Bill C-36 (Historical)

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code in response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Attorney General of Canada v. Bedford and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create an offence that prohibits purchasing sexual services or communicating in any place for that purpose;
(b) create an offence that prohibits receiving a material benefit that derived from the commission of an offence referred to in paragraph (a);
(c) create an offence that prohibits the advertisement of sexual services offered for sale and to authorize the courts to order the seizure of materials containing such advertisements and their removal from the Internet;
(d) modernize the offence that prohibits the procurement of persons for the purpose of prostitution;
(e) create an offence that prohibits communicating — for the purpose of selling sexual services — in a public place, or in any place open to public view, that is or is next to a school ground, playground or daycare centre;
(f) ensure consistency between prostitution offences and the existing human trafficking offences; and
(g) specify that, for the purposes of certain offences, a weapon includes any thing used, designed to be use or intended for use in binding or tying up a person against their will.
The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

[Jeanne Sarson, As an Individual]

I will continue.

I will now expand on the continuum of the persons who are forcibly trafficked, prostituted, and tortured. What and who are the johns buying, renting, or procuring?

Our answer has come to be that some prefer to rent children, including infants, for their pleasure of inflicting sadistic, sexualized, non-state torture. They are demanding, buying, and renting the so-called “sexual services” of underage prostituted girls who were groomed to normalize and sexualize torture and be rented out by parental pimps. You have to remember that children are where the money is.

I now share Sara's story of her drawing on page 7 of the brief. You can see her sitting on the counter of her father's store with an endless line of johns waiting to buy and rent her, and her father saying, “Bring her back when you're done”. That's a statement of her commodification and objectification. She was two.

To illustrate her continuous harm from forced prostitution and trafficking, I move to when she was 12 years old. A john rented her; drove her to his boat; took her to sea; and raped, beat, and water tortured her by repeatedly caging her and dropping her in the cage into the sea. During the continuous harm of forced prostitution and trafficking we estimate Sara suffered at least 24,000 torture vaginal, anal, and oral rapes. This does not account for the bestiality and the object and weapon rapes. She escaped in her late-twenties. For Lynn, in the story that Linda just told, we estimated that maybe she suffered 8,000 torture rapes.

We recommend to the committee that it ask that section 269.1 of the Criminal Code of Canada, on torture, be amended so that everyone, including pimps and johns, is held to account if they commit acts of torture and that torture be listed in Bill C-36, under paragraph 753.1(2)(a), to go along with the sexual assault.

We also support Bill C-36 to make sure that it does not criminalize prostituted women and children. As for the $20 million in funding, it will be inadequate. Many people have said that.

I would like to close on a cheap and preventive strategy that promotes the social paradigm shifts that we're talking about and promotes the human rights of women and girls. This is an example of me teaching grade 7 classes on human rights and the fact that the teachers came because of their concern about the misogynistic jokes from the boys about prostitution and human trafficking.

I use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Canada very proudly spent much time promoting in New York after the war. It says that everyone should be equal. If you opened it, which I do in class—and all the children get a copy, you will see that in your brief—the children ask about torture porn and about snuff. The girls talk about prostitution, so I have to tell them the stories that Linda and I have known for 21 years.

If you look at the universal declaration—and we're talking about women's and girls' equality—article 5 says that no one should be subjected to torture. The children are shocked when I have to say that only some people have the right not to be subjected to torture. The only people that have that right are those who are tortured by state actors. That means representatives of the government, which means MPs, police, and military. If it's a john or a pimp, and you're a private citizen who is tortured by a john or a pimp, you cannot take them to court and claim that you were tortured. For the whole concept of human rights equality, totally for women and girls, I ask that you ensure that section 269.1 of the Criminal Code is amended and included in your bill.

Thank you.

[Linda MacDonald]

Thank you.

We are nurses from Nova Scotia. We have 21 years of grassroots experience. We're human rights defenders. We're also members of the Canadian Federation of University Women, which is an NGO of approximately 8,000 women across Canada, and they support us in what we're speaking about today.

We'd like to say that Bill C-36 is historic/“herstoric”. It's transformative in that it's socially, legally, and relationally a new way of looking at prostituted persons in that they are persons, not a nuisance, and that the demand is criminalized.

