Vic Toews

[Sponsorship Program, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, last week the Liberal vice-chair of the public accounts committee said that the committee may not be able to find out the truth of who was responsible for the millions of dollars taken by Liberal-friendly advertising firms.

Rather than trying hard to find out the truth, the Liberal majority is pushing forward with a whitewashed report to bury their connections with the sponsorship scandal. How can the committee find out the truth when the Liberal majority keeps on burying it?

[Sponsorship Program, March 30th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal fix is in at the public accounts committee. Last week, following the instructions of the Prime Minister, the Liberal majority on the committee defeated a Conservative motion calling for a release of the Gagliano papers.

Is the Prime Minister now trying to cover up the sponsorship scandal because the only thing at the bottom of this scandal is more evidence of Liberal sleaze?

[Sponsorship Program, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, a career public servant of 29 years, Huguette Tremblay, with everything to lose and nothing to gain, put the current President of the Privy Council at the scene of the crime.

Why will the Prime Minister not release the Gagliano papers so that Canadians can determine what the involvement of the President of the Privy Council was in respect of the sponsorship pie?

[Sponsorship Program, March 25th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, today the public accounts committee heard that the current President of the Privy Council met with Chuck Guité, the official in charge of the sponsorship program.

When did the President of the Privy Council disclose to the Prime Minister his direct involvement in the sponsorship program?

[Criminal Code, March 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member for Lakeland on this timely initiative.

Speaking as a former prosecutor and also as the director of constitutional law for the province of Manitoba, I have had quite a bit of involvement in terms of the difficulties involved with the prosecution of impaired driving offences. I have worked with the former justice minister in Manitoba, James McCrae, who implemented, as a politician, the first administrative licence suspension program in Canada. Manitoba, indeed, is a leader.

I had the honour to work with the attorney general at that time, as the director of constitutional law, in researching the existing problems with the law, developing a new system, and coming up with a system that has led Canada in terms of reducing the number of drunk drivers, and more importantly, deaths, injury and property damage caused by drunk driving.

One of the difficulties--and why the Government of Manitoba had to use its powers under property and civil rights--was because the federal government was unwilling to move in terms of making meaningful amendments that would stop impaired driving. It was very frustrating.

Speaking as a prosecutor, I recall that one of the most difficult charges to prove was impaired driving. When we look at impaired driving without any blood alcohol testing device, it is very difficult to prove. That is why I have expressed this concern about the decriminalization of marijuana. It will create additional difficulties if that encourages the more widespread use of marijuana.

However, when it comes to per se impairment, that is when someone blows into a breathalyzer machine and it reads over .08, one is presumed to be impaired. The theory was great. The technicalities though, that have developed, have been just astounding.

If we look at the legislation in the Criminal Code and the case law in annotated Criminal Code, perhaps Martin's Annual Criminal Code , there are many precedents cited, all dealing with technical defences on how to avoid convictions under the Criminal Code. It is very frustrating.

As a prosecutor, I would have much rather prosecuted a serious assault. Proving assault causing bodily harm or other serious assaults, indeed, somebody even suggests murder is easier to prove than .08 because of the technical nature of these defences.

Judges have been ingenious in developing ways of avoiding convicting individuals. Some of the ways that have been developed by judges, at the urging of defence counsel, are the two issues that this bill addresses: the Carter defence and the last drink defence.

The Carter defence is basically using expert evidence to rebut the evidence produced by the breathalyzer. The last drink defence is essentially the defence saying that an individual was at a party, quickly chugged three or four drinks and then got in the car and tried to make it home before getting over .08 alcohol absorbed in the blood. This is absolute foolishness and yet judges accept it as a matter of course.

Not only is it foolish, it is dangerous. We have seen these kinds of defences accepted by judges in this country. I do not blame defence counsel for raising these ridiculous arguments because judges apply these defences. If we had judges who would say, as they should, that this is nonsense and just put away these defences, then we would not be worried about the kind of amendments that my colleague from Lakeland, who has been such a strong fighter in this area, has put forward. We would not need these kinds of defences.

