Status of Women Committee on Feb. 6th, 2007

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you, Chair. Thank you to our panel for taking the time to join us this afternoon and, I guess, this evening as well.

My question speaks to the point of the difference between--we haven't formulated this yet, but theoretically--an office for human trafficking and that of a rapporteur. Throughout the discussion, we've heard what the different roles might be and the importance of independence. I'm still not convinced, though, that there really couldn't be....

Let me just back up for a moment. Not having to create two separate bureaucracies would be an advantage from the standpoint of public expenditure, public resources, if there was a way to accommodate the role of the rapporteur within an office that was, to some extent, at arm's length from the government. I think one of our committee members mentioned that we have offices that report to Parliament as opposed to the government. For example, the Auditor General and various commissioners have these types of roles.

To our witnesses, could you answer briefly whether that type of format could in fact work--in other words, whether the rapporteur role could be accommodated within such a commission that would be independent and still have the responsibility to report to Parliament in this case, not the government?

Mr. Dandurand.

[Yvon Dandurand]

Thank you for that question.

I agree that it would be possible. What is most important is not whether it's an independent structure but whether the function is independent. In fact, in the Netherlands the rapporteur is located in the Ministry of Justice, and it is supported by a bureau. Of course it makes a lot of sense, given that extraordinary precautions need to be taken to protect the information, to ensure its integrity and to protect the victims, because the rapporteur might have information about them. For me, it's a red herring to talk about structure. It's not so much about the structure but about the independence of the function.

I disagree with some of the previous comments. I really believe it is absolutely essential for that function to be kept totally separate from operations, victim assistance, advocacy, and all of those other functions--not that they are not important, but they need to be different.

In preparing for this meeting, we were in touch, again, with the office of the rapporteur in the Netherlands. That was one comment they basically re-emphasized, that the function has to be absolutely separate from all of the others. Of course, as Mr. Perrin has said, those other functions of advocacy, coordination, and all this are important, and having a rapporteur is only one element of the solution.

I would conclude by saying that we have to be very careful about the expectations of the rapporteur. Notwithstanding what was said, the difficulty of collecting that information in Canada is huge. We're not talking about the Netherlands, a country that you can cross in half a day. We also have a federal system. We have different police forces. The task here is huge. It is very difficult. Therefore, if the committee decides to recommend the establishment of a national rapporteur, one would have to have fairly modest expectations of what could be produced in the first two or three years as all the actors begin to trust each other, to develop relationships, and to exchange data that is of value.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Perrin...if there's time, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Yes, you have one and a half minutes.

[Benjamin Perrin]

I am quite concerned with the additional layer, and that's not just for public expenditure purposes, although that is important. From our perspective, it adds a level of distance between the political accountability.... It is admirable to say we have these reports coming out--even when governments are ignoring them--because that adds pressure. Fair enough. But it also allows any government to simply say, well, we're waiting for the rapporteur.

The experience, again, as I've heard from looking at the Dutch example, and for which you've just now heard confirmation, is that it's going to take at least two or three years. The government is not going to act, because it will say we have this rapporteur and now we have to wait. That's two or three years, and then you're going to need another year to get an action plan. We're talking about 2015 before any victim program or assistance or legal change is going to take place. That is a very troubling prospect.

The reason you have a distinction between information intelligence gathering and policy implementation is a very good one. It's because you don't want people who are supposed to be researching a problem to be solving it at the same time. That doesn't mean those can't be within the same office. It means that office is charged with a mandate. There is the research division and the policy division. I do think you keep those roles separate, but that does not mean creating another level of bureaucracy.

Ideally, a non-governmental group should be the one raising this to the national attention. I can tell you that if the government decided to do nothing on this, tomorrow our organization would be out there talking about it. You don't have to be run on government funding to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We will now go to Madame Demers.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for joining us. This topic is of particular interest to us. Women and men recognize that human trafficking has increased in recent years.

Costs would be incurred in order to set up a national rapporteur office and the government would have to allocate rather substantial sums of money to this initiative in its budget. Ms. Wahlberg, you quoted the sum of 13 million Deutschmarks in connection with your position of rapporteur and your office.

