Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice, I would like to agree with him, but he has tried to pull a fast one on us because what he is saying is not true at all. In fact, that is the problem. On the question of child pornography, I have the two documents, Bill C-22 and Bill C-58. They are the same thing. Allow me to go into one of the two documents that were prepared.
At the justice committee, we examined this famous Bill C-58. With all due respect, if the government had not prorogued the session, that bill would be in force. We are entitled to expect that the government would have put procedures in place, international agreements, to put an end to child pornography. That is what we were told in committee, and allow me to review a bit of it. When that bill came to us in committee, the first witnesses who appeared before us told us: "At last, Canada has entered the 21st century." And that is not bad news.
The government has dragged its feet on this for several years when there was in fact an agreement. Governments had agreed to have a child pornography bill passed in the United States, France, England and several countries, including Canada. Quite obviously, Canada has dragged its feet. We asked the Conservatives: "What have you done?" We were told that all the impacts had to be studied. That is why they came in with Bill C-58, which is now Bill C-22. I will say right now that the Bloc Québécois agrees with this bill. Our Conservative friends are going to stop spreading it around that what we care about is defending criminals, because it is not true. This is more exaggeration, more demagoguery.
There is a section in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that clearly states that every human being whose life is in peril has the right to assistance. That has been adopted everywhere. It is part of the charter of the rights of the child adopted by the United Nations. One of those examples is child pornography. In fact, it travels exponentially, and contrary to what the parliamentary secretary said, and I will say this again: when they tell me that the service provider is important and they are going to control the one doing the distributing, that shows a very poor grasp of how the Internet works. You have to go to the sites, and obviously I am not suggesting anyone do that, to see that once a site is detected it closes down as fast as it was opened. The justice committee was told what will have to be done with this bill, it was reiterated and everyone agreed, and that is to start now to put in place what the government needs for implementing this bill. At that time we were talking about Bill C-58, which is now Bill C-22. This Bill C-22 does not change anything. It is a copy of what the government handed to us in November 2009, except that it has now been able to hold two press conferences, to say the same thing two times: that they care about victims and that on this side, which makes no sense, we do not care about children, and we are this and we are that.
Sometime the government should stop trotting out these old ideas. Everyone has heard them. I hope no one in the House is in favour of child pornography. Once that has been said, we need to take the appropriate action. What is it? It is to force Internet service providers to report people to an organization. That is where the problem lies. We asked the government if it had already started to set up this organization. Does it know who it will be? Will it be the RCMP or some other agency? There was no answer.
We agree that this bill should be studied in committee, but these questions will still have to be answered. Everyone knows the bill will not be studied in committee this session. It will be studied next session, starting September 20, unless the government prorogues Parliament or calls an election or manages in some other way to make political hay.
It will soon be a year since this bill was introduced in the form of C-58 or C-22. That is why we want our police forces to be immediate authorized to set up an action group. It is sad to say, but in order to put an end to child pornography, it is necessary to go on-line with snooping software. The RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and some other police forces have special teams and computer geniuses who can snoop and trace pornographic sites back to where they are located and installed. If they are located in Canada, it is easy to take action against them. However, legislation is needed to do so. The necessary legislation is Bill C-22, which we support.
There is a very important point that should be repeated over and over. People in Canada, Quebec and all the provinces need to know that child pornography will be diligently prosecuted. We should never yield in the face of this odious crime. There is no need to describe what child pornography is. The words speak for themselves.
It is important to remember that the increased likelihood of getting caught is much more dissuasive than increased penalties, which often seem distant and abstract. Everyone who hosts these child pornography sites should be told to watch out beginning right now because they will be hunted down thanks to a new system and they can be traced and punished.
Unfortunately, I must say very respectfully that I have not received any answers. The Bloc does not know whether the government is prepared to fulfill its obligations and implement Bill C-22. I am afraid it is not. We obviously will get back to this and agree that the bill should be studied in committee.