Specifically, we addressed these two defences in Manitoba's administrative suspension law. When I drafted that Manitoba legislation, we eliminated these two defences. We said that if the police were to catch people and they blow into that breathalyzer and it shows .08, the defences of when they had their last drink or the expert evidence that could be called to rebut that would simply not be available. The breathalyzer was conclusive evidence that their blood alcohol level at the time of the reading was in fact the level at the time they were stopped while driving.

What that does is put a little bit of fear into people who wonder if they should risk it. They could always chance getting a stupid judge. We should try to eliminate not the Carter defence and the last drink defence, but the defence we are talking about of how many judges buy this nonsense. That is the real defence.

In the Manitoba legislation we simply stated that we did not have any room for stupid defences like these. It was conclusively proven. As a result of that--and I make no apologies about the tough stand that the Conservative government in Manitoba took--we have seen a decrease in death, injuries and property damages.

I can look my constituents in the face and say we have saved lives and we have kept families together. That is what we need to do federally. We need to make it clear that this is a crime. There is nothing funny about drinking and driving, and killing people.

If only we could rely on the common sense of judges to do what is right. To do what is implicit in the legislation, we have to come up with these technical kinds of defences.

The effort by my colleague from Lakeland is an excellent effort. It needs to be done. But the moment we put this in the Criminal Code, I can already see the gears working in the minds of the criminal defence bar, saying “What other stupidity can we come up with that we can actually get a judge to buy?”. It has become quite a challenge. Lawyers would not go to all this trouble and go to all this length if judges did not buy these defences.

I am encouraged by this initiative. I support this initiative fully and I want every member in the House to take this amendment seriously. If we can pass this kind of amendment, it will decrease the ability to get away from one's responsibilities as a licensed driver on the road and increase accountability. It will decrease deaths, injuries and property damage.

[Sponsorship Program, March 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, money laundering is not acceptable process.

According to the Prime Minister, over the last 10 years the Liberal government he was a part of was engaged in cronyism and patronage. Now the Prime Minister engages in cover-up. Why is the Prime Minister hiding the fact that he ordered the Liberal majority on the public accounts committee to vote against releasing the very information that Canadians need to get to the bottom of this scandal?

[Sponsorship Program, March 24th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, across Canada, Liberal-friendly ad agencies have skimmed huge percentages from grants destined for community initiatives. Liberal ad agencies from as far away as Montreal and Halifax dipped into a Ukrainian community initiative in Manitoba.

Who allowed Liberal ad agencies to take money from the Ukrainians of Manitoba through an elaborate money laundering scheme?

[Criminal Code, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, from my conversations with them, I understand that the Toronto police, as well as other police forces across Canada, support an increase of that age of sexual consent to age 16 when it comes to dealing with child-adult sexual relationships.

In terms of pornography itself and child pornography in particular, the police are very concerned. Indeed, they are overwhelmed. In this age of technology and computers there can be thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands, of pictures on a particular computer, making it very difficult to prosecute these cases, and very cumbersome and very expensive. We had a presentation here from the Toronto police about a year ago now, wherein they expressed concern that the legislation and the approaches by the government were not stemming this tide of child pornography.

Rather than simply proceeding along the same path as it has been, why will this government not bring in legislation that addresses the concerns of front line police officers, that addresses the concerns of child advocacy agencies, and that indeed addresses the concern that children are not being protected in the existing law or in this law itself?

[Criminal Code, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-12, a bill that has been recycled by the federal justice minister, a bill that would do nothing to help give children the legal protection they need.

We heard a lot of evidence in committee regarding the bill. We heard from frontline police officers and from child advocacy groups, including groups like Beyond Borders. The government has simply ignored the mounds of evidence from these child advocate groups and frontline police officers who have indicated time and again that the Bill C-12 would not be effective in protecting children.

By reviving what has been referred to as pedophile-friendly legislation without a thought to the real needs of children, the Prime Minister has simply carried out the previous prime minister's legacy of indifference.

The bill does not address the fundamental problems relating to the protection of children that our criminal justice system should address. It does not eliminate all defences for the criminal possession of child pornography. It does not raise the age of consent for adult-child sexual contact from 14 years of age, one of the lowest ages of consent in the western world.

