Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to speak on such a serious issue as the subject of Bill C-26.

This bill is a perfectly clear manifestation of the Conservatives' law and order ideology. It also demonstrates the Conservatives' failure to provide the law and order they talk so much about, since sexual offences against children have increased by 6% in the last two years.

We in the NDP have zero tolerance for sexual offences against children, while respecting jurisprudential principles and basic law, an area where the government too often expresses its disdain for judges by reducing their freedom of decision-making and imposing minimum sentences.

I would remind the House that we offered to speed the passage of the parts of former omnibus Bill C-10 that dealt with sexual offences against children. In those parts, the mandatory minimum sentences were more severe. However, today we are debating a bill that would increase the existing mandatory minimums and the maximum sentences for certain sexual offences against children.

This provision gives the impression that the Conservative government is trying to make up for its failures, but I would like the government to tell me how these new mandatory minimum and maximum sentences can succeed when they have failed in the past.

Like the other members of Parliament, I have read the statistics. The number of crimes committed has risen exponentially. As the mother of three children, I find the following figures rather frightening: in 2008, 54 people were charged with luring children by means of the Internet; in 2012 that number was 127; in 2008, 241 people were charged with sexual interference; in 2012 there were 916.

I wonder whether the problem lies with the sentences or with the services provided.

We know that our communities need more resources to combat the sexual abuse of children. The NDP has supported the program called Circles of Support and Accountability or CoSA.

The former federal ombudsman for victims of crime has revealed that funding for this program will end this fall. That is very sad because, like most community services for victims, the CoSA program is not very expensive. Its 700 volunteers across Canada meet with offenders after their release, help them find work and housing, and meet with them regularly over coffee. The former ombudsman said they were helping offenders remake their lives, avoid reoffending and take responsibility.

Harsher prison terms will probably not be enough.

I would like to raise another point I think is dicey in this bill: the creation of a publicly accessible database containing information with respect to persons who are found guilty of sexual offences against children.

A number of elements that need to be clarified come to mind when I read this bill. This database is likely to lead to a false sense of security, as it gives the impression that the threat comes only from strangers, from those sex offenders walking around in our communities and on our streets, even though the vast majority of child molesters are close to the family. The Fondation Marie-Vincent has determined that in 85% of cases of sexual abuse of children under the age of 12, the abuser is a person the child knows.

I am not saying that establishing this kind of database is a bad thing. I am saying that care must be taken and that the database should not be the only tool for making people safer. It has a role to play, of course, but it is not the main way to make our neighbourhoods safer.

There is another point that bothers me: this kind of registry has already been established in the United States, and we can see that the results are not very good. The Chicago-based Journal of Law and Economics conducted a study in 2011 that showed that the highest rates of sex crimes in the United States come from sex offenders who are listed in registries that are available to the public, simply because the offenders whose names are on these public lists have a tendency to hide and comply less with the law. They tend to live in secrecy. They will take longer to reintegrate into society and be rehabilitated. In other words, they will not be monitored as other offenders are by assistance services and they will be more likely to reoffend. I think this is something that should be examined in greater depth, and I am sure that my colleagues will try to raise all of these sensitive issues in committee.

Since 2006, the Conservative government has taken measures that it says are meant to protect children better. We have taken note of this, but considering that the numbers of sex offences against children continue to rise, the government’s repressive measures are clearly not sufficient.

We would like to see measures that will protect children in a tangible way and make our communities safer, not measures that are just intended to make the Conservatives look good in press conferences. We must also examine in depth whether certain of these measures—such as the high-risk child sex offender database, evidence from spouses of accused persons in child pornography cases and the imposition of consecutive sentences on offenders who have committed sexual offences against children—are in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Finally, it is easy to see that the unilateral and essentially repressive approach by the Conservatives is unlikely to be enough in and of itself and that this strategy must be urgently reviewed in order to fight effectively against child sexual molestation.

Djaouida Sellah

Transcript

Government Orders

Discussions (0)