You have served as national rapporteur for a decade now. Can you tell us how many people have been arrested, charged, imprisoned or helped as a result of your work? Do you have any figures that you can share with us? We have to do something, but we need to know how the money is spent. Setting up an office to implement the recommendations of a rapporteur is a costly proposition.

[Gunilla Ekberg]

The 30 million kronor that Ms. Wahlberg mentioned was earmarked by the government to work on operational measures against trafficking in human beings, not to the office per se. In Sweden, the cost of the office is included in the large budgets of the national police. Because the government has given the task to the national police, they will have to fund her office from that budget.

As for numbers, we'd be happy to go through the numbers, although I did in fact send the reports of the national rapporteur, where it has all been listed. We can just say that last year, in 2006, 25 traffickers were prosecuted and sentenced to long prison terms. As for victims, 56 victims were rescued. Several of those obtained permits to stay in Sweden, either temporarily or permanently, as was the case.

Most of the victims we have, because it's close to the Baltic countries, prefer to go back. And this is me speaking, not Kajsa. We have a project going on now, a multilateral project, with the Baltic countries and the five Nordic countries to establish good repatriation services in the countries of origin, with shelters, education of those who work in the shelters, and access to employment, education, and so forth.

When it comes to the buyers of sexual services, all in all, about 1,500 men have been charged and from two-thirds up to three-fourths have been convicted under that legislation.

If you care to have more numbers, we would be happy to provide that.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

I simply wanted to get an idea of what kind of money is involved versus results. The following is noted in the brief:

[...] in the Netherlands, in addition to the National Rapporteur, victim assistance is coordinated through the government-funded Foundation against Trafficking in Women which has created 10 “relief networks” in the country (protection), while prosecutions of traffickers are coordinated through a national public prosecutor specializing in human trafficking (prosecution), and efforts to address the situation in source countries is coordinated by government-funded La Strada (prevention).

Is this indicative of a more global approach, one that better meets the needs of victims of human trafficking and that allows for much more tangible results in terms of research, data collection, arrests, and so forth?

Mr. Dandurand.

[Yvon Dandurand]

Thank you, Ms. Demers.

Madam Chair, in the case of the Netherlands, the annual budget is in the order of...

[Gunilla Ekberg]

Should I answer that?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

No, Mr. Dandurand is answering, and he has about 20 seconds to answer.

[Gunilla Ekberg]

Who is to answer this one?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Mr. Dandurand is answering the question. I will have to give you another....

[Yvon Dandurand]

In the case of the Netherlands, the annual budget totals 450,000 euros. One has to remember that this is a small country with a unique police force. The budget for a similar operation in Canada would be much higher.

You've raised a very important point, Ms. Demers. A national rapporteur is only one of the components of a national strategy. You alluded to Holland's national strategy, which includes a host of measures. Here in Canada, we are eagerly awaiting the implementation of a national strategy that encompasses these factors and addresses this problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Merci.

We will now go over to Ms. Mathyssen, for five minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Madam Chair, I have been looking over the recommendations in regard to the mandate of the rapporteur. You've identified five specific pieces or parts to that mandate. Some of them are very, very challenging. I wonder if you've given any thought to how to overcome some of those challenges--for example, the issue around access to information and the problems that are associated with that, in view of our privacy laws in Canada.

[Benjamin Perrin]

I think there needs to be an assumption that amendments to the Privacy Act would be required to allow for this degree of information sharing. That's why, it being outside of government and independent, that link is very key. So unless that link were going to comply with measures to permit the exchange of that sort of data, you would instead say that if we couldn't enact them in the Privacy Act--we obviously wouldn't be in that realm--we would comply with it; we would do what was needed now under the current act. What degree of data will satisfy the act? You end up with more generalized, more redacted forms of information. A decision would need to be made.

We haven't done an analysis of the privacy legislation with respect to the national rapporteur to see if that would give you meaningful enough data to comply with it. That's an analysis that the committee would need to have its researchers or counsel take a look at. You are absolutely right; unless you get data that is going to give you the information you need, you're not going to be able to go anywhere.

You don't need the name of a victim, for example, or their age, to develop policy. Basic things like where they are from, how they were trafficked, how they were apprehended or brought to police or came to police or social service agencies--that's the sort of data that you generally need, and those data can likely be collected in a way that would comply with the law. That would need to be one of the things the committee would work at.

