Mr. Speaker, at this point there is no consent.
Lost his last election, in 2004, with 5% of the vote.
Supply April 23rd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, at this point there is no consent.
Supply April 23rd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the concern of the hon. secretary of state for children and youth. It is a big issue.
I remind all members that our motion is not a statement of law. It is not an omnibus bill. It suggests there are a number of other issues the government needs to look at besides those addressed in Bill C-15A. As the hon. secretary of state mentioned, the law already says one cannot exploit a person under the age of 18 for sexual purposes. Now the government is writing a law in Bill C-15A that says one cannot lure a person under the age of 18 for the purpose of sex.
I have two questions for the hon. minister. First, does she believe a 40 year old man living in the United States could communicate with a 14 year old girl in Canada, come to Canada, invite the 14 year old girl to his hotel room, have sex and not be exploitative or have lured?
Second, does the minister believe pornographic material such as that in the case of John Robin Sharpe would be kept private and used only by the creator? Does the minister believe that nonsense?
Supply April 23rd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, obviously the answer is no. If he had listened carefully, he would have heard me say that several times in my speech. The answer is absolutely no. We are after a change in the laws that would prevent adult exploitation of children.
Supply April 23rd, 2002
Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of people who have their own agendas. We are aware of some organizations that wish to lower the age of consent to as low as eight. How can we explain something like that?
We can explain it by saying that people are somewhat selfish. They have their own motives and their own answers. Why parliament would lower it to the age of 14 is beyond me. Why we would not want to raise it to 16 or 18 is beyond me. In this day of seeing the damage from this new wave of pornography that is so readily available and so often involves our own children, I would hope that we would take the responsible course and raise the age.
Supply April 23rd, 2002
moved:
That the government immediately introduce legislation to protect children from sexual predators including measures that raise the legal age of consent to at least sixteen, and measures that prohibit the creation or use of sexually explicit materials exploiting children or materials that appear to depict or describe children engaged in sexual activity.
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise today to speak to this most pressing of issues, the protection of Canadian children from sexual exploitation by adult predators.
Although I am honoured to be speaking to the motion, I am truly sad that it has to be so. It is no secret that Canada's low age of general sexual consent at 14, coupled with the government's failure to adequately protect children from sexual predators, has resulted in Canada potentially becoming a preferred destination for sexual predators to prey on innocent Canadian children.
The damage to children due to the proliferation of child pornography and the exploitation of young girls and boys through sexual abuse and prostitution has been incalculable. The need to protect innocent and vulnerable children from pimps and other sexual predators is a matter of highest priority.
The government now has a opportunity to send a direct and clear message to Canadians that it will no longer stand for the abuse of innocent children by sexual predators by voting in favour of our motion today.
Before I proceed with my comments, I want to make a couple of things abundantly clear. First, that the motion is not making criminals out of teens or those close in age who decide to engage in some kind of sexual activity. It is also not about lowering the age of consent in any of the cases where it is now 18. The current law governing the age of consent does not criminalize behaviour between teens who are close in age and we concur with this aspect of the current legislation.
We in the official opposition are calling on the government to raise the age of consent, which is set out in section 150.1 of the criminal code, from 14 to at least 16. There are many good arguments that it should actually be raised to the age of 18 across the board.
In addition, we are asking that the government strengthen the existing child pornography legislation by sending a clear message to Canadians that there is zero tolerance for sexual exploitation of children in our country. We are asking the government to place the protection of children above the rights of those who would exploit them through the creation of sexually explicit materials depicting children or materials that appear to depict or describe children engaged in sexual activity.
We on this side of the House echo the comments of the attorney general of Alberta who recently said:
Some argue that we must be careful not to restrict freedom of expression. I say that if there is any place that cries out for society to say no it is the area of child pornography.
We do not accept the concept that people should be free to defile children--either physically or in writing.
We do not accept the concept that there can be “artistic merit” in the victimization of children.
And we do not accept the concept that the intention of exciting or titillating a passion for that which is illegal, immoral, and in all fashion and form reprehensible to a civil society, is acceptable in any form. Even if it is based on the rather far fetched notion that the creators of such offensive material will not share it with others and will keep it only for themselves.
