Evidence of meeting #17 for Status of Women in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Ms. Minna, we won't have much time for any answers at this rate.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but please be brief.
12:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick
I'll try to be brief.
The problem is that this is the status of women committee. If we focus on punishing men or focus on the big-picture stuff, which should change—the inequality between men and women, the economic inequality, the sexual inequality, the sexual abuse of women by men, that should change, but it's going to take, as we know, a very long time. There's that level of needing to address those big-picture things. But at the lower level we need to focus on practical policy. As a political scientist, that's what I do.
What we've found is that if you institute a law like the Swedish law, which criminalizes men or anyone for buying sexual services but not the women, it has unfortunately not proven...and this is the police report. The police are the ones in Sweden who are complaining about this law. They say it hasn't helped. Instead of focusing on giving women more rights, it's focused on making them go in and find these men. There's no extra support for women.
12:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of History and Politics, University of New Brunswick
Yes, maybe, but in this case, going in and raiding men has meant it has gone even further underground. The Swedish outreach groups and the police are therefore having a much harder time finding them, even though we know they're there. Remember, cellphones have made the sex trade completely invisible.
So it depends on where you want to focus your energies. And with trafficking—
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
I'm sorry, but I have to cut you off. Mr. Stanton has been waiting and it has been more than five minutes.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Bruce Stanton Conservative Simcoe North, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair, and my thanks to both of our witnesses today.
I'm going to be directing my question to you, Monsieur Poulin, and I'll apologize first off that I'll address you in English, because my French is
a “work in progress”.
First, I was startled by the statistics that you brought to us in regard to the degree to which the institutionalization of prostitution is occurring in other parts of the world, like Germany—and you also cited the numbers in Thailand.
Has there been any work done or could you relay any data that exists that might connect...? If the formalization of prostitution is going at such a pace in the world, presumably Canadian men are also availing themselves of this broader access to these types of services. To what degree is that activity impacting—I'll use Ms. Minna's word—the “objectification” of women and children here in our society?
This is an activity that's obviously on the increase. Has there been any link drawn to how that's impacting our attitudes and culture here in Canada? I was surprised at the extent to which this phenomenon is actually gaining pace in the world.
12:45 p.m.
Full Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa
It is difficult to say. In Thailand, prostitution has been institutionalized for 40 years now. No longer is there really any way of keeping track. In the 1990s and early in 2000, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Greece, Germany and The Netherlands legalized prostitution, thinking that this would protect women and that by regulating prostitution, it would no longer be controlled by organized crime. At the present time, municipal authorities in Amsterdam are questioning the very existence of the city's red light distinct, because people have realized that organized crime has even tighter control there than before.
Canada is a country where Canadian citizens engage in sex tourism, but it is also a country that attracts pedosexual tourists. The cities of Vancouver and Toronto are know for their “kiddie strolls” which attract sex tourists. There are newspapers in Vancouver which publish the best addresses for pedosexual tourists and that are funded by the Canadian government through tax measures.
For some years now, people have been assessing the connection between what might be called the trivialization or standardization of prostitution -- including within our society, particularly through the belief, as expressed by some, that it is a job like any other job -- and phenomena such as the oversexualization of young girls and early sexualization. So, the connections are now being made.
I would just like to say as well that in Canada, there has been no inquiry into the sex industries, and particularly pornography and the effects of using pornography, since 1985, and the work of the Badgley and Fraser commissions. Pornography exploded in the 1990s. In a way, it is a kind of propaganda in favour of prostitution. There has been no inquiry into the effects of pornography on people, and even less so on young people. I have done a survey, which will have to continue, but we already know that young people start to using pornography around the age of 12 or 13, on average -- in other words, even before they have reached sexual maturity.
How does that influence their vision of the world? What impact does it have on their relationship with their body, their relationship with their sexuality and the fact that it is normal to be able to buy sex from a woman. We don't yet know much about this, but there is a need to do more research on the topic. Of course, if we are just talking about sex work, there is no need to do any research; all that is needed is better enforcement of labour laws.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
All right. Thank you very much. There are thirteen seconds left if you wanted to get a--
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
All right.