What is an Internet service provider? It seems to refer to people who provide an Internet access service. But who are they? Do they also provide e-mail services, website hosting services and social networking sites? It is not really clear in the current bill. Internet service providers generally means people who provide access to the Internet. Does this include Cablevision in Abitibi or Vidéotron? The bill needs to go further. We have to be able to get at e-mail, website hosting services and social networking sites. Does it include Twitter and Facebook? Will all these networks be subject to Bill C-22?
That will be the debate. The committee members were not satisfied with the government’s responses. The government said it was the responsibility of the Internet service providers, Videotron, Rogers or Bell Canada, for example. We must go farther. What we are asking the government is whether it is prepared to go onto the Twitter and Facebook sites. I give those two examples, because I think that is enough.
As members of the House, we receive between 200 and 300 messages a day. Very often we have no idea where they come from. Sometimes we see some rather special images, to put it mildly. How do we go about stopping all this? Of course I am not talking about child pornography only, but it is an example. There are also hate crimes.
The hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine has a whole series of photos against the seal hunt, which are incredibly biased and which were distributed to us over all the networks. You can imagine what the situation is with child pornography.
Many of our friends are on Facebook and Twitter. What will happen if those networks are not included? We think that it will be absolutely necessary to get answers to these questions. Since the bill will not come back before committee until next fall, the government will have time to answer these questions. We in the Bloc are even prepared to propose amendments to this effect. We must absolutely and totally eradicate the slightest possibility of access to child pornography on sites hosted in Canada. We will have to find ways of doing this. It is vital that police forces be able to implement special squads and task forces.
In this bill, there is a duty to report. Any person or group providing Internet services to the public will have to report if advised of an Internet address. The minute there is an Internet address where child pornography is available, what methods will be used to track down those responsible?
I would draw a parallel with drugs and money laundering. It is all very well to arrest the drug traffickers, but where does the laundered money go? This is how the commission of other crimes is abetted.
It is obvious to us that child pornography brings in hundreds of millions of dollars for organized crime. There is no doubt about that. The police must have effective means of dealing with this. This is something we need to come back to. Analyzing websites is fine, but once they are analyzed, how do we step in? We must and we will have to step in, not only in Canada, but also in the United States, in other countries of the Americas and even abroad. Some sites are hosted in Russia, and others in Asia. The Government of Canada, in particular, must take the leadership in signing agreements so that intelligence can be transferred very quickly and we can put a stop to this. For we know how it works.
As soon as someone realizes that they might be suspected, they close their site and open it somewhere else. The government will have to find the resources, but for the moment, unfortunately, we are not getting an answer. We absolutely have to be given answers to these questions. Otherwise, we will have passed a bill and done our job. Members are being asked to do their job: to introduce, develop and analyze legislation to combat child pornography or pedophilia sites.
Have no fear, we are going to do it. The public can rest assured that the Bloc and its colleagues in the Liberal Party and the NDP agree with the government. We are going to move forward, but the government absolutely has to find the resources and gives some speedy indications that it has given very serious thought to what has been decided at the international level to combat child pornography, which is extremely harmful to our young people.
In September 2008, the federal, provincial and territorial justice ministers agreed that Canada's response to child pornography would be strengthened by federal legislation. It has been almost two years and to date nothing has been done because the session was prorogued last fall. We resumed almost six weeks late, and so we have not been able to study the bills quickly enough.
We are in favour of Bill C-22. We believe it is necessary and it is an important tool to combat criminal organizations and crime, something we should be doing day after day, fighting the people who put our children at risk of falling victim to these kinds of crimes.
I invite my colleagues to give their opinions on this bill, but it must be passed quickly so we can study it in committee next fall. The government must not delay implementing it; it can do it.
I would like to offer some interesting statistics. In 61% of sexual assault cases reported to the police and 21% of physical assault cases, the victim was a child. Seventy-two percent of Canadians think it is easy to find child pornography on the Internet. Ninety-two percent of Canadians say they are concerned about the distribution of child pornography on the Internet, and 96% think it is important to have a service for reporting child pornography on the Internet.
In those homes where the use of Internet is not monitored, 74% of the children say that it is when they are left alone that they surf on the Internet. Moreover, 21% of them say that they have met in person someone they first got to know on the Internet.
It is urgent that Canada take its responsibility and tackles the issue of child pornography on the Internet.