Our Conservative government has introduced Bill C-54; ‘Protecting Children from Sexual Predators Act’ which would help make our streets and communities safer by toughening the laws protecting children from adult sexual predators.  Sexual exploitation of children causes irreparable harm to the youngest and most vulnerable members of our society.  Your government is committed to helping prevent sexual offences against children by ensuring that adult sexual predators receive sentences which reflect the extreme seriousness of their crimes.

As your MP, I cannot think of anything viler than people who sexually prey on children. The proposed legislation would establish mandatory prison sentences for seven existing Criminal Code offences, such as luring a child, sexual assault and aggravated assault.  As a result, conditional sentences (i.e., house arrest) would no longer be available for any of these offences. 

The proposed legislation would also increase mandatory prison sentences for seven sexual offences involving child victims, such as possessing and accessing child pornography and sexual exploitation.

This Bill would create two new offences with mandatory prison sentences that seek to prevent the sexual exploitation of children by making it illegal for anyone to: provide sexually explicit material to a child for the purpose of facilitating the commission of a sexual offence against a child (referred to as “grooming”); or the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, to communicate with another person to agree or make arrangements to commit a sexual offence against a child.
The new measures would also require judges to consider prohibiting suspected or convicted child sexual offenders from having unsupervised contact with a child or any unsupervised use of the Internet.  This would help prevent them from offending and re-offending.

Your Conservative government campaigned back in 2006 that if elected, we were going to “crack down on crime”.  This new Bill, C-54, is just one of many bills brought forward by our Harper government to fulfill our promise to YOU to make our streets and our citizens safer.

It is our hope that the opposition coalition parties will co-operate with us in the House to get these appropriate bills passed in order to ensure that our police and courts have the tools needed to put sexual predators behind bars.

Colin Mayes, MP
Okanagan-Shuswap