Robert Cribb and Jennifer Quinn and Julian Sher, Staff Reporters

The federal government is promising unprecedented reforms to protect foreign children from Canadian child sex offenders including creating a “publicly accessible” registry of high-risk predators.

Currently, only law enforcement officials can access information in the country’s sex offender registry.

Asked for clarity on how much detail the public would be able to access on those contained in the national database, a Public Safety spokesman said details on the legislation would be available when it is tabled this fall.

“Public means public,” the spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney added. “The sex offender registry is already available to law enforcement.”

Related:

•Child sex tourism investigation

•Cuban police crack down on prostitution after investigation

In the U.S., convicted sex offenders have long been searchable by name, address, county, city or zip code, complete with mug shots.

A public registry would signal a major departure for Canada where such information has always remained a tightly guarded secret due to privacy concerns.

Even Canadian border officials are currently prevented from easy access to the information — a fact that experts say has allowed child predators to routinely exit and re-enter the country undetected.

“Gaps in information sharing and collection, as well as gaps in enforcement, mean child predators can slip over our borders unmonitored,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Monday. “That is going to change.”

Under the proposed legislation, all Canadians would be privy to details on those with a history of sex offences against children.

The Tougher Penalties for Child Predators Act would also force sex offenders with travel plans outside Canada to provide detailed information on their itinerary — and authorities in their destination country will be informed of their arrival.

The proposed legislation comes in the wake of a Toronto Star investigation which revealed that Canada’s pursuit, prosecution and punishment of travelling sex offenders has been feeble, despite its public commitment to protecting children abroad.

The Star series focused on the case of James McTurk, a now 78-year-old retired postal worker with two previous child pornography convictions in Canada. McTurk travelled to Cuba 31 times between 2009 and 2012 to have sex with young girls. Earlier this year, he became the first person in Toronto to be convicted under Canada’s child sex tourism legislation.

“This is definitely a step in the right direction and it’s refreshing to hear the government is going to take steps to protect children in other countries from our own homegrown predators,” said Det.-Sgt. Kim Gross, head of Toronto Police’s Child Exploitation Unit which investigated McTurk.

“Just having the legislation in place may put a huge dent in this happening because it’s a huge deterrent. We’ve prosecuted people for this, but your articles have clearly raised awareness that wasn’t there before.”

Among the deficiencies exposed by The Star’s investigation was a near-complete lack of communication among agencies responsible for monitoring sex offenders, and few resources for intensive on-the-ground investigations overseas.

“We’re pleased, but it’s long overdue,” said Mark Hecht, a law professor at the University of Sherbrooke and co-founder of Beyond Borders, a child rights advocacy group which has long lobbied for tougher laws. “It’s frustrating it took so long, because who knows how many predators took advantage of the loopholes in the past.”

Currently, sex offenders are essentially free to come and go when they please; the Sex Offender Information Registration Act says only that someone on the registry must notify authorities of absences from home only if they are away more than seven days.

That means that offenders who intend to travel for short periods of time, perhaps to countries closer to home — such as Cuba, which a confidential Royal Canadian Mounted Police report, obtained by The Star, identified as a new destination for Canadian sex offenders — are able to do so without telling anyone.

And the act doesn’t say when offenders must notify authorities, so it is currently legal to report in, and then board a plane — or to give notice once they have left the country, “within seven days after the date of their departure.”

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Crucially, sex offenders are not required to say where they are going, something Harper said would change: “Canadian officials must warn destination countries that a dangerous offender is heading their way.”

Information-sharing between law enforcement authorities and the Canadian Border Services Agency will also be addressed by the proposed legislation, Harper said.

At the moment, front-line officers from the Canada Border Services Agency do not have access to the names of the 30,000 Canadians on the National Sex Offender Registry or the 16,000 on the Ontario sex offender database. And because of privacy laws, use of the Sex Offender Registry is limited to law enforcement officers who are investigating sex offences.