting a political party logo on a Government of Canada cheque that comes from all Canadian taxpayers. That is the kind of hyper-partisanship that the government has displayed.

However, I am so proud of the committee, and I hope I can be proud of this chamber, when we say enough is enough and stop the government from taking its hyper-partisanship to permeate and infect something as serious and important as the laws of our country. Surely all parliamentarians can agree that we can stop our political partisanship when it comes to the actual drafting of our laws. Laws should be made in this chamber that are sound, that are responsible, that are needed.

We all have different ideas on what laws should be drafted and that is why we have these debates in this chamber. That is why we hopefully listen to each other so we can maybe influence and form better legislation. When it comes to the actual drafting of the bill itself, it should reflect an objective, lawful and responsible drafting of that law. It is no place for cheap politicking. This is the message that I think the committee has sent back to this chamber. It is saying “enough is enough”. It will no longer tolerate this silly, puerile and infantile attempt to infect our legislation with Conservative jingoism.

“Cracking down on crooked consultants” is an actual phrase in a piece of Canadian legislation that we expect lawyers and judges in the courts of this land to express. With the greatest of respect to every member of this chamber, I beseech all of us to stop this.

One day the government, hopefully soon, will be on this side of the House. I wonder how it will react if the government on that side of the House takes the kind of partisan approach to drafting legislation that it is trying to impose on all of us today. I seriously doubt the Conservatives would like it.

I want to talk briefly about the accuracy of the bill. Again, it has been pointed out by many of my colleagues that it is actually a dishonest title for the bill. The bill is one aspect of cracking down on child exploitation and being subjected to pornography from the Internet. It does not have the magic bullet answer.

I want to end with the phrase, “for every problem there is an answer that is simple, easy, cheap and wrong”. That epitomizes the government's approach to crime. It thinks that every issue of crime can be fixed with some simple jingoistic answer, some easy phrase. That is not the case, and Canadians know it.

Canadians want parliamentarians to act responsibly and maturely in this chamber. That is why I hope we can all support the committee and reject this short title that is so irresponsible and so inaccurate.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?