The crime bill currently before the Canadian Senate includes the change to the age of consent previously supported by KINSA. The bill calls specifically for raising the age of sexual consent to 16 from 14 in certain cases. Click here for complete coverage on the bill.

KINSA contends that criminal legislation around teenage sexuality must be approached with caution, and balance. The proper solution must recognize that it is not the role of the state to closely regulate or dictate matters of adolescent sexuality. These issues are to a large degree private matters, and teenagers need some autonomy to make personal choices, influenced not by the law but by their own families, their own values, and their own religious or social communities. However, concern for personal autonomy must not override real threats to personal safety. Thus the focus of any new criminal law must be limited to real threats to a teenager's personal safety that are not already addressed, such as the growing threat posed by adult sexual predators. The best possible law to protect young teenagers from adult sexual predators, while according them appropriate liberty to grow into their sexual selves, must have the following characteristics:

1. The new law should retain the current provisions that protect children thirteen and under.

2. The new law should, in a preamble, recognize that recent studies have pointed to 14 and 15 year olds as those most likely to be victimized by adult sexual predators in internet luring situations.

3. The new law should recognize that 14 and 15 year olds have a right to pursue their awakening sexual development, but that that development should take place in the safety of a social environment limited to their peers in age.

4. Accordingly, the new law should make it clear that consensual sexual activity with 14 and 15 year olds is lawful only if there is no exploitation, there is no abuse of power trust or authority and the 14 or 15 year old's sexual partner is no more than five years older.

5. The new law should not change the current law applicable to 16 and 17 year olds. The current law says that 16 and 17 year olds can have consensual sexual relations with persons of any age, as long as those relationships involve no exploitation, or abuse of power, trust or authority.

Click here for more information on this subject on the KINSA Web site.