We agree with the attorney general.
Before I continue I want to take this opportunity to thank the member for Pickering--Ajax--Uxbridge for his excellent work and recent initiative in addressing the protection of children from sexual exploitation.
I also want to make special mention of the work of my hon. colleague, the member for Calgary Northeast, who unfortunately cannot be here today to speak to the motion. He has worked long and hard on trying to raise the age of sexual consent and should be commended for doing so.
One of the things I want to do this morning is to emphasize the size of the problem because most people do not realize the size of the problem we are addressing in the motion today. I want to attempt to give people some idea of the magnitude of this terrible scourge on our children. If people have not seen the pictures or the broken lives it is impossible to comprehend the awfulness of this repugnant blight on society.
Let me try to illustrate it with some facts. Approximately 7,000 people were registered as members of the Candyman e-group, including 4,000 living outside the United States. I would presume that some of those 4,000 would be in Canada. This is the fact that caused the launch of Operation Candyman.
On Monday, March 18 of this year, 89 people were arrested in 26 states, including 27 who were charged with molesting children, after a nationwide sweep called Operation Candyman.
This helps to show that the use of the Internet to sell and trade child pornography has grown sharply in recent years.
In 2001 the FBI's crimes against children unit opened 1,541 cases against people suspected of using the Internet to commit crimes involving child pornography or abuse, compared to 113 cases in 1996. In 1995 the FBI had only 20 employees devoted to cases involving Internet crimes against children, compared to about 150 agents now. U.S. law enforcement officials and experts on pedophilia generally agree that there is a link between child pornography and sexual abuse of children.
On the Canadian scene, the child pornography unit of the Toronto police department reports that out of every 17 people arrested for possession of child pornography, 8 of them are guilty of sexual abuse of children. They say that 8 out of 17 arrested with child pornography were child molesters and child abusers. That was right here in Canada.
U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft said “Operation Candyman demonstrates our commitment to protecting our nation's children from sexual predators”. Just what is it that demonstrates our government's commitment to protecting children?
Stephen Whitelaw, a former Glasgow university lecturer and chief executive of Buchanan International, a Scottish security software company, developed a program to trace, log and map the dark side of the worldwide web. They were able to produce a unique profile of the web in all of its inglorious forms. They were able to register in forensic detail about 40 broad categories of undesirable activity, some of which were fraud, anarchism, virus creation, violence promotion and pornography.
Mr. Whitelaw found that more than 20,000 new hosts for pornographic sites were being created daily. The average site contained just 43 images but some sites had more than 100,000 images.
I want to give a few statistics that come from the child pornography unit of the Toronto police. Two thousand cases of child abuse are reported annually in Toronto and of those under 14 years of age, 70% were sexually assaulted. One case of child porn being investigated has yielded 400,000 pornographic images of children. Those 400,000 images have to be catalogued one by one and then presented to the defence one by one. Just cataloguing these images freezes the entire department for five to six months. Four hundred other known individuals need investigation and 160 are known to need to be arrested but it cannot be done because of the backlog of this one case. They have confiscated 750,000 child porn pictures since January 1 of this year. That is one unit in our country.
In August 2001, the National Post reported an RCMP investigation called Project Snowball. Two thousand Canadians who subscribed to explicit child pornographic websites were under investigation by the RCMP.
Police sources said that Project Snowball had identified 406 suspects in British Columbia, 232 in Alberta, 52 in Saskatchewan, 82 in Manitoba, 946 in Ontario, 436 in Quebec, 61 in Nova Scotia, 35 in New Brunswick, 8 in Newfoundland, 6 in Prince Edward Island, 20 in Northwest Territories and 4 in Yukon.
RCMP Sergeant Paul Marsh said “The protection of our youth in Canada is one of the RCMP's top priorities. It is a serious problem in that our youth is the most vulnerable to people with criminal intent”.
I now want to spend some time talking about the damage sexual abuse causes to children. I want to share with the House some information that I received as a result of a request from Kathy Broady. Kathy is the clinical director of AbuseConsultants.com. She said:
Severe abuse leads to severe responses. Society can never ever underestimate the price children continue to pay for the rest of their lives after being victims of crimes like pedophilia, child pornography and prostitution.
