Mr. Speaker, it is with great humility that I rise in the House today, especially after hearing those of my colleagues who are legal experts debate Bill C-13. I would like to contribute based on my own personal experience.

I was a teacher for many years. I was lucky enough to teach many classes and work with many students. As an educator, I realize that in this modern world, education and information play a very important role. These days, young people need to adapt to a society that is quickly evolving. From my teaching days, I remember how students sometimes spoke to one another, how boys and girls talked. Sometimes it was troubling, because I found that the language they used often mimicked what they heard in the media, on TV and perhaps all around them, even on the street. It always troubled me to hear such language spoken between boys and girls. I taught for many years and then I did something else. However, that memory stayed with me.

In our society, social media and the Internet play a very important role in our lives and in the lives of young people. Unlike me, my nieces and nephews have never known a world without the Internet. Protecting privacy was very important in the past. My nieces and nephews were raised in a world in which the Internet plays a very important role. They were born with the Internet, much like I was born with television. We sometimes forget that when we are in our offices or in our rooms in front of a computer, as soon as we connect to the Internet, we are no longer in the privacy of our own space. We are in a public place. We are on display for everyone to see.

That is why my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord proposed a bullying prevention strategy, as a means of increasing awareness about bullying, including cyberbullying.

We need to keep in mind that the Internet is an absolutely terrific tool for sharing information, but it can be used maliciously. On the one hand, it can be an extraordinary information tool, but on the other hand, it can be a very powerful tool for bullying. As such, it must be used very carefully. To me, education and prevention are very important. We have to know how to use a tool as powerful as the Internet, how to protect ourselves against cyberbullying, what means we can use to do so, and what resources are available if we fall victim to cyberbullying.

By providing information to young girls, young boys, women, the marginalized, and even those who are being bullied, by providing them with the tools to protect themselves and a safe place where they can be protected from these attacks, we are giving them the power to combat bullying and violence. Of course, often awareness, information and education are not enough. However, it is very important that we start with this approach as much as possible.

It is not easy to talk about bullying because it affects not only us as humans and our emotions, but also memories and things that have happened to us. I have to admit that it is not always easy to talk about it.

I am also the chair of the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. We recently studied the issue of eating disorders. As part of this study, we spoke about the impact of social media and the Internet. The way in which body image is projected—especially for women—is very interesting, as is the way that the Internet and social media put an incredible amount of pressure on girls and women, when it comes to that body image. There is work to be done when it comes to the media, social media and the Internet. At the end of the day, what can we do to bring this body image more in line with reality?

As many of my colleagues have mentioned, the current title of the bill is unfortunately misleading. The bill is called the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act. As it has done with many of its bills, the government has included a number of elements in this bill that go far beyond the issue of cybercrime. I want to stress that we are now not only talking about peace officers, but also public officers, which the bill describes as someone “who is appointed or designated to administer or enforce a federal or provincial law”.

I find these excesses troubling. Once again, I want to congratulate our new justice critic and all the members of the official opposition on the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. They presented perfectly reasonable amendments to address the excesses in Bill C-13. For example, the amendments dealt with changing the wording of “reasonable grounds to suspect” to “reasonable grounds to believe”; establishing that the term “peace officer” applies to police officers; and removing the worrisome term of “public officer”, which is poorly defined and could, once again, lead to spillover. They also proposed including a clause to require that the minister report to the House to indicate how many request and orders were submitted, and to include a certain clause.

I want to once again express my support for my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca regarding the importance of including a clause on gender equality, in order to protect transgendered people from cyberbullying.

A great many troubling things have been added to this bill, and they have no business being there. That is why the official opposition cannot support this bill.

Hélène LeBlanc

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