Mr. Speaker, I am pleased today to stand in the House of Commons with parliamentarians from all parties to talk about Bill C-58. In this Parliament probably one of the most important things we are doing is addressing the protection of our most vulnerable citizens, our children.
Bill C-58 would provide a level of certainty for all those who supply an Internet service to the public that they would be held to the same reporting standard with regard to child pornography. We have heard in the House that child pornography is on the increase. The images that are displayed are becoming more and more violent. Our government recognizes the efforts of major Internet service providers in voluntarily reporting this type of material.
However, creating a uniform mandatory reporting requirement with respect to Internet child pornography on all who supply Internet services to the public across Canada will strengthen our ability to protect children from sexual exploitation.
As I have listened to the speeches, there has been a thread throughout and this thread has been that all members feel that this is a horrendous crime against children. Mr. Speaker, you have small children and I know that it must touch your heart because our children are our most precious gift.
The bill would improve the law and improve law enforcement's ability to detect potential child pornography offences and help reduce the availability of online child pornography. It would also facilitate the identification of victims so they may be rescued and help identify and apprehend offenders. This is a very important piece of legislation. We have heard in the speeches that there are 1,400 police reported child pornography incidents of which 440 resulted in charges, and that is not even up to date. There are more today in the year 2009 going into 2010.
Many good people across this nation are watching and putting the lens on what Parliament is doing in terms of protecting our children. Traditionally speaking, Parliament is a place that sometimes can go wonky. Even though a good bill is presented, sometimes it does not get passed. We have a lot of unnamed people making a lot of unnamed speeches that sound good, but in the end the laws sometimes do not get passed.
As we know, after we deal with the laws here in the House of Commons, they then go into the Senate where they must be examined before they can receive passage.
I want to talk about people across the country who have made a big difference and who are watching what our government is doing in terms of child pornography. I am proud that our government also introduced related bills that have supported Bill C-58. So there is a concerted effort with our government to address our most vulnerable citizens and to protect our children.
Our government recently produced three hard-hitting related bills and one is Bill C-46 which was brought forward on June 18. That bill would require Internet service providers to provide police with email and ISP addresses of those viewing child pornography. It also would require ISPs to freeze child pornographic data for 21 days. It also would require cell phone companies to assist police in tracking child porn on cell phones and BlackBerries.
Again, Bill C-47, which was passed on June 18, was a bill that permitted police to obtain information about clients from ISPs and requires companies to acquire the technical ability to allow police to intercept information. Bill C-58 is just another building block on this foundation that helps protect our children.
In my travels over the past decade, I have met many of the people working on this issue of human trafficking and child porn in our country. As a mother of six children and the mother of an RCMP officer who used to be in the integrated child exploitation unit, I have seen first-hand the cost that a lot of these police officer have paid. They sat there and viewed those images. They went out and tried to get the bad guys. I pay honour and respect to all the police officers who have done that.
Many of the projects across the country outside of Parliament Hill have really put pressure on all of us as members of Parliament to stop this horrific crime. When we talk about child porn over the Internet, it brings to mind Mr. Brian McConaghy who was the founding director of the Ratanak Foundation. He is a forensic scientist with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and has served with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 22 years. He worked tirelessly to help build the case against Donald Baker. For 19 of those 22 years, he performed his duties with the RCMP while setting up and running this foundation. After that, he continued on.
I was talking to Mr. McConaghy yesterday. He and I work on different things.
When we are talking about the Olympics, human trafficking or child porn, they are all connected. What makes these police officers and front line workers who work with the victims of Internet child porn so special is their heart.
The Baker file has been forgotten in some cases but other files keep coming up. They come and go. They are horrendous and yet they are forgotten. I know everybody remembers the Willie Pickton file in B.C., which was a horrendous case that hit the front pages. The RCMP officers and the police vice officers who were working on Internet child porn and on these cases were deeply touched by the victims of this crime.
When we have people watching these images on the Internet and when they go across the ocean and act on those images and fantasies, they come back and continue that appetite for acting on the fantasies because they have allowed themselves to go into that dark place that human beings often have with child pornography.
We talk about the front line officers and we talk about the victims but I want to talk about one victim just to impact our Parliament today so that we understand.
Serena Abbotsway was killed by Willie Pickton. She was a kind young girl who was on the streets helping young people who were victims of human trafficking and child pornography. She underwent many beatings in trying to rescue people because she herself was a street person.
Mr. McConaghy is off to Cambodia right now but when I was talking to him the day before yesterday, he was telling me, as a forensic scientist, how he became attached not only to the cases but also attached to the victims.
He told me what it felt like to look at the skull of Ms. Serena Abbotsway and to look at the picture he had of her. She was baptized at a church on the east side. She worked on the streets and was involved in all kinds of different things. There, before him, was her remains.
He treated her remains with respect as he went through her particular case. When he finished doing his forensic science work, he put her skull away and said goodbye to her. He told her that he would never forget her and that he would do the best he could to ensure that other victims were not hurt.
