House of Commons Hansard #103 of the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament's site.) The word of the day was forest.

Topics

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:30 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

All those in favour will please say yea.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:30 p.m.

Some hon. members

Yea.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

All those opposed will please say nay.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:30 p.m.

Some hon. members

Nay.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

3:30 p.m.

Liberal

The Speaker Liberal Peter Milliken

In my opinion the yeas have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #130

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

4:10 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

I declare the motion carried.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK

Mr. Speaker, I ask that all other notices of motions for the production of papers be allowed to stand.

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Is that agreed?

Motions for PapersRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

Seventh Report of the Standing Committee on FinancePrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Paul Szabo Liberal Mississauga South, ON

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, after question period, the member for Outremont rose on a question of privilege concerning the leak of the finance committee's confidential draft report on its prebudget consultations. He also reported that the leak was by Mr. Russell Ullyatt the then employee of the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar.

Also, yesterday at 6:23 p.m., after the presentations on the privilege issue were made, the clerk of the committee received another email from a Mr. Andy Gibbons, who has Conservative ties and is with the lobby firm of Hill & Knowlton. Today the clerk provided that copy of the email to the hon. members of the finance committee before our meeting started.

I bring this to the attention of the House and the Speaker for consideration of the question of privilege raised yesterday. It would appear the disclosure of now a fourth person is more than has been presented to the House with regard to how broad this has gone.

It appears this has gone much further than the House has been aware. As a consequence, I submit that information for the Speaker's consideration and I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to table the email from Mr. Gibbons to the clerk of the committee, in both official languages.

Seventh Report of the Standing Committee on FinancePrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to table this?

Seventh Report of the Standing Committee on FinancePrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

No.

Seventh Report of the Standing Committee on FinancePrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre Saskatchewan

Conservative

Tom Lukiwski ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Mr. Speaker, I want to add my small intervention to this matter. Yes, indeed there was a fourth lobbyist, apparently, who received an email from the now terminated, former employee of the office of the member for Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar.

I would submit for your consideration, Mr. Speaker, that whether there are three or four, I think the arguments presented both for and against a breach of privilege yesterday are still germane. This does not change things, but I would point out for your consideration, as one of my colleagues said earlier, that there was another breach of confidentiality yesterday, made by the member for Mississauga South, who in his intervention spoke to emails that were discussed in camera at the finance committee. One of my colleagues asked him respectfully to apologize to the House for the breach of confidence. He did not do so. I would ask that you take that under consideration when considering the original breach of privilege motions and interventions that were made yesterday.

Seventh Report of the Standing Committee on FinancePrivilegeRoutine Proceedings

4:15 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

I thank both hon. members for their contributions to the question that the Chair is considering.

Before moving on with debate, it is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Windsor West, G8 and G20 summits; the hon. member for Laval—Les Îles, G8 and G20 summits.

The House resumed from November 23 consideration of the motion that Bill C-22, An Act respecting the mandatory reporting of Internet child pornography by persons who provide an Internet service, be read the third time and passed.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Deputy Speaker Conservative Andrew Scheer

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice has 10 minutes remaining. He now has the floor.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:20 p.m.

Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles Québec

Conservative

Daniel Petit ConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice

Mr. Speaker, I will continue my speech from yesterday. When I was interrupted, I was speaking about Cybertip.ca.

This company also compiles statistics on child pornography in Canada. Every month, Cybertip.ca receives approximately 800,000 hits on its website and triages over 700 reports. Approximately 45% of these reports are then forwarded to law enforcement.

As of June 2009, Cybertip.ca had triaged over 33,000 reports since becoming Canada’s national tip line in 2002. Over this period, more than 90% of the reports received by Cybertip.ca were related to child pornography. At least 30 arrests have resulted from these reports, approximately 3,000 websites have been shut down and, most importantly, children have been removed from abusive environments.

When they appeared before committee, Cybertip.ca’s representatives mentioned that, in the first year since becoming the designated agency for receiving reports of child pornography under Manitoba’s mandatory reporting legislation, Cybertip.ca saw a 126% increase in reporting, and 17 of those reports led to the identification of children or perpetrators.

Before I conclude, I would like to talk about the penalties proposed in the bill. Pursuant to Bill C-22, which is before us today, individuals, or sole proprietors, would be liable to a fine of not more than $1,000 for a first offence; a fine of not more than $5,000 for a second offence; and a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for a term of not more than six months, or both, for each subsequent offence.

Corporations and other entities would also be liable to a fine of not more than $10,000 for the first offence, a fine of not more than $50,000 for the second offence and a fine of not more than $100,000 for each subsequent offence. This two-level penalty system takes into account the diversity of the Internet service sector in Canada, where there are just as many sole proprietorships as there are multinational corporations.

Some might feel that these penalties are light, but we have to remember that this bill complements all of the existing measures to protect our children against sexual exploitation, including the harsh penalties provided for in the Criminal Code for child pornography offences.

This bill sends a message to those who provide Internet services to the public that they have a social and moral obligation, and now also a legal one, to report the existence of this heinous material when they become aware of it.

We believe that the penalties provided for in this bill would allow us to balance the objective of the bill with its effectiveness. In order to achieve the objective of this bill, to better protect children, the government wants to ensure that all Internet service providers in Canada abide by the law, not just the major Internet service providers who already voluntarily declare such cases and assist the police.

