OTTAWA - The country's top court has upheld the conviction of an Edmonton man charged with luring a 13-year-old boy on the Internet.

In a unanimous 9-0 ruling released Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed Michell Rayal Levigne's appeal.

Writing for the court, Justice Morris J. Fish said that under the law Levigne is presumed to have believed that a police officer who baited him on the Internet was a 13-year-old boy calling himself Jessy G.

"He is presumed by law to have believed that he was communicating with an underage sexual target," Fish wrote. "The constitutional validity of that presumption is not in issue."

The ruling came as a relief to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a group that runs a national tipline for incidents of child sexual exploitation. Lianna McDonald, the group's executive director, said the decision sends a key message that adults cannot hide behind the assumed anonymity of the Internet.

"There's such a power imbalance between adults and children and I think this ruling really sends a strong message that children are off-limits. And if you engage in this behaviour there are going to be strong consequences," McDonald said.

Fish said in the ruling that Levigne did not take the "reasonable steps" required by law to determine whether the person he was communicating with was in fact 13 before arranging a sexual liaison.

"The accused's convictions must be upheld," Fish wrote.

"The 'reasonable steps' invoked by the accused were in fact neither 'reasonable' nor 'steps to ascertain the age' of the person with whom he was communicating by computer for the avowed purpose of his own sexual gratification," he said.

"Rather, they were circumstances which explain why he in fact took no steps to ascertain the actual age of JG. And this despite the latter's repeated assertion that he was only 13."

Likewise, there is no defence in the fact Jessy G was actually an undercover cop baiting him.

In structuring the Criminal Code provision on Internet luring as it did, Fish said Parliament "recognized that the anonymity of an assumed online profile acts as both a shield for the predator and a sword for the police."

"As a shield, because it permits predators to mask their true identities as they pursue their nefarious intentions; as a sword ... because it permits investigators, posing as children, to cast their lines in Internet chat rooms, where lurking predators can be expected to take the bait -- as the appellant did here."

Levigne, 50, was initially found not guilty of Internet luring, but was later convicted on appeal.

Levigne arranged a meeting online and was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in an Edmonton shopping mall in 2006, but he testified he "would have walked out" had a 13-year-old showed up.

Levigne contended he didn't believe the person he was chatting with was 13, even though the undercover officer said repeatedly in the 2006 chats that he was 13 and in Grade 7.

The court agreed with a decision by the Alberta Court of Appeal reversing Levigne's acquittal, and didn't buy Levigne's argument.

The "decisive question," Fish wrote, is whether the trial judge was bound by two provisions of the Criminal Code to find that Levigne believed he was communicating by computer with an underage boy for the purposes of sex.

"Like the Alberta Court of Appeal, I would answer that question in the affirmative."

McDonald said that despite the efforts of police and groups such as hers, she believes Internet luring is a growing problem. She added that victims are sometimes reluctant to come forward because they believe they are partly to blame for what happened to them.

"We see situations where kids may get groomed into a situation where they send an inappropriate picture or something and then they are blackmailed by the individual to go further, or they're threatened to be exposed," McDonald said.

"An adolescent who's going through those teen years feels they've been complicit in this grooming process when really they've been exploited."