Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a rather lengthy answer to the question, but if I may proceed, the Supreme Court of Canada is Canada's highest court of decision. Its decisions are binding on all courts and governments across Canada.

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague speaks of a recent Supreme Court of Canada case on child pornography, I believe Mr. Delorey is referring to the decision of the Crown against Sharpe. Contrary to what Mr. Delorey has said, in 2001, the Supreme Court did not make it legal to possess child pornography. The court upheld the law that prohibits the possession of child pornography, with two specific exceptions. The first exception is written materials or visual representations created and held by the accused alone for his or her personal use. The second exception is visual recordings created by the accused that do not include unlawful sexual activity and are held by the accused for his or her private use. The court found that there was no reasonable risk to children in these materials.

The Criminal Code creates two defences for an accused who is charged with offences of child pornography. One is the defence of artistic merit, or where the material serves an educational, scientific, or medical purpose. I am not aware of the case that Mr. Delorey suggests is now before the court. He may be thinking of Mr. Sharpe's case, which was sent back to the B.C. trial court. That trial ended in March, 2002, and Sharpe was convicted for possession of sexually explicit photographs of children, but acquitted of the charges related to his writings on the basis that they demonstrated artistic merit.

Since that decision, jurisdictions have asked the federal government to eliminate the defence of artistic merit from the Criminal Code. The Department of Justice has been monitoring the work that has been done to fix this problem. This has been done very carefully, because we do not want to have a new law, which a court might see as unreasonably violating the rights and freedoms of expression.

I expect the Minister of Justice to be updating me on the progress that has been made, and alternatives which would eliminate the defence. I would be pleased to report back to the Members of this Legislature about this after next week's meeting. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.