It is an additional complexity, though. If this were in an office within the RCMP, for example, or the Criminal Intelligence Service, then you would be able to do it, because you essentially would not be sharing information outside the department. It's the same department, and they are analyzing their own data, and that's where most of the data is. That's an argument, to actually do this through law enforcement, but obviously also to bring in staff members and researchers in a team that includes the other stakeholders and groups that would have something really valuable to add. We heard that from the rapporteur who was on the conference call today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

You have two and a half minutes.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

We've heard a number of different perspectives in regard to this mandate. Who else should we consult if we do decide to go? Who should in fact be involved in defining the mandate, besides those we've heard from?

[Yvon Dandurand]

I cannot give you names of people you should consult, but I think it would be very wise to try a pilot study in one municipality, one region, or one province of the country, and to try to address some of those issues you talked about earlier, issues of privacy. It's not just federal privacy laws; it's provincial privacy laws, child protection laws, and a whole bunch of other things.

Once more, I disagree slightly with Mr. Perrin, although I agree generally with his overall position. Yes, if you want to do a good job of it, you do need personalized data. Why? Because if you can't track those cases, you don't know what you are counting. That is the opinion of the expert group assembled by the European Union, which basically said that you do need personalized data that you can track and relate to. Otherwise you have a bunch of people counting the same thing several times. That creates huge difficulties.

I would say it's not so much that you need to talk to one person or another. I think by now you have a fairly good sense of what the challenges would be. You really need or the government needs to try to experiment with one serious study in one province or one part of the country. There are parts of the country where that would be possible. Mr. Perrin mentioned a couple. Certainly in British Columbia there has been very intense collaboration between NGOs and the police for three or four years now, and there are all kinds of other parts.

I would not agree that this is an RCMP issue. This is not about the national police. It's a Criminal Code offence. In the Criminal Code, the administration of justice and policing is a provincial responsibility. When you get to this, you have to engage the provinces, municipal police forces, and provincial police forces, because the idea that you are going to stop those traffickers at the border is really a non-starter. That's not where you catch them; it's afterwards, when they start exploiting women and children.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We will now go to Ms. Davidson.

Are you sharing your question with Ms. Grewal? Okay.

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

Thank you very much.

Thanks very much for your presentation. I certainly have found it quite interesting.

Mr. Dandurand, if I heard you correctly, you described the function quite succinctly: an arm's-length operation with a clear mandate to focus on data collection, exclusively able to access privacy information, and the authority to report directly to protect the integrity of that information.

Do you see that this rapporteur would report to Parliament or government, however that is set up? Then do you see a trafficking office to deal with all the data and the findings coming out of that, similar to what Mr. Perrin said?

[Yvon Dandurand]

The rapporteur is not the full solution; it is one element. Definitely you need a coordinating mechanism, and you probably need two. You need a coordinating mechanism at the operational level within the federal government, because several agencies are involved; and you also need federal-provincial coordinating mechanisms when it comes to dealing with these issues, particularly when child victims are involved, because a lot of the issues, or services and so on, are dealt with or provided by the provinces or are their responsibility. So yes, I see both as being required.

Actually, it would be quite silly to simply have a national rapporteur and have no one responsible for doing anything about the problem. What we would then have is what Mr. Perrin described as one of the worst-case scenarios; you'd get more reports on the shelves and no one doing anything. So you need the full strategy.

And if you want to keep that strategy current, perfected, and in line with what is basically a moving target, a changing problem, you have to keep in mind that human trafficking presents different forms all the time. So if you want to keep your strategies current, you need to have this constant monitoring, not just based on the perception of a few police officers or police forces, but basically you must also have all of the actors involved, including major league women's organizations, victim assistance people working with refugees and illegal immigrants, and so on and so forth. All of these people need to be part of this, and it's why an arm's-length rapporteur is so important. These people will not come forward otherwise. We know through consultations with them here in Canada and elsewhere that they will not come forward and not encourage victims to come forward unless they think it's safe to do so. Therefore, you need a rapporteur who creates a space where it is safe for these agencies to share data and information without any fear the information is going to be misused.

[Gunilla Ekberg]

May I comment on that too?