Gabriel Ste-Marie

“Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the people of Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. It is always an honour to speak in the House of Commons, but on this occasion, it is a particular honour. Before I begin, I want to recognize and honour the life of Attilio Sirianni, who passed away last month in Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. He leaves behind his children Ferro, Teresa, Mario, Gino, Maria and Raffelina. I extend my deepest condolences to Attilio’s family. May perpetual light shine upon him. Before I get into my speech, I want to recognize the life of Angelo Carusi, who recently passed away in Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola. Those who are left to mourn him include his father Tino, who I have gotten to know through the Colombo Lodge, our local Italian cultural centre; his son Angelo; and his siblings Augie, Ed and Rina. May perpetual light shine upon him. I extend my deepest condolences to the Carusi family. When I was young and growing up, I basically spent my time watching baseball. I was a huge Blue Jays fan. Because I was on the west coast, the Blue Jays games would start at 4:30 p.m. every day. I would come home from school and that is essentially what I did. I had a 286 computer that I would use for word processing. My dot matrix printer was always there and always ready to help me out. I used that all the way until I was in my third year of university. In 1999, I think I got a Windows-based computer. That tells members how old I am. At the end of the day, the computer was a tool for work. I had terrible handwriting, so I would often type out my things. My mom was a legal assistant and could type about 60 or 70 words a minute, so I would sometimes conscript her into typing out my work assignments, for which I thank her. Things were simply different. For instance, I have a background as someone who has worked extensively to combat Internet luring, but the luring of children, back when I was a child, was all done face-to-face. When people wanted to meet one another, they took out classified ads. The young people would read these ads and make fun of them. That was essentially how people met. Let us face it, kids were not generally responding to these ads. Luring takes place when somebody deliberately targets a child and, through that, attempts to lure the child into a relationship. It is almost never initiated by the child. That is why it is called luring. This is an area that I devoted a fair amount of my time to. It is no wonder, when we think about how much time kids spend online. The Internet has changed a lot of things, but in some ways I think it has made the predatory world even more predatory. The anonymity of the Internet is something else. I remember attending a workshop about luring and the difficulties for children. We were told about all these social media vehicles where people did not even have to enter their name or email address and they could instantly go into a chat room and start talking to people, or do something that essentially was a crime immediately without any oversight. For far too long, it has been my view that service providers and social media providers have looked the other way. When people look at the stats, they see that a number of crimes have skyrocketed. That is one of the reasons why I put forward my bill, Bill C-291, in the last Parliament, which received royal assent. I did that with the former member of what is now Kamloops—Shuswap—Central Rockies. The reason we put that bill forward to change the name of child pornography to child sexual abuse and exploitation material was to reflect the gravity of the offence. If somebody were to look at a chart, what they would see for 2013 is this massive skyrocketing, probably by about 10 to 15 times, of the reporting of offences. That is not just because more predators were born in, say, 1993 or something, and the offences are now coming to fruition. The difference was a difference in reporting. For far too long, we saw organizations and providers essentially turning a blind eye, as in they knew that luring was happening and the Internet was an unsafe place, yet nothing was done. In 2012, and I am proud to say this as a Conservative, the Conservative government imposed a positive obligation on service providers to report. People might ask what a positive obligation is. Most laws are negative obligations in criminal law or in traffic law. “Do not speed” is a negative obligation. Someone has to not do something. “Do not assault” is another example. A positive obligation requires a person to do something. For instance, paying taxes is a positive obligation. This law imposed a positive obligation for service providers to report, and the numbers absolutely skyrocketed. It was not just that this was happening more; it was being detected more. I recently went to the RCMP to meet with RCMP commissioner Duheme and deputy commissioner Larkin, as well as many others, many of whom are in the business of protecting children. I went with the member for Oxford. It was a great meeting. These are the unsung heroes, in my view, of our law enforcement community. The reason is that they deal with child sexual abuse and exploitation material, day in and day out. They do not get a reprieve. They are the ones who have to deal with it, so I want to give a shout-out to those people because they are not paid more to do this, yet they put their lives and mental health on the line so that others do not have to, as they protect our children. This is all to say that this is a crucial area of law. The Internet, let us face it, is not a safe place. Where I would like to see things go and where I would actually challenge the government to go on this point is with respect to sentencing. We are talking about an Internet regulator, but so much of what concerns us in our discourse here in Bill C-34, what we are aiming to do, the pernicious and insidious harms, if we will, of kids being on the Internet, is actually already regulated by criminal law. I think we should be looking at the sentencing. I will give an example. Internet luring began with a sentence of five years in jail, maximum. A maximum sentence is a sentence that can be imposed, but not must be imposed. It started at five years, and then it went to 10 years. As Conservatives, I am proud that we upped it to 14 years. Bill C-299 is a private member’s bill I tabled last Parliament. I believe sentencing should go to life in prison. I believe someone who offends against children for that offence, or for sexual interference, which is essentially the sexual assault of a child, because children cannot consent, should be liable to life. If someone touches a kid, they should see the inside of a jail cell. I have said it before and I will say it again: If I am ever in charge of making laws on the government side, I will not stop until sex offenders see the inside of a jail cell for a darn long time. I know I am already running short on time just talking about this. It is an area of great passion for me. I really do think that we have to value the mental health of children. We really do. This is not something that I think only the Conservatives value or only the Liberals value. Let us be real. Everybody in here values the mental health of children. How we go about it is what we need to debate substantially. I would invite the government to consider thinking about the sentencing aspect. Before I end, I want to reflect on the life of Iolanda Bartella, somebody from Kamloops—Thompson—Nicola who recently passed away. Iolanda leaves behind her sons Frank, Carmelo and Rob. I actually taught her granddaughter Kiely at law school in a class on sentencing, probably eight or nine years ago. Kiely is now a lawyer. I send my deepest condolences to the Bartella family. May perpetual light shine upon her.”