One of the provisions in the Criminal Code allows an adult to have sex with a child as young as 12 years old if that adult thought the child was in fact 14 years of age. While that may seem preposterous, that is exactly what happened in a recent case in Saskatchewan where a judge acquitted two adult males in their twenties who had sexual relations with a young aboriginal girl who had run away from home. They were acquitted because they thought she was 14 years of age.

The bill fails to introduce mandatory sentences for child sexual assault, as has been done in other jurisdictions, specifically the United Kingdom and the United States.

The bill also fails to streamline the laws of evidence governing convictions for sex offenders.

Canada is becoming a global haven for child predators because of these glaring Liberal policy failures. In fact, the entire bill is filled with vague provisions that fail to create the certainty of protection that children require. No doubt prompting therefore the applause from a notorious child predator like John Robin Sharpe, who supports the bill, because he believes it would bring understanding to the adult-child sexual relationship. Praise from a child predator is evident, but all the frontline police officers and child care agencies, indeed, every witness who went before the justice committee, condemned the bill, other than the minister himself.

Let me deal specifically with some of the concerns that have been raised.

The first concern that needs to be raised, which I know some of my colleagues have addressed, centres around the controversy regarding the artistic merit defence. That controversy began in reaction to the court case of the previously mentioned child predator John Robin Sharpe.

The Supreme Court of Canada in R. v Sharpe said that artistic merit should be interpreted as broadly as possible. That really opened the door to mischief in terms of trying to enforce this particular law. It basically meant that one could bring forward any witness to say that there was at least some artistic merit to these degrading writings and that would be sufficient for a judge to consider an acquittal.

That interpretation of the law by the Supreme Court of Canada helped shape the decision that allowed Mr. Sharpe to be acquitted for two counts of possession of child pornography with the intent to distribute, as the material, containing violent writing targeting vulnerable children, was considered by the judge to have artistic merit.

It is truly remarkable that we would never accept the defence of artistic merit with respect to women in our society and with respect to the exploitation of racial minorities, and yet with respect to the most vulnerable minority of them all, our children, the courts are more than quick to protect artistic merit rights and destroy the protection that children deserve. It is very evident that that defence needs to be eliminated. It is simply not necessary.

We have called on the federal government, as the Conservative Party, to eliminate that defence. The government responded but the response has been a pitiful response in terms of protecting children.

The defence in the old bill has now been reduced into a single defence of public good. Despite the former justice minister's attempt to sell this bill on the basis that the artistic merit defence has been eliminated, he admitted in the justice committee hearings that the artistic merit defence is still included under the broader public good defence.

Again, that is typical of the kind of approach that the prior justice minister took and now apparently the new justice minister takes. If people are sufficiently outraged they make changes, not changes that substantively address the concerns raised, but rather changes that simply disguise their original intent and in fact carry out that original intent.

What did the former justice minister state in describing what this new public good defence includes? He admitted, and I want to quote from his comments. He stated:

Artistic merit still exists in the sense that a piece of art will have to essentially go through the new defence of public good and through the two stages. Of course, the first question is always this. Does it serve the public good?

Clearly, within there is still the defence of artistic merit.

In the Sharpe decision, when it was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada, the court also addressed that particular statement. It briefly considered the defence of public good. The court found that public good has been interpreted as “necessary or advantageous to...the pursuit of science, literature, or art, or other objects of general interest”. That was the Supreme Court of Canada's interpretation of public good.

The court went on to say:

It might be argued that the public good is served by possession of materials that promote expressive or psychological well-being or enhance one's sexual identity in ways that do not involve harm to others. In some cases this might eliminate some of the more problematic applications of s. 163.1(4). For example, it might in certain cases foreclose the law's application to visual works created and privately held by one person alone....

That statement by the Supreme Court of Canada has been the subject of a lot of controversy. One of the things that the court apparently did not understand was that this type of written child pornography is used to groom children into thinking that these types of sexual relationships with adults are all right. It is very difficult then to suppress this particular information or this type of child pornography. The excuse being offered by these pornographers is that they were only writing it for themselves.