Our goal here today is to expose a population of women we have been working with and supporting for 21 years who are invisible to this country. They are women who have endured grave brutality. They are involved in forced prostitution, which means no choice. They were forced into human trafficking. And what we're focusing mainly on today is the non-state torture that they endured.

Non-state torture is an Amnesty International term. The UN definition of non-state torture is severe pain and suffering; it's purposeful, it's discriminatory—in this case, gender discrimination—and it's intentional. The intentionality, indeed, shatters the relationship with the self of the prostituted and tortured woman.

Who are the torturers, in our work? We found them to be parents, family, guardians, spouses, pimps, traffickers, and johns.

Where is this torture occurring? It's primarily in-house. It's definitely organized crime.

You're wondering about the type of torture. What we're going to do, as a way of explaining it, is read the story of a tortured woman. Her story was published in the work we do in the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

Her name is Lynn. She is now dead. She said:

I was called bitch, slut, whore and ‘piece of meat’. Stripped naked and raped—‘broken in’—by three goons who, along with my husband, held me captive in a windowless room handcuffed to a radiator. Their laughter humiliated me as they tied me down spreadeagled for the men they sold my body to. Raped and tortured, their penises and semen suffocated me; I was choked or almost drowned when they held me underwater, threatening to electrocute me in the tub. Pliers were used to twist my nipples, I was whipped with the looped wires of clothes hangers, ropes, and electric cords; I was drugged, pulled around by my hair and forced to cut myself with razor blades for men’s sadistic pleasure. Guns threatened my life as they played Russian roulette with me. Starved, beaten with a baseball bat, kicked, and left cold and dirty, I suffered five pregnancies and violent beatings-forced abortions. They beat the soles of my feet and when I tried to rub the pain away they beat me more. My husband enjoyed sodomizing me with a Hermit 827 wine bottle, causing me to hemorrhage, and I saw my blood everywhere when I was ganged raped with a knife. Every time his torturing created terror in my eyes, he’d say, ‘Look at me bitch; I like to see the terror in your eyes’. I never stopped fearing I was going to die. I escaped or maybe they let me escape, thinking I’d die a Jane Doe on that cold November night.

That was Lynn's story.

In Bill C-36, there's an expansion of weapons in what can be used as restraint. Lynn's example shows that handcuffs could be used as a restraint in her case.

The other way we can expand on what torture is, what the ordeals are of the women we have worked with, is in our brief as well. It's a questionnaire that we developed and that we send to women who are interested in filling it out. Bridget Perrier was one of these, and she was willing to have me disclose that today.

This is another woman in Canada. We have identified 48 different forms of torture: forced impregnation; smeared with urine, feces, or blood; placed in a freezer.... All these are listed. This one Canadian woman endured 47 of the 48 that we have listed.

She summed up her statement by saying that she was sold to hundreds of perpetrators for sex and stating that “the goal of torture is to control and or break the human spirit through any heinous means possible.”

I would like to say to you that from what you've heard and in my opinion, I cannot call torture “work”.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

I will call this meeting to order.

We are the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, and this is meeting number 40 and we are televised. Per the order of reference of Monday, June 16, 2014, we are dealing with Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code in response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Attorney General of Canada v. Bedford and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

We will have a couple of announcements before we get to our witnesses. I'm going to make one announcement, and then Madam Boivin has a question for the committee.

The Department of Justice has sent out the summation, whatever you want to call it, of the note on the summary conviction issue. Everyone has it, or you should have it anyway. I just need to know whether you need us to add some time on Tuesday for the officials to talk about this particular issue. Our analysts have looked at the submission from the justice department and are in 100% agreement, but if you need the officials to come here for that, I need to add it to the agenda. If not, we'll just assume that we are satisfied with the response.

Madam Boivin, on that issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you very much.

That was mine, I hate to tell you.

Thank you, witnesses, for coming tonight and being part of this review of Bill C-36. We have another panel today, and then three panels tomorrow, and then we'll be doing clause by clause next week.

So thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Since buyers are part of this change in Bill C-36, that's what I want to focus on. You say they were interviewed or surveyed. What's the breakdown? How many were interviewed in person, and how many were surveyed?