What I am presenting is not a list of symptoms. This is a list that describes the daily existence of these children and adults. These are the facts of what their lives are like after being so severely abused. Put yourself in their shoes and imagine your life with a small handful of these complications everyday for a week...If only it was that easy for victims of severe sexual abuse. These issues are constant--daily, yearly, seemingly eternal--struggles for them.
Severe childhood sexual abuse literally steals a lifetime of productivity, happiness, fulfillment, and peace from its victims.
Children that have been sexually abused and sold into the sex slave industry experience the following negative impacts.
The list by category is long so I will only read the categories. From five to twelve items are listed under each category in the document. If members wish to view the document they can find it on the AbuseConsultants.com website. The categories are: fear, mistrust, ongoing violence and abuse, poor coping skills, self-destruction, suicide, addictions, mental health problems, no self-esteem, less education, destroyed careers, poor medical and therapeutic assistance, damaged relationships, sexual problems, lack of parenting skills, increased medical complications, detachment, poor self-care, mental torment, sleep complications and disorders, anger issues, and losses.
Under losses, she lists health, family, education, career, self-worth, years of time, personal integrity, financial independence, peace of mind, intellectual capability, spiritual security, emotional growth, the maximization of their potential, and the fulfillment of their dreams.
If we took the time to examine those problems we would understand the extreme damage this activity with our children brings about in their later life.
Let me read a part of a personal victim's statement that describes her ordeal in her own words. The statement reads:
I am doing this because of the importance of putting a face to all the victims of pornography. It is easy to forget that there are real children and adults behind the statistics and generic words that are used to describe the victims whose lives have been shattered by pornography.
I know this because when I was 4 years old until I was fifteen I was taken to people's houses as a child prostitute. Inside those homes I was shown newspaper type magazines filled with haunting pictures of children like me that looked drugged, dazed and lifeless. I still remember their faces today and wonder whatever became of them.
Pictures were also taken of me. I clearly remember standing cold and naked, exposed to all while someone would tell me how to pose. It was harder than the physical and sexual abuse because there wasn't any fighting or struggling to keep me distracted. I would try to go numb or disappear but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't. The pain that I felt and the shame was too strong for me to go numb. After it was over and I would go home I was always worried and scared where those pictures would wind up, and who would see me. I still have those same concerns at age thirty. Those pictures could be anywhere.
Today, I can't take a picture of my own children without feeling like I am doing something wrong. I cringe at the sight of someone approaching me at a gathering with a camera. If someone looks at me the wrong way or simply asks me to move my arm I instantly feel all the terrible feelings that I had back when I was a child. Nightmares and flashbacks still occupy my mind now 15 years later. I can feel as though it all happened again after having a night filled with nightmares. No matter how hard I try to get those experiences behind me they can come and take over my mind and make trying to enjoy anything in the present impossible.
There are a lot of things that go along with the picture-taking and posing. There is drug use so that a child is more cooperative and sexual abuse that can leave a child with emotional scars that may never heal. I have tried to look for more survivors of this abuse, and, to tell you the truth, they are hard to find.
It isn't that they don't exist. It is just that some have died, or are not mentally able to speak about their trauma, or sadly have turned to prostitution or drugs to hide from the pain. Just because they aren't able to talk about it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. The problem is that it is such a horrible abuse that it destroys a person's life so strongly that it makes it almost impossible to talk about. The hardest part of having those experiences is having the knowledge that there are thousands of boys and girls who are now being robbed of the innocence and will walk around with the effects of their abuse for the rest of their lives.
That is a dramatic description from the life of one person. Let me read a brief excerpt from a mother and grandmother of children who were sexually abused. This is what she says:
What I can say without fear or favour is that our whole family has been systematically and wilfully torn apart and destroyed by these obscene perpetrator networks. In particular, by exposing my children and grandchildren to unspeakable abuses from early infancy, these criminal networks systematically and wilfully interfered with the normal and healthy development of their immature brains. In effect, as innocent infant-children they received a life sentence, without trial, without representation, and without parole.