I heard an interesting story with respect to some of Mr. John Robin Sharpe's material that it was in fact found with a notation on it, “This material may be illegal in Canada”. That is a curious thing to put on one's own writings required for one's own personal use. If Mr. Sharpe thought it would be illegal, that is one thing, but why would he have to put that on the face of the material itself? The inference is clear. He distributes this material in order to assist other child predators in their activities.

In trying to create these kinds of exceptions, ostensibly to protect free speech, what the court does is it opens the door to the abuse of children.

The Conservative Party calls for the elimination of all defences that justify the criminal possession of child pornography. Members opposite say that then means we have to make it illegal in every context. That is not correct. That is being mischievous. Obviously, for the purposes of prosecution, for example, it would not be illegal for the police or prosecutors to possess that or for researchers who are studying the effects of exposure to child pornography.

However there needs to be some limitation and clear delineation of what is acceptable and what is not.

We were met with a problem similar to this some years ago when it appeared that police officers were conducting certain illegal activity to further another criminal investigation.

The Supreme Court of Canada said there was no justification for police officers to engage in that illegal activity, no protection in common law, statute or otherwise. The House addressed that issue by passing legislation that set out exactly when police officers could break the law to investigate another charge. It was clearly delineated and set out in statute.

When members opposite say that the exclusion of all child pornography and categorizing it as criminal possession would never work because it would exclude the legitimate handling of pornography by police or prosecutors for a prosecution, is simply a lot of nonsense.

This bill needs to go back to the drawing board to address what I consider a fundamental flaw in that legislation, but yet a flaw that can be remedied by good statutory language. I might note in this context as well that civil libertarians have also indicated that they have a concern with the defence of public good and that it is simply too vague and too broad. So those who are interested in protecting children are concerned about this and civil libertarians who are concerned about certain artistic endeavours are also concerned that this phrase establishes no standard at all.

I want to talk about the age of consent. This bill, frankly, does not deal with that issue in an effective manner. Instead of prohibiting all child exploitation by adults where that child is, for example as in other countries, under the age of 16, this legislation requires a court to examine on a case by case basis if a child has been harmed. This kind of tiptoeing around criminal behaviour is reprehensible. The Conservative Party will not support this kind of vague legislation.

Again, comments by the notorious child predator John Robin Sharpe praising this pedophile friendly piece of legislation further validate the opposition's concern about this bill. Instead of raising the age to simply and clearly state that there shall be no adult-child sexual contact, the Liberals import this vague standard.

At the same time, I recognize that it is not the role of Parliament to get involved in certain social policy issues, for example, sexual relationships between children. The concern of the Conservative Party is not to regulate the sexual conduct of children between each other, that is, children under the age of 16. What we are concerned about is the exploitation of children by adults. We recognize that there needs to be a close in age exemption that ensures we do not criminalize consenting activity, but we do want to stop the kind of activity that John Robin Sharpe was just recently convicted of.

On the age of consent, 80% of Canadians polled said they want to raise the age of consent to at least age 16. The response of this government has been that there are certain cultural considerations in Canada which prevent it from doing that. We have asked time and again what culture in this country agrees with the sexual exploitation of children by adults. The Liberals have been silent. The government has tried to rely on some kind of cultural camouflage, which has only insulted Canadians of every culture. If there is evidence that cultures in Canada accept the exploitation of children by adults, why does the government not bring it forward instead of casting aspersions on every culture in Canada?

The approach of the Liberals in this bill to create this category of exploitative relationships is simply cumbersome and is in fact very difficult to prove in terms of trying to bring forward a prosecution. We already have a provision that makes it against the law for someone in a position of trust to exploit a young person between the ages of 14 and 18. Here, they are simply trying to recast this. Those are my brief comments at this time. I appreciate the opportunity to speak.

[Sponsorship Program, March 12th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, that only begs the question, why was the staff of the finance minister, now Prime Minister, directing and singling out that particular advertising agency, Groupe Everest? Ministerial staff does not freelance. Ministerial staff follows orders.

How can the Prime Minister continue to deny that he knew nothing about the funnelling of tax dollars into Liberal pockets when his right hand and his left hand, his most trusted advisers, Littler and O'Leary, had their fingerprints all over this scandal?