How Kids Should Stop Sexually Exploiting Adults (or, Did You Wonder What Happened to Team Grewal?)
...I did the other night, and thought I'd update myself on the activities of the honourable member for Fleetwood-Port Kells, the more silent and less controversial of the two parliamentary Grewals, Nina.
On the front page of her site, she touts her work in attempting to have the age of sexual consent in the Criminal Code raised through a defeated motion (I suspect this is unrelated to the recently defeated private-member's bill presented by Tory backbencher Rick Casson which attempted to raise the age of consent to 16). I also suspect that this was from the last parliamentary session.
The page reads:
Nina's motion to raise the age of consent failed to be approved by the House of Commons because of the combined votes of Liberal, BQ, and NDP members. The vote was 100 in favour and 169 against.
Ms. Grewal later questioned the Justice Minister on the government’s failure to protect children: “Mr. Speaker, yesterday, members opposite chose to reject my motion to raise the age of consent, choosing instead to protect adults who prey on young teens. Parents and families need laws that protect children, not predators. And now, predators are coming to Canada from around the world to take advantage of our weak Liberal laws. Police and family groups across Canada support this change. Can the Minister of Justice explain why he is giving a pass to sexual predators instead of protecting young Canadians?”
She then adds some comments about her future efforts to pursue this issue, stating:
"Nina will continue to fight to raise the age of consent, protecting children from sexually exploiting adults. [emphasis mine]
Let this be a lesson to all public figures: never ever let your grammar degenerate into such ambiguity.
posted by ROC @ 4:35 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hey, she is ESL after all... and it was a very fine touch to catch that one...
What's amazing about this is that both when Nina and Rick Casson put forward this legislation, they got relatively little coverage, and the Liberals got relatively little criticism for opposing it.
Canada really is in a left liberal media bubble. The average age of consent globally is 16. There are provisions to keep cases of people proximate in age from ending up affected by this.
Most of the US has age of consent laws at 16 or higher. The UK, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Japan, Norway, Luxembourg, Finland, The Netherlands, Belgium, all have age of consent laws at 16 or higher. Even France's (set at 15) is higher than Canada's! Most of socially-liberal Europe and most of the OECD countries get by just fine with the consent laws that they have (at 16 or higher).
There was an attempt last year to change the age of consent in NZ by way of government legislation.
The new provision would have allowed people as young as 13 (as I recollect) to legally have sex provided that the elder partner was no more than two years older than the younger.
I have no idea what planet the idea came from. I am only gratefull that the legislative system in this country allows people to get the message through to government (usually) and sometimes they listen.
In this instance they did get the message. It remains at 16.
Government denies legalising sex between children as young as 12
The Government says it is not committed to new legislation which critics say will make it legal for children as young as 12 to have consenting sex. It says the status quo will remain if there is no public support for such a change. It argues it is not lowering the age of consent...
Dateline 23/5/04
http://login.nzherald.co.nz/?redir=http://www.nzherald.co.nz/search/story.cfm?storyid=%1C%FE%FD%C9%2D%B0%BE
Canada had a proximate age provision in most versions of the raising age of consent legislation. It's more or less to keep courts clear of "puppy love," as always the Liberals lie to the public and act as if it isn't there.
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