Here is the story from the Winnipeg Free Press. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Manitoba MP Joy Smith’s quest to have child sex traffickers hit with mandatory minimum sentences survived a challenge Tuesday when a Bloc Québécois amendment to her bill was defeated.

[…]The legislation creates a new offence for trafficking of people under 18 and sets five years as the mandatory minimum sentence upon conviction. The bill sets six years as the minimum sentence for trafficking minors with aggravating factors such as sexual assault.

Currently convictions of human trafficking don’t separate victims by age. The maximum sentence is 14 years (life with aggravating factors) but there is no minimum.

Smith says too many convictions under the law since it came into effect almost five years ago have seen sentences far shorter than five years.

Joy Smith is a Conservative Party MP. Here is the roll call of people who voted against protecting children from sexual predators. 46 MPs from the two socialist parties (the Bloc Quebecois and the New Democrat Party) voted against the bill. The NDP is the English socialist part of Canada, and the Bloc Quebecois is the French socialist party of Canada.

Socialists receive lots of votes from criminals and are generally soft on crime, because they believe that law-abiding victims of crime are actually responsible for criminal behavior, and that criminals are the real victims of crime. That is how people on the left think. Good is evil. Evil is good. Does this remind anyone of the ACORN story?

Conservative MP introduces pro-life petition

In other news, Andrew notifies me that my favorite Canadian MP, Maurice Vellacott, has recently introduced a petition to recognize that abortion causes pain to unborn children.

Excerpt:

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine) this week put forward a petition calling on the government to adopt effective animal welfare legislation because of the fact that animals feel pain and suffering.

In response, pro-life Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott noted before Parliament that preborn human children also experience pain. However, this fact is not recognized in Canadian law, which allows for legal abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

Presenting his own petition, Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin) stated, “Mr. Speaker, as a follow up to that series of petitions in respect of the pain that animals feel and in view of the fact that babies in the womb for the entire nine months feel some considerable pain caused by the abortion procedures that are used in this country, these petitioners in the country of Canada note that in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms everyone has a right to life, freedom from pain and freedom from the kind of assault fetuses experience in the womb…”

Again, the left-wing Liberal Party MP is terribly concerned about animal pain, but not concerned at all about allowing innocent unborn children to be killed. On the other hand, Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott is a solid social and fiscal conservative. He is especially active on men’s rights issues like shared parenting. He has an earned doctorate from Trinity International University in Chicago.