File photo (image credit - CFJC Today)

By Michael Reeve

FRANK CAPUTO

Eventful first full year in office for Kamloops MP Caputo

Dec 23, 2022 | 3:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — At a federal level, the year began with the trucker convoy descending on Ottawa, then the subsequent enacting of the Emergencies Act to clear the downtown core and border crossing throughout the nation.

While the governing Liberals made no major changes to their leadership, the official opposition quickly entered a leadership race in which Pierre Poilievre was elected Conservative leader.

It was Frank Caputo’s first full year in office as a member of parliament (MP). He used that time to move forward a private members bill relating to changing the name of child pornography.

“Child pornography implies consent because when adults do things on camera or in photograph it is meant to be consensual. Children can never consent so we shouldn’t be calling it pornography. We should be calling it was it is, which is child sexual abuse and exploitation material, to reflect what is actually happening here,” said the Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo MP.

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Caputo and the Tories have also been focused on changing the proposed Liberal legislation on gun laws.

“I think the government went way to far way too fast on this bill. They are starting to backtrack on it now, but my hope is that they would have consulted with people from the beginning instead of creating a political wedge,” Caputo said.

Similar to issues addressed by local MLA’s, Kamloops’ MP noted hearing from the public about the importance of tackling street issues.

“And people here in Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo are telling me that street crime is really and issues. We did see the government relax a lot of penalties and I don’t think that is the way that we should be addressing this because the issues is not going away and what we are doing so far isn’t working,” Caputo added.

Looking ahead at 2023, Caputo is looking to the Liberal government to start addressing the rising cost of inflation across Canada.

“I would really like to see the government take tangible actions to get inflation under control. Get shovels in the ground, the reality is that we have a housing issue, we have supply and demand, we don’t have enough supply and too much demand, we need to get shovels into the ground,” Caputo said.

MP’s return to Ottawa on Jan. 30 for the first sitting of 2023.