Recent research has shown that this kind of abuse that we have been talking about actually impacts the development of a young child's brain. It is actually observable in physical form. These are the four abnormalities, as one researcher describes them, that are likely to be present in that person's brain: first, changes to the part of the brain that control emotions, usually affecting the left hemisphere of the brain and associated with more self-destructive behaviour and more aggression; second, deficient development of the left side of the brain, which may contribute to depression or impaired memory; third, impaired pathway integrating the two hemispheres, resulting in dramatic shifts in mood and personality, especially with boys who have suffered neglect and sexually abused girls; fourth, increased blood flow to the part of the brain that involves emotion, attention and the regulation of the limbic system, disrupting emotional balance.
In closing, I would like to urge the members of the House to set aside partisan politics and do what is right. The government now has the opportunity to send a direct and clear message to Canadians that it will no longer stand for the potential abuse of innocent 14 year old children by perverted 40 year olds who would take advantage of their innocence.
I would urge all hon. members of the House to be honest and ask themselves what kind of protection they want for their own children. Are we truly content with a law that allows our own 14 year olds to run away and have sex with a person of any age without being able to stop them?
As I mentioned at the outset, the motion is not about making criminals of those teens who are close in age who decide to engage in sexual activity. This is not the intent of the motion. The intent is to protect innocent children from exploitation by adult predators. I ask the hon. members across the way to listen to their own former Minister of Justice who, on October 3 of last year, told the justice committee:
...I think we will see that a consensus is emerging that with certain safeguards we should probably be moving the age of consent from 14 to 16.
That indeed is one of the intentions of the motion.
Finally, I ask all hon. members to listen to the public outcry begging for the gaping holes in the current child pornography legislation to be filled. Let us send a clear message to all Canadian families that the House will no longer stand for the sexual exploitation of our most precious resource, our children. I would urge all hon. members to vote in favour of the motion today.
Child Abuse April 19th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, Canada's low age of sexual consent at 14, coupled with the government's failure to protect children from sexual predators, has resulted in Canada potentially becoming a preferred destination for sexual predators to prey on innocent Canadian children.
The damage to children due to the proliferation of child pornography and the exploitation of young girls and boys through sexual abuse and prostitution has been incalculable. The need to protect innocent and vulnerable children from pimps and other adult sexual predators is a matter of the highest priority.
I urge the government to send a direct and clear message to Canadians that it will no longer stand for the abuse of innocent children by sexual predators and immediately introduce legislation to better protect children from sexual abuse.
Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2001 April 18th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, it is an honour and a privilege for me to speak today to Bill C-15A regarding the Senate amendments and to the larger picture with which we have to deal, child pornography.
This is an issue that is very close to my heart. I have a daughter whose career is counselling people who have gone through severe sexual abuse from quite early ages. I have heard some of the horrific stories from her of the results of that abuse and the life changing experience that causes. As my hon. colleagues have pointed out, there is no healing from that.
I certainly appreciate the comments that were made about the need to write the laws in parliament and to see our judiciary back them and enforce them rather than write them. We need to address these issues because of the tremendous, traumatic experience it is for those who are allowed to slip through the cracks.
I thank my hon. colleagues for their presentations and their willingness to stand up and speak to these things.
The bill does do some good. There is new legislation that creates the offence of luring a child by means of a computer system and it uses the same ages that the criminal code already sets out for determining the ages that make using the Internet to lure a child a crime. Accordingly, it is a crime with a maximum punishment of five years to use the Internet in these cases. The age is 18 for prostitution, child pornography, sexual assault, sexual touching or incest where the accused is in a position of trust. It is 16 for abducting an unmarried child from his or her parents and 14 for sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching and some other things.
I am not a lawyer but I know enough to know that the term luring is open to interpretation. I know what luring is when I am at the trout stream and I am tossing out the lure to draw the fish to my hook but I am not so sure that we can clearly define luring when it comes to sexual predators.
