Canada lets child-porn offenders off easy while targeting Bible believers
Courts weaken mandatory minimum sentences for child-porn offenders as Ottawa signals interest in prosecuting Bible believers for hate
Was Canada’s 1982 Charter meant to condemn the Bible as hate literature or to weaken sentencing for child pornography? Like it or not, that is the direction post-Charter Canada is moving.
For Halloween, the red-robed justices at the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a one-year mandatory sentence for accessing or possessing child sexual abuse materials amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.” The judgment upheld a similar ruling from the Quebec Court of Appeal.
A narrow 5-4 majority leaned on a hypothetical. If an 18-year-old received a sexually explicit image from a 17-year-old girlfriend, that image would technically be child porn. If prosecuted, the recipient could face a one-year minimum sentence. On that basis, the judges rejected the entire minimum sentence law.
But the real case before them was far more disturbing. Two Quebec men possessed images and videos that were clearly the result of abuse. One had 317 unique images of child porn, with 90 per cent showing girls aged three to six years old forced into penetration and sodomy by adults or other minors. The other had 531 images and 274 videos of girls aged five to 10 engaged in sexual acts, including anal and vaginal penetration and, in some cases, multiple children.
Courts ease penalties for child-porn crimes as Ottawa targets Christianity.
Image by Rod Long





















Toi Staff
Sabine Sterk
Gideon Levy
Penny S. Tee
Waka Ikeda
Daniel Orenstein
John Nosta
Grant Arthur Gochin