VANCOUVER - A judge slapped a Canadian sex tourist with an 11-year jail sentence Wednesday for having sex and making pornography with girls in Cambodia and Colombia as young as eight, media reports said.

Kenneth Klassen, a 59-year-old father of three and an art dealer in the western city of Vanouver, pleaded guilty to charges related to having sex with underage girls, and of one count of importing his own DVDs of the acts.

Klassen had argued in court that Canadian laws against sex tourism did not apply to him, because the acts had taken place in other countries.

Justice Austin Cullen of the British Columbia Supreme Court dismissed the argument and in sentencing called Klassen's behaviour "intensive, intrusive and degrading," local media reported.

Rosalind Prober, president of the anti-human trafficking organization Beyond Borders, applauded the jail term, which she said sends "a message to Canadians and people around the world that child sex tourism harms children."

But because the final sentence came six years after police first discovered DVDs that Klassen sent to himself from the Philippines in 2004, Prober said the case revealed the difficulty in stopping sex tourists.

Most countries have passed laws against sex tourism, she noted, but most cases are difficult to prosecute because they take many years and countless hours of police time.

"To get someone convicted of this crime is an enormous burden," Prober told AFP.

Only a handful of people have been convicted since Canada amended its laws in 1997 to make sex tourism a crime.

Local media reported that before he was sentenced Klassen told the court: "I'm sorry for what I've done with all my heart."