Speak slowly. Is that the advice? I will slow down my speech.
The Conservatives are really strong on deterrence. That for them means punishment. It means beating people into submission by incarcerating them for life. I am sure that the majority of the Conservative caucus members, if they had the ability to do it, would bring back the death penalty as well, because they think of deterrence that way.
The approach in this bill is a much more effective deterrent. It is a deterrent to organized crime. Deterrence rarely works, certainly not in crimes of passion or in crimes to our youth. Deterrence just does not work. There is no evidence to the contrary. All of the evidence we have shows that deterrence does not work in those circumstances. However, making an effective tool available to our police so that they can get to the purveyors of child pornography is a very effective deterrence tool.
I do not think that the Conservatives have the ability to comprehend this fact, but every study we have ever done, and I learned this in law school and repeatedly in my professional practice as a lawyer, shows that we deter crime by convincing those people in our society who contemplate committing a crime that they will be caught. This bill is an effective tool in sending the message that if people put this stuff on networks across the globe, we are going to catch them, and we will deal with them under the rest of the sections in the Criminal Code. This bill is an effective tool from that perspective.
We are supportive of this legislation. However, I think that the government threw it together rapidly, when it was Bill C-58.
I have asked some of these questions before, but I have not received satisfactory answers.
The bill definitely needs to go to committee so that we can take a look at it and have some people in from the industry, the Department of Justice, and the police to tell us whether in some respects it goes far enough. There may be some overreach, but in this case, as opposed to most crime bills we get from the government, it may not go far enough.
I ask people to look in particular at the penalties. A constant problem we have with the government is that it does not trust our judiciary. If convicted of not reporting, the maximum fine on the first offence, for individuals, is $1,000. I believe that the fine is $10,000 for corporations. These are very small amounts of money, given the individuals and the kind of revenue they generate from their operations. That is all the judge can impose. That is the maximum fine a judge can impose.
The situation that immediately jumped to my mind, and I am not sure why the government did not catch this, was this: What if over several months or several years there has been a whole series of reports to a company about child pornography on its system, and the company has not reported it? What is going to happen in the courts is that the company is going to be convicted for all of them all at once. The maximum fine in that situation would be $1,000. The individual who may have breached his or her responsibility under this bill one time would also be exposed to the maximum fine.
What this comes down to is that the government does not trust judges to look at that situation and say that this was one time on the part of this company, but on the part of that company, it was the 10th, 15th or 20th time people complained and pointed out that child pornography was on the network it controlled, and it had not reported it. That company would also get that $1,000 fine or that $10,000 fine.
Clearly, it is not a proper approach. If it were left to the judiciary, they could assess the situation once the convictions had been entered and could determine whether there would be a much more substantial fine for a company that continually breached its responsibility under the legislation as opposed to the individual or company that did it only once. That is one problem with the bill.
A couple of other provisions give me cause for concern. There is a provision in the bill that requires the individual or company that has the material to keep it for a maximum of 21 days. Knowing the workload we have imposed upon our police and prosecutors, that period of time seems tremendously short. The only way they can be required to keep it for more than 21 days is if the prosecutor goes to court to get a judicial order requiring them to keep it until further order. That process would require our police and prosecutors, in fewer than 21 days, to get the material together and get a court date. It is a very short period of time for them to function properly and make sure that the material or data is kept so that an effective prosecution can be pursued.
I do not know where they came up with 21 days. It seems to be totally out of keeping with the practicalities our police and prosecutors face in doing their jobs. I believe that we will have to take a look at that. As I say, they have not been flexible enough to look at this situation and say that this is just not adequate. I do not know whether they consulted with police and prosecutors. However, I think that anybody I would have talked to would have said that it is simply not a long enough period of time for the data to be held.
I just want to cover one more point, and that is the issue that in the past has caused companies and individuals not to co-operate. Some provisions in here, in several sections, deal with the right of corporations and individuals who identify this material, this child pornography, to report it without being sued. I have to say that I am questioning whether these provisions are adequate.
There are three provisions in clauses 8, 9, and 10 that in my mind raise doubts as to whether the bill goes far enough to protect them. These are individuals or corporations that are being responsible. They are reporting. However, they may step back and ask if they are going to be sued. Are they going to hesitate? It is very important that they do that reporting as soon as they possibly can so that an investigation can be carried out. The material can be saved, but taken off the Internet, and the police can be given the opportunity to chase back through that whole network system, which oftentimes includes a large number of providers.
We have heard from the police that they have had cases when they went through 25 to 50 service providers before they found the source. That is, of course, where we want to go. The sources, with very few exceptions, are international sources. They are not Canadian sources. It is very important that once they have the information, the service providers provide it. What we have to do is be very clear with them that they have absolute immunity from civil suits or prosecution under other legislation if they provide the material in a timely fashion.
We have to look at that. When it goes to committee, it will be one of the areas we look at.