YouTube/Al Jazeera English

Canadian Justice Minister Peter MacKay tabled a bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday, giving prosecutors more power to force spouse to testify in child pornography cases, provide border officials better ability to trace travelling sex predators and grant the public more access to a new national database of high-risk child sex offenders.

The legislation aims to toughen Canada's laws versus child sexual predators, makers and consumers of child pornography and people who travel overseas for sex tourism.

The bill proposes tougher mandatory minimum and available maximum jail terms for various sexual offences against children, higher penalties for repeat offenders who break probation or court orders and mandates those with convictions for harming multiple victims to serve their sentences consecutively.

It seeks to address some gaps in the law such as lack of strict reporting requirements on registered sex offenders who leave Canada and lack of information sharing between the police who are responsible for the National Sex Offender Registry and border officials with the Canada Border Services Agency. There are 30,000 names on the registry, while Ontario has a separate sex offender database with 16,000 entries.

YouTube/Kids Live Safe

Mr MacKay explained that "people have the right to know if a child abuser lives in their neighbourhood," quoted by ifpress.

The present rules require registered sex offenders to inform authorities of trip overseas only if they will be gone for over seven days.

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