I recently heard about an incident that happened here in Ottawa a number of months ago where a person from another jurisdiction, where the age of consent was higher than in Canada, became acquainted with a 14 year old. He developed a relationship with the 14 year old and invited her to meet him. He came to Ottawa, set up in a hotel and the 14 year old met him. I am sure it could be argued that was the cultivation of a relationship. The distraught mother, having found out something of what was going on, sent the police. Although they found numerous sex toys in the room, they could do nothing because the 14 year old had gone to the hotel to meet this man of her own free will.
Luring was a crime then and it is now but how do we define luring? There are weaknesses here in some of the things we do. We get into the habit of saying things in legalese and it sometimes is more confusese than legalese. We should be able to use common sense and understand that the girl was lured for sexual purposes. It was a tremendous travesty of justice and of the law breaking down and not really protecting her like she should have been protected.
The amendment coming from the Senate adds the following to the legislation:
A custodian of a computer system who merely provides the means or facilities of telecommunication used by another person to commit an offence under subsection 163.1(3) does not commit an offence.
We certainly agree with the protection of those who are innocent third party people who become involved in an offence in an innocent way. In fact, this is the one thing we can commend. We wish that this kind of principle was followed in some other bills like the species at risk act and even in the cruelty to animals act. We believe there needs to be a certain level of knowledge and a certain level of intent before a criminal act is actually performed. Therefore we have no problem with that and we are glad it is there.
Then we move on to this great mysterious line which includes some other words. It goes like this:
Where the accused is charged with an offence under subsection (2), (3), (4), or (4.1), the court shall find the accused not guilty if the representation or written material that is alleged to constitute child pornography has artistic merit or an educational, scientific or medical purpose.
What do some of those words mean? First, perhaps the most innocent of those words it would seem would be “educational”. However, in a meeting on the Hill this week where the material was presented to us by some of the members of the Ontario police and the porno unit from Toronto, we were shown copies of the drawings that were done by Mr. John Robin Sharpe. The judge referred to those drawings as having some merit because by watching the sequence of drawings in sort of cartoon form he said that one could notice there was a tremendous ability for the victims to survive and therefore there was some kind of artistic merit. Perhaps he could have said that there was some kind of educational merit to those drawings because they in fact demonstrated that the victims could survive.
I believe that is stretching it way too far. I believe that is stretching the term educational too far. I believe it is stretching artistic merit too far. I would ask the judge, and I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether there would be, for instance, any artistic merit in a sign being carried by a demonstrator on the front lawn of parliament that promoted hate toward, let us say, Muslims, Jews, parliamentarians? If the sign being carried promoted the aspect of killing, hating, wounding or abusing other members of society would the judge say that it was such a beautiful sign, done in such magnificent colours, that it was the most beautiful, colourful sign he or she had ever seen, and that it had such artistic merit that he or she would allow the protestor to carry it? I do not think so. I do not think that would happen.
Yet in that court, looking at those repulsive drawings, a panel of judges of this land could actually say that there was artistic merit. Why would the Senate want to send an amendment sticking those undefined, undetermined words and qualifications back into this legislation? Why would we do that?
I would suggest when it comes to artistic merit, when it comes to educational, scientific or medical purposes, perhaps there are some higher standards on which we should judge whether or not it is right to allow it.
For instance, the supreme court decision in the John Robin Sharpe case, when it defined or allowed for artistic merit, did not take into account the true and accurate reflection of community standards. Yes, I understand that the judge even wrote in his decision that there was no moral standard or community standard that could be applied. Again it is part of the abominable process that allows us to ignore the decency of common people.
Why can we have such laws and judgments that in themselves degrade, depress, demoralize and destroy our own country? Why is that? Why would we again write them in Bill C-15A? What is wrong with applying some community standards?
I would suggest that the court's application of artistic merit did not put a priority on the protection and the rights of children. How can we do that? How can we allow some artist, and I do not care if he is Michelangelo, to come up with material whose sole purpose is to promote the abuse of children?
Let us face it. That kind of pornographic material, especially kiddy porn, is designed to desensitize not only the predator but it is used to slowly expose the children who are targets and victims to the pictures and to the idea of being involved with adults in sexual activity until the children's minds are desensitized to that activity, so that they will be receptive and can be brought in to participate.