What those watching us now must understand is that there are individuals who provide Internet services and there are, of course, large corporations that provide the same services. So we created two types of offences and two types of progressive fines. We wanted to ensure that we identified all of the cases in which an individual or a corporation might host child pornography sites or might fail to report a child pornography site.

According to representatives of Cybertip.ca, mandatory reporting of child pornography helps prevent personal and professional dilemmas related to reporting this kind of material. It ensures compliance with the law and ensures that quick, appropriate action is taken. Taking a closer look at the current role of Cybertip.ca as a designated organization under the Manitoba legislation on mandatory reporting is helpful in understanding how to explain the provisions of Bill C-22. This is what I was saying earlier.

In closing, I would like to make a final point. I recently had the opportunity to go to Palermo, where the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe was meeting. I was representing Canada, along with other members of our delegation. We supported the same bill that we have here before us. We summarized it in a few lines and asked the entire European community to approve it. Some 54 countries were represented by their elected officials.

It was a victory for Canada: the resolution on that bill was the only one that passed unanimously. We are making progress in the fight against child pornography. Of course we had to explain our bill and urge the members of the other delegations, elected officials like me, to vote in favour of the bill. Many of the areas that produce pornographic sites were in certain Asian or Middle Eastern countries. We needed to send a clear message that we would no longer tolerate these sites, which come to Canada and the United States through major systems. We no longer want children, whether their children or our children, to be exploited on Internet sites that disseminate child pornography, nor do we want three- to five-year-old children doing such degrading things.

That was our argument and, at the risk of repeating myself, we won: our resolution was the only one that was unanimously adopted by that Parliamentary Assembly, which includes the European Community. We do not always win, but we won in that case. I want the public to know that Canada can be proud. We are at the forefront of the fight against child pornography.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:25 p.m.

Liberal

Jim Karygiannis Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague and to what he was doing in Palermo on the 54 or 57 countries.

I wonder if he could shed some light on some of the ways that the Government of Canada is being proactive about blocking sites that can come from other countries, countries that are not signed on to this, so that when perpetrators want to go surfing to see child porn sites, we can make sure that these sites are not available in Canada.

Is there something that the Government of Canada is doing proactively to block those sites that are hosted in countries that are not signed on?

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:25 p.m.

Conservative

Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. Numerous countries have been wondering the same thing. What is happening here can make its way there and vice versa.

Both there and here in the House, Canada tabled what we refer to as 21st century evidence. In other words, we will give Internet service providers everything they need. Not only will the government alert providers to the presence of child pornography or anything degrading that is prohibited by law on their sites, but it will also order them to have the means to store the material as evidence for approximately 21 days. That way, complaints can be brought against a provider that has not said anything or, if it has, against the people using such sites.

There is also the issue of pornographic images coming from other countries. Countries are talking to each other, especially the people who enforce the law, such as police. The convention on cybercrime, which is about a decade old and which many countries have signed, allows us to notify the countries in question when something is found. This has been in effect for some time now. They take our information and we take theirs. We then make arrests or simply shut down the server.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:30 p.m.

Bloc

Serge Ménard Bloc Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary where he got his information stating that we are the first country to have a law like this. I believe that the information we received from the Library of Parliament refers to similar laws in other countries, including the United States, that are far more thorough. As far as I know, there are also laws like this in nearly every western country and as far off as India.

Is there really an indication that we are the first to have this kind of law? Are there not already laws like this in most civilized countries?

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC

Mr. Speaker, I mentioned that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has a Parliamentary Assembly of 54 countries. Many democratic countries have laws that are more or less similar to ours.

Nonetheless, we are the only country to have proposed joining all these laws together so that all the other democratic countries—some of which are more or less democratic—that are part of this organization as observers or such can see precisely what Canada has done.

If our proposal was nothing new, they would have told us this already exists in their country, but they did not. Our way of presenting the bill is in fact something they did not have. Everyone has laws against these servers, but we have developed something much broader, requiring ISPs to disclose what we are asking for so that we can make arrests and store evidence. We were able to justify all of these actions, and the 54 countries accepted.

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:30 p.m.

NDP

Jim Maloway NDP Elmwood—Transcona, MB

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the government is spending $42 million to play cat and mouse with people who are running these sites, when we have the examples of Germany and Sweden simply blocking the sites and the problem is solved.

I want to ask the member whether the government has looked into best practices in other countries. There are other countries beyond those, which I could name, that actually do not have a problem with this issue simply, once again, because they block the sites. Is that not a reasonable solution to this problem?

Protecting Children from Online Sexual Exploitation ActGovernment Orders

4:30 p.m.

Conservative

Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC

Mr. Speaker, in fact, it is a matter of knowing whether to totally block them or to use reporting, with tools like Cybertip.ca, to intervene. When it comes to completely blocking them, I could mention the country that blocks them the most: China. It completely blocks everything.

Other countries block certain areas of the server. However, techniques are so advanced that people can simply go on another server and start over. We need to find a way—and that is why Cybertip.ca was created—to allow the public and parents to report things if they see their children going on any strange websites.

Instead of having one or 10 television or Internet police officers, we could have one million people all over Canada reporting what they see. Accordingly, it will be very difficult to escape this huge network of eyes watching the Internet just for child pornography.