Status of Women Committee on Dec. 5th, 2006

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Ms. Davidson.

[Patricia Davidson, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Thank you.

First of all, I would like to say thank you very much to each of the witnesses. It's been a fantastic morning of hearing what you've had to say. I was extremely impressed, because I think each one of you brought solutions to us. You didn't just identify problems, but you gave us a lot to think about and solutions that we may be able to enact. I would like to be able to ask all of you questions, but time doesn't permit that.

Jamie McIntosh, I would like to ask you a couple of things. Your referred to the Bakker case--the man from Vancouver who was the only Canadian to be charged to this point--and the sex tourism. You referred several times to Cambodia. Are there laws in place, or are there ways that we can enact stricter laws that would enable the sex tourist to be hindered, or charged, or eliminated in some way?

The other question I had for you was about the four things you listed. You talked about enforcement, awareness and training--and then I missed the next two. So maybe you could just briefly touch on those again.

[Jamie McIntosh]

Certainly. I'll speak to sex tourism, and if I may, I'd like to defer the other questions to Hiroko.

Particularly relating to sex tourism, I think one of the great things that this House has done is to enact laws that allow for the criminal prosecution of Canadian pedophiles who go abroad to exploit children. There was the Prober Amendment that came in 2002, which removed the provision under which you needed to formally obtain the consent of the foreign attorney general before there could be a prosecution. That loophole has been pulled out, and now the law as it stands I think is quite good. Perhaps the penalities could be looked at and stiffened, but in terms of the laws, resources are being deployed to enforce those laws.

If the Vancouver police hadn't actually tuned in to our Dateline NBC feature that was talking about how we rescued these individuals, and weren't sharp enough on their feet to put two and two together and say, “Oh my goodness. These are the victims that Bakker was violating”, and then cooperated with us and provided the stills--we had this information, but we wouldn't have been able to secure a conviction against him. It was only because we had deployed in these countries that we were able to make that law effective. It's kind of like an emancipation proclamation. It exists, but you have to go out and find those individuals and bring application to be able to set them free. So again, it's not so much a question of the legislation at this point in time; it's a question of deploying the resources to ensure that effective enforcement of those laws that exist can be set up.

[Hiroko Sawai, Research Associate, International Justice Mission Canada]

Our foremost recommendation was on enforcement. The second one followed from that: we need education and training for all those involved in the law enforcement process, which means police, judges, immigration officials, prosecutors, and the diplomatic community. They need to know and be sensitive to the issue of trafficking, and they need to know how to identify trafficking, know the methods, the key indicators, the trafficking routes, and the laws. This training would be critical for people deployed overseas as well, because they're in the front lines and will have the ability to spot trafficking at the source.

Canada's education and training efforts should also focus on building capacity in those countries where trafficking is prevalent. That's something that we can do given our influence with a lot of countries. We should be giving financial and technical assistance, for instance to support special anti-trafficking police units and prosecutorial teams with training, operational support, hands-on assistance, and maybe even helping countries write legislation on anti-trafficking--all those things that focus on actually having laws in place, enforcing them, and sending offenders to jail.

Also, I think we've touched on the need for domestic awareness, and we can work in partnership with NGOs and other stakeholders. For instance, since November 2005, Air Canada has been showing inflight videos on the issue of child sexual exploitation. We can work with those national forums. We can use schools, faith communities, groups such as scouts, and those sorts of organizations.

We would also urge members of Parliament to become more aware of the issues of human trafficking. We would recommend that a group of parliamentarians actually travel to countries such as Cambodia and Thailand to see trafficking for yourself.

I think other people have mentioned that we need a national action plan. That action plan should encompass both what we're doing in Canada and what is being done internationally. We really can't combat trafficking just by looking at Canadian issues. We need to be looking at international issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

That brings us to the end of our time. May I say, on behalf of the committee, a sincere thank you for not only coming today but for the work that you are all doing and the fact that you care about many of the most vulnerable in our society, not only in Canada but around the world.

You have been a wonderful group of people with which to close our presentations from witnesses, because you've really helped us capitalize on a lot of issues we need to move forward into our report, which we are hoping to complete before the House rises.

Thank you very much.

I will suspend for one minute to enable everyone to leave so we can resume our meeting in camera. Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]