A former B.C. soccer coach has been sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to travelling to the U.S. to have sex with a preteen girl.

Kuldip "Kelly" Singh Mahal, 48, received the sentence in Seattle on Tuesday. He was also given 10 years of supervised release for a federal sex crime.

"I think the sentence was a great message deterrent to other people who might be tempted to victimize children over the Internet," federal prosecutor Kate Vaughan said.

"The growth of this kind of criminal conduct is exponential and the number of child victims is growing at an alarming rate."

Police said Mahal had been corresponding with an undercover agent who he believed was a 12-year-old girl early last year.

The U.S. Justice Department said he had sent several sexually explicit messages and photos to the agent, and repeatedly asked for explicit photos in return. The pair also engaged in "lengthy sexualized chats" by text message, the department said.

He was arrested in February 2015 at a park in the Washington city of Burlington, where he expected to meet the preteen for sex, police said. A year later, Mahal entered a guilty plea after reaching an agreement with prosecutors.

At the time of his arrest, Mahal was a facilities manager for a Vancouver tech firm and a volunteer coach of an under-16 soccer team in Surrey. He was suspended by the Surrey United Soccer Club after the allegations against him came to light.

Speaking at the sentencing, Mahal became emotional in court, telling the judge he wanted to apologize for his actions.

Contrast in sentencing north of the border

Mahal committed his crime in Washington, and was sentenced by a U.S. judge. However, an incident that occurred north of the border shows the stark contrast in how the Canadian judicial system deals with sex crimes.

In late 2013, a Utah man in his early 30s travelled to B.C. to commit the same crime as Mahal. 

In Mahal's case, the 12-year-old girl he'd met online was actually a U.S. federal agent, but in Kevin Knowlton's case, the girl was who she claimed to be.

Knowlton met the 12-year-old through an online computer game in June 2013. He then made five trips to Surrey to see her. He filmed and photographed their sexual encounters.

Knowlton pleaded guilty in March 2014, and was sentenced three months later to 3.5 years in prison. He was given six months' credit for time served before trial, and will be deported back to the U.S. at the end of his sentence.

Critics of Canada's judicial system say the contrast is a glaring example of why penalties should be tougher.

"We need to get tougher on crimes," Put Kids First advocate Chris Danielson told CTV Vancouver.

"Everybody needs to start phoning their politician and saying, 'This is important to me. I want a lot more done.'"

In the U.S., judges typically follow a point system that helps determine a range of possible sentences. In Canada, judges rely on past cases, and the range suggested by the Crown and the defence. In Knowlton's case, the Crown only asked for a sentence of two years.

The former Conservative government introduced mandatory minimum sentences for crimes including those against children, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has vowed to roll back the policy. The Liberals have said that the mandatory sentences don't appear to deter crime, though officials did not say specifically which minimums they plan to strike down.

Instead, Trudeau said his government would trust judges to make appropriate decisions.

With files from CTV Vancouver's Michele Brunoro and Scott Roberts