Mr. Speaker, I first raised this issue on June 6 in a statement that highlighted that between 2013 and 2016, the Toronto police investigated 359 cases of sex trafficking, and in each of these cases every single girl was advertised on backpage.com.
This is a reality in other cities across Canada, as well. These are women and girls who are being sold online to be raped for profit.
On June 13, I sent a letter to the Minister of Justice laying out this information and conveying that in 2010, under the former Conservative government, the former minister of justice officially requested that Craigslist eliminate their erotic services section for the same reason, and Craigslist complied.
I want to note that the former Conservative government's request was also supported by the provincial attorneys general in Liberal, NDP, and Progressive Conservative governments across Canada.
I urged the current Minister of Justice to take whatever steps she could to prevent backpage.com from advertising victims of sex trafficking. On October 7, the day after the CEO of backpage.com was arrested on sex trafficking charges directly resulting from the ads on backpage.com, I asked the government what action it was taking.
At the time, the parliamentary secretary indicated that they were examining the issue. He is very aware of this issue as it is his former department that investigated hundreds of these sex trafficking cases on backpage.com.
Finally, a few weeks later I received a response from the Minister of Justice and was extremely disappointed by her response. The minister indicated that the police use backpage.com, in a sense, as a tool, to rescue victims of sex trafficking and that they do not want to see it go because it would make it harder to find victims.
I would like to know which human trafficking units are saying this, certainly not the ones I have heard from. They take offence to the idea that backpage.com is a tool they need. One unit noted that they do not need backpage.com to find victims. They sometimes might make use of it if it is there, but they view backpage.com as part of the problem, not the solution. Backpage.com is not a tool that police need.
Last week I spoke to a front-line agency that helps girls trying to leave prostitution. The founder, also a survivor, emphasized that it is wrong to view backpage.com as a tool because it is just not worth it. She pointed out that there may be hundreds of girls being sold in one city in just one night but the local human trafficking unit might only have time to investigate two or three cases.
I would ask the government, why does it permit backpage.com to profit off ads that offer women and girls to be raped? Why is the government not taking action against a company of which 90% of its revenue is solely from its adult services ads, whose CEO was arrested for sex trafficking, whose payments have stopped being processed by Mastercard, Visa, and American Express due to connections to sex trafficking, which has been held in contempt by the U.S. Senate, and which repeatedly refused to take down ads of minors being sold despite multiple requests from parents?
I would hope that in the government's answer, it could address these serious issues. Canadians do not want to hear that they are only examining the issue. All this information is well known. Will the government take action to prevent backpage.com from advertising victims of sex trafficking, and what is its plan to do this?