We can talk about people like Matt Logan. In Parliament the public needs to know about these unsung heroes who work so hard every day. Matt Logan is a recently retired RCMP officer. He has penetrated the psyches of countless psychopaths, pedophiles and hostage-takers. He has spent time in the jail system assessing predatory sex offenders. He is one of only seventeen people in North America who are both police officers and qualified psychologists, and one of even fewer who specialize in the criminal mind.
The member opposite mentioned the toll it took on the police officers. I know many police officers who have taken that toll because of their work. Matt Logan knows an awful lot about pedophiles and about their minds. He knows how to get into those minds and how to rescue the victims.
Staff Sergeant Logan has done so much to bring this issue to the forefront on our national scene. He said that he had a hard time believing that, given an opportunity, the child predators, when after watching victims, would not act on their fantasies. He said, “Child pornography exists primarily for the consumption of predatory child molesters”.
It is the beginning of something that can grow. Logan, who is a criminal psychologist in the RCMP's behavioural science group, has done extensive work with sex offenders. He has been called on more and more to consult on child exploitation cases.
RCMP Matt Logan describes two types of child molesters, the situational and the preferential. He says that most molesters fit into the situational category. He says that means most are male and are indiscriminate with victims, committing sexual assault based on accessibility to a victim. If they have a pornography collection, child porn is usually a small portion of it. He says that the preferential child molester can be of any age, driven by fantasies centred on a specific age, gender or even the look of a child. Most gravitate to prepubescent. Is that not shocking?
RCMP Logan said that although he had worked with some whose fetish was newborns, preferential child molesters also had a long-term pattern of behaviour and almost certainly collect child porn. He says, “The images and erotic stories fuel the fantasies that “drive the bus” to hunting and molesting a child”. This is a statement from a seasoned 22-year RCMP officer who worked in this area.
Bill C-58 is extremely important.
Talking about close to home, my son is an RCMP officer and is in the ICE unit. On his days off, he goes all over the country, talking to associations and groups about how to protect their children against child molesters. In fact, next Friday night he and I will do a joint presentation at one of those locations.
There are other people, like Lianna McDonald, who is the head of the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. She does so much to try to get the cybertip lines up and running. She works hand-in-hand with Beyond Borders, with Roz Prober.
For the first time, businesses across the country are putting money toward organizations that are fighting child trafficking and child porn. One of those organizations is The Body Shop. It has recently launched a huge initiative about hand cream. My Christmas baskets are going to be filled with its hand cream because of its support for the protection of child victims from human trafficking and from child porn.
I want to talk about Paul Gillespie. Paul Gillespie was on the streets protecting children, victims of child abuse. He worked on the ground with many of these young women. I have met some of the young women whom he has rescued. Now he is with KINSA, the Kids Internet Safety Alliance. He works with Canadian law enforcement and other partners to deliver training and build capacity among the police of developing nations to help them find and rescue victims of child abuse, whose images are shared on the Internet. Once rescued, he helps the victims and their families receive support to help them heal through the Mothers Online Movement, MOM. It is a powerful community network. These are the unsung heroes who are listening today to what is going on in Parliament.
Paul Gillespie, a former police officer, built and led the child exploitation section of the Toronto Police Service Sex Crimes Unit. He has become widely known as a world leader on this issue. I consider him a very good friend of mine and someone who is one of those unsung heroes. He has never been brought to the forefront for his work. Today I want to do that and to thank him.
Then we have the small groups that are springing up all over our nation, those groups that do not receive any money from anyone, but they find out about human trafficking and child porn. They go out and educate people. I have always said that education is our greatest tool.
We can talk about Naomi Baker from Canada Fights Human Trafficking. She has brought so many people together and educated many of them on how to protect their children.
We can talk about Natasha Falle. She is my hero because she was a victim of trafficking and was the daughter of a cop. She is off the streets now. She has helped so many people. She now runs Youth Unlimited. We will never find a more articulate, more beautiful, more grounded person than Natasha Falle. She is the poster girl for getting programs in place that will protect and help these victims because they can be rehabilitated.
We can talk about the beautiful Temple Committee Against Human Trafficking in Montreal, started by Rabbi Lerner.
Many people are working so hard to ensure that this horrendous crime is suppressed. Even today in the other chamber, Bill C-268 is awaiting the passage by the Senate. We look forward to all senators supporting that bill.
Over and over we hear in Parliament that this issue has to be a non-partisan one. When it comes to the protection of our children, parliamentarians have to work together. It is so important.
The Olympics are coming upon us in a very short time. I happen to know the bad guys now are getting all the girls together. I know some towns from where they have taken some of these girls.
We cannot sit and wait. This is Canada's hidden secret. This is one of our darkest spots in history when child sex slavery is allowed and when child porn has become something of a joke to some of the people in our country. We have to take this seriously. We have to speak out. As parliamentarians, we cannot afford the luxury of in house bickering. We can only afford the luxury of the privilege of putting laws forward that will protect our most vulnerable victims.