I don't believe we have time to get started, unless, Ms. Davidson, you have a quick question.
October 19th, 2006 / 12:50 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Sure.
First, thanks very much to both our presenters today. It's been extremely interesting.
Dr. Poulin, one of the things you talked about was the fact that we don't have any real data on information here in Canada. First, is it possible to get that data or is it too much of an underground industry?
Second, you said that 92% to 95% want to leave prostitution, but there's no exit strategy, if you want to call it that. What would an exit strategy be?
So, two questions, please.
12:50 p.m.
Full Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa
Yes, it is possible and easy enough to assess the size of the industry and the number of prostitutes in Canada, including juvenile prostitutes. All you have to do is open the phone book and you'll see all the hostess agencies, massage parlours, etc., listed in there. We know how many people work for those agencies. It's just a matter of counting them across Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I can do that in Ottawa, and I can do it in Montreal, but I don't have the means to do that all alone, all across Canada. Statistics Canada could do this kind of survey. I know for a fact, because I teach statisticians from Statistics Canada, that every year, the idea of doing such an assessment is put on the table, but ends up being taken off because it's not a priority. There are other priorities, which is understandable. But yes, it is possible.
There is still some so-called “underground” prostitution, but that is basically street prostitution. There again, municipal police know all about this. It's a matter of centralizing the information.
What we are lacking here in Canada are shelters for prostitutes, whether they were born in Canada or have come here from abroad. We don't have any such shelters, nor do we have vocational and academic training programs; we don't have anything at all. A prostitute in Gatineau or Ottawa who wants to get out of prostitution has to go through a detox centre, because social services have nothing to offer her. But the fact is that people engaged in prostitution are not necessarily addicts. We have a problem in the sense that we have always considered prostitutes to be responsible for prostitution, as opposed to being the victims of a system of prostitution. So, we have never developed any services for these people. That is the first thing. The 1949 Convention says that one of the most important things is to develop services aimed at ensuring social and vocational reintegration, etc. In any case, if we don't provide these services, they will never be able to get out of prostitution; they will continue to work in the industry, because they have no other choice.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
Thank you very much, Monsieur Poulin.
I must bring to your attention a program that I suspect you would know in Toronto called StreetLight. I started that program. That was my program in Toronto; that was my way of dealing with some of those street issues. You might want to connect with them and have a look at what is happening there.
Thank you both very, very much for your valuable information. As we move forward, there may be a need to have you back, or the analysts may need to connect with you to get additional information. So thank you both very, very much for your very important information--it was quite informative for us today.
To the committee, we had talked earlier about trying to get witnesses. Ms. Smith has a couple of names for this coming Thursday. I would suggest we might need some time to talk about whether we want to narrow down our studies. We need to have an opportunity for some further discussion among the committee members, because it could be very broad, or maybe we need to be narrower and deal with the sexual exploitation avenue. We could get into a lot on the bigger issue of the exploitation of migrants, which affects women, or do we want to narrow it down?
Could I suggest we reconvene on Tuesday at eleven, as is our normal practice, if we can get an extra witness to come in? We need to think about where we want to go and if we need to narrow this down, so maybe we focus on one avenue this time and another avenue later on. It's a suggestion.
Is that all right?
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Joy Smith Conservative Kildonan—St. Paul, MB
I think that's a good suggestion. If we do have a witness on Monday, perhaps we could have half an hour for the witness and half an hour for discussion on narrowing it down.
Thank you.
12:55 p.m.
Bloc
Maria Mourani Bloc Ahuntsic, QC
Madam Chair, I just wanted to point out because motions were passed at the beginning of the meeting, I did not have an opportunity to ask any questions on the second round. As a result, I will not be particularly in favour of dealing with motions at the beginning of a meeting, because I end up being penalized.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Judy Sgro
We would have stopped the meeting at our normal time. We usually have the last fifteen minutes to deal with these things. So it would have happened at the beginning, or it's going to happen at the end--whatever we can do to facilitate our members here.
The meeting is adjourned.
