Age of Consent Changes Positive: One Man's Opinion

By Ben Meisner

The raising of the age of consent in Canada from 14 to 16 will be seen as a good move by most Canadians, given that the limit had been set about 100 years ago.

Under the proposed law, sexual consent is raised from 14 to 16, meaning that having sex with a boy or girl under the age of 16 is a criminal offence. There is one exception that being the 14 and 15 year olds who have sex with a person who is less than five years their senior.

We should have examined the laws much sooner given that in today’s world young women reach womanhood much earlier than they did even 40 or 50 years ago. There are plenty of young girls who are still a child in a young woman’s body and society needed to reflect on the matter.

The 14 age of consent has been around for a long time.

I recall in talking to my mother about the fact she  had arrived in Canada, at the request of what was known as a "remittance" man.  That is a person from France or England, usually an illegitimate child who has been shipped off to Canada or some foreign land. As long as they stayed away from the home land they received a remittance every year from the royalty who had sent them packing.

My mother was from Poland and had lied to get out of the country saying she was 16, but she added that 14 would have been alright to work for this remittance man on some estate in Saskatchewan. The point of course being that you can bet your bottom dollar that the plan wasn’t just to hitch her up to a plow, which by the way was done in those days .

She got tangled in with my father who worked on the same estate and they made a run for it shortly after she arrived in this country. But I’m sure to this day there are plenty of off shore women who arrive in a child’s body only to be treated like a sack of potatoes.

While the age of consent won’t eradicate the practice, at the very least, it will raise the bar.

Under the proposed law, lecherous persons who prey on young boys and girls will find themselves in some hot water. I predict the law will have no difficulty in passing parliament.

I’m Meisner and that is one man’s opinion.

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