These children do not have the ability to weigh out and think the way an adult is supposed to think, although some question of that ability is being pointed out at some levels of our government. We must protect the children. They have no way of knowing where they are going once they start down that path. Those drawings are designed to draw them aside. The Internet is filled with that kind of stuff and if I have time, I will mention more on that.
The supreme court decision did not reflect the spirit of intent of even the term artistic merit. I can understand allowing room for the artists to do things. I do a little artwork myself. I have paintings hanging in my own house that I have painted, but there is nothing like that hanging on my wall. Perhaps I might have a hard time getting someone to judge my paintings as worthy of artistic merit. I am not a great artist but I am kind of proud of what I do. May I say that even my wife likes it, so that makes it pretty good.
There is an understanding here that some room needs to be given for artistic merit. There are some cases where examples need to be depicted for medical or educational purposes. I understand that wholeheartedly. However, to push it out and over the precipice to such an extent that we have done with artistic merit is absolutely absurd. Why would we stick that back into the legislation we are writing to try to protect children over the Internet?
A moment ago my hon. colleague across the way referred to the statistic that was given to us this week by the Toronto child pornography unit. My ears heard its statement this way, that it was so bound up with one case in the courts that it was frozen from examining the 400 others just in Toronto that the unit needed to examine. In the case the unit is working on now, it has confiscated 400,000 images.
Do members know what has to happen in order to prosecute the case? Do members realize that every one of those 400,000 images has to be viewed by the prosecutor's staff, classified, categorized and listed? Then in court, the 400,000 pictures have to be shown to the defence and the defence has to go through them.
We were told that the department was absolutely paralyzed for five to six months because it was using its entire staff simply to categorize these pictures. We are talking about something voluminous, something huge. We are not talking about if, maybe and perhaps these things might happen. The Toronto unit alone has confiscated 750,000 pictures since January 1.
There is a terrible problem out there. We certainly do not need to reinforce the opportunity for this to happen by allowing artistic merit or a lack of the definition of “luring”, little things like that, to give an opening to those who would traffic in child pornography. We do not need to do that.
Mr. David Griffin of the Canadian Police Association said these words, to the best of my being able to write them down, “If you hear the kind of sentences given out by judges to people guilty of these crimes, it would make you sicker than the pictures”. That is where I am coming from. I am sick of the lack of proper treatment of those who are ruining and destroying the lives of our young people by involving them in the production of pornography by feeding them pornography in order to use them in other ways.
We have to tighten this up. This is not yet enough. We need to go much further than this legislation goes. We owe it to the children, to the parents, to the future of this nation to put out legislation that would demonstrate some sort of backbone in parliament.
Harassment April 12th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, this past Monday a 14 year old junior high school student in Halifax shot himself. His friends say it was because of bullying.
Because of bullying, students are being forced to quit or transfer or endure a tremendously miserable existence at schools. Principal Charlie O'Handley said “There's a bullying problem in every school. There's a bullying problem in the adult world. It's universal”.
I want to direct the House's attention to a constituent of mine from Craik, Saskatchewan, Kim Ehman. Kim is the mother of four school age children and has been deeply affected by school tragedies. In the last three days she has addressed students in 13 different sessions. She has a deep and powerful message to parents and students alike. She has written and produced a video entitled Unknown Wounds for her use in presentations. I would like to give a great big thanks to Kim Ehman for her personal attention to a national issue.
Justice April 11th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, last year the Canadian Police Association and the provincial justice ministers passed resolutions calling for the age of consent to be raised.
Children across the country are being sexually exploited every day. A 1999 Department of Justice paper said “the present age of consent is too low to provide effective protection from sexual exploitation by adults.”
When will the Minister of Justice do the right thing and raise the age of sexual consent?
Justice April 11th, 2002
Mr. Speaker, it is time the justice minister did the right thing and raised the age of consent. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines a child as a person under 18. The current age of sexual consent is 14.
In this country we tell 14 year olds that they are too young to drive, too young to drink, too young to vote, too young to smoke. Does the Minister of Justice really believe that a 14 year old grade nine student is old enough and fair game for sexual activity with, say, a 40 year old adult?