Justice committee  I just want to say that poverty isn't really the driving force in worldwide sex trafficking. It's organized crime. It's the fastest-growing, biggest criminal industry in the world. Poverty is one of the reasons there are so many vulnerable people around the world, but don't forget about organized crime.

Justice committee  I agree.

Justice committee  No. There are times, obviously, when jails do come in and must be effective, and are effective. There are already sections in the Criminal Code to deal with sex with the underaged, and everything else. There are tough penalties, as there should be. There is no will that I know of, certainly in this City of Vancouver or this province, to spend the money to investigate and give the police, like your three sons, the tools they need to do a proper investigation.

Justice committee  I've heard the arguments that they need time to assess the purchaser so that it won't be as dangerous. Most of the victims of Willie Pickton knew Willie. It was party time at Willie's place. Most of the women picked up knew who Willie was, and they'd known him for a long time. It's an argument that I don't buy, and I haven't bought, that if you give more time, then it will be safe, or that if you take it off the street and put it indoors, it will be safe.

Justice committee  It's the different climate in the country with regard to prostitution. In Sweden, you see that trafficking has decreased dramatically, particularly from foreign jurisdictions. They also say that in Sweden there is nothing to back up the assertion that taking it indoors makes it safer, and this suggestion that adult prostitutes will hire bodyguards and have chauffeurs is a side of prostitution I haven't seen.

Justice committee  I don't know how much john school.... Anything that helps, I'm in favour of. If it increases the awareness and the sensitivity of those who think it's fine to purchase sex or that's their thing, if it decreases that, I'm all for that. I'm not a big believer in jails. I never have, even though I had to send a lot of people there.

Justice committee  To take away that one section that criminalizes women is my first thing. My heart fell as a card-carrying Liberal when I saw that resolution coming along. That wasn't my part of my Liberal Party. Yes, increase penalties, but that's not the answer. The real question is whether we are really going to make prostitution easy for young people who are coming around.

Justice committee  One of the things that's never talked about by those who want to legalize prostitution are the children, the teenagers. You cannot separate the issue of children, the young, in the sex trade, as I've said. In the early 1970s in Vancouver, I tied up the provincial courts for about a year and a half because I defended almost every prostitute, dozens of them, who came into my office.

Justice committee  The Inter-Agency Coordination Group statement that I referred to indicated that one-third of the lucrative financial profits gained worldwide from trafficking, totalling about $150 billion a year in 2014, was from the economic or labour aspect of trafficking, and two-thirds was from trafficking for the purpose of prostitution.

Justice committee  None that I'm aware of.

Justice committee  Why would you legalize prostitution?

Justice committee  You can't, but—

Justice committee  Thank you to the members of the standing committee for the opportunity to speak. My name is Nancy Morrison. I've asked the clerk to put before you a statement that was made on July 10, 2014, by Brian McConaghy, a former RCMP forensic specialist. For the last 25 years he's been the head of an international charity that assists Cambodian youth to recover from sex trade abuses.