Justice committee  I think that we need to level the gender playing field. This has been discussed, obviously, by the experts on it. When we look at the idea of decriminalizing the majority of women and criminalizing the majority of men, I think it helps to level that playing field. I think this i

Justice committee  In the context of, let's say, Sweden, there are some men who will always want to pay for sex, so they'll either find a way in Sweden or they'll travel abroad. However, for the average guy, say myself, if prostitution was legal, it'd be very easy to hop out to a brothel. But if I

Justice committee  Do you want popcorn?

Justice committee  Well, Mr. Chair, who doesn't want more money from the government. We went to 80 cities, and they're looking to the federal government for a signal. What I think Bill C-36 does is it sends a signal that human beings are not to be bought and sold. We see that there are victims of

Justice committee  Men go where it's easiest to pay for sex.

Justice committee  Yes. We just finished an 80-city tour across Canada, which took us a total of 37,000 kilometres, seven months in a car together. So it was a very good test of our marriage. We celebrate six years in three days, so that's exciting. That's good.

Justice committee  Yes, thank you. At so many events, girls would come up to us afterwards in tears to thank us for helping people to realize that it's not their fault. We would have guys come up to thank us for talking about sexual addiction. We met trafficking victims across Canada, in towns as

Justice committee  [Inaudible—Editor]

Justice committee  While Mr. Lowman would also like this committee to believe that the vast majority of women in the sex trade are not trafficked, it's likely that he doesn't fully appreciate the nuance of the word “choice”, nor is it likely that he shares the same definition of trafficking that is

Justice committee  I also think it's important that we need to speak to the issue of the Bedford case. Ms. Bedford being a case in point for why we should criminalize the purchase of sex in order to prevent trafficking, as a nation. While it's rarely mentioned in the media, Ms. Bedford first ente

Justice committee  Here's the big question that we need to ask as a nation: what are we doing here? Is prostitution really the best that we can offer to our most vulnerable women and children? Look, if our goal as a nation is to make it easier to pay for sex, then let's toss Bill C-36 out the win

Justice committee  We met a girl in the Netherlands, named Eline. Her husband-trafficker forced her to groom other girls and made her cover for him whenever they dealt with the police. As the head of the anti-trafficking unit in Amsterdam put it, “If I can force you into prostitution, then I can al

Justice committee  I think what it comes down to is this. So far this debate has been framed as a rights issue, that people have the right to sell their bodies. We don't particularly disagree with that, but I think we need to reframe this as a proportional rights issue. For example, my right to ki

Justice committee  In our minds, it's not unreasonable that Canada should decriminalize the selling of sex because those involved are overwhelmingly victims of circumstance. We don't criminalize rape victims; we don't criminalize victims of domestic abuse. Prostitution is inherently violent and sho

Justice committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is it 10 minutes?