[Pierre Jacob, NDP, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Very well.

You can speak to my next question, time permitting.

You said you were against Bill C-36 because it would result in more neglect and violence for sex workers and give rise to alienation and inequality, among other things.

I would like you and your colleagues to tell us how Bill C-36 would affect you if it came into force tomorrow morning.

[Georgialee Lang]

She looked at the law, and she recognized that the objects in the Criminal Code on prostitution were not prostitution laws; they were nuisance laws. So when the court examined that, they then weighed the benefit of having a nuisance law against the safety issues that we recognize are inherent in prostitution.

What she said in the statement, that Parliament is not precluded from imposing limits, is certainly a fundamental principle. It is the federal Parliament that makes the criminal law in Canada. It is then the court that can determine whether that law is constitutional.

With Bill C-36, I believe the honourable justice minister and his committee have addressed the issues that were raised by Madam Justice McLachlin, and her colleagues in the Supreme Court of Canada, and they have done that in a very effective way.

There are numerous law professors across Canada who have examined whether this new law will pass constitutional muster, and there are many who agree that it will. There is no doubt that it will be challenged, but I think the justice minister has done an exemplary job of crafting a law that speaks to the interests of the parties involved in prostitution. It decriminalizes it for the women, unless of course they are selling sex around children. It speaks to the buyers of sex, who are the exploiters. The preamble to this bill clearly says that's what we're after, the harm, and that we, as Parliament, have the right to make that determination and make that law.

This bill is a good bill. It's addressing what the justices raised in the Supreme Court of Canada. I believe it speaks to the real issue, which is the exploitation of women and the commodification and the commercialization of women's bodies, which is a frontal assault on human dignity and a breach of human rights.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to each of our guests.

Ms. Perrier, we've met before. It's very good to see you. I hope you won't mind if I call you Bridget.

I want to join with my colleagues in thanking you for sharing your story and the story of your daughter, Angel. I personally was very moved, and I'm pretty sure everyone who was listening to you today was equally moved.

I've had the honour to meet a lot of war veterans in my life, but I think you might be the bravest person I've ever met. We'll maybe have an opportunity later for that applause that's so deserved.

If I could award you a medal of valour I would, but one thing I do know is that you're saving lives today. I want to thank you for being here and for speaking out about the terrible things that happened to you, and to your daughter, and other people you know. Thank you for the work you're doing every day to save the lives of others.

I'd like to ask Ms. Lang some questions.

Ms. Lang, you mentioned in your opening statement the penultimate comments made by Chief Justice McLachlin in her decision, which I think are worth reading again because they are very important. She said:

Concluding that each of the challenged provisions violates the Charter does not mean that Parliament is precluded from imposing limits on where and how prostitution may be conducted, as long as it does so in a way that does not infringe the constitutional rights of prostitutes.

She then went on to say:

The regulation of prostitution is a complex and delicate matter. It will be for Parliament

—that's all of us and the people we serve with every day in the House of Commons and in the Senate—

should it choose to do so, to devise a new approach, reflecting different elements of the existing regime. Considering all the interests at stake, the declaration of invalidity should be suspended for one year.

She threw it back in our lap. She could have said that the provisions are struck down, as of today, and we have wide open, unfettered, unregulated legalization of prostitution in Canada. She didn't. She passed it back to us. She said Parliament has a role to play.

There are some who would abdicate that role, but I think it's incumbent upon us, and I think the Chief Justice has asked us to read the decision and to look at all the issues surrounding prostitution, hear the stories of Bridget Perrier and so many others who have come before us, and then craft a response. She's talking about the jurisdiction of the federal government of Canada.

She knows very well the division of powers under the Constitution of Canada. She's not talking about zoning and business regulation at the local level. She's not talking about employment or occupation and health safety regulation. She's talking about those things that are in the purview of the Parliament of Canada—criminal law; banking insurance law; railway law; and certain other areas obviously; national defence; taxation. But within that purview, of the tools we parliamentarians have to regulate the way prostitution is carried on, the primary one has to be the Criminal Code.

What do you think she was referring to? Do you think she was asking us to re-examine the Criminal Code and find a way of making it work in a way that protects the Charter rights of the prostitutes, and do you believe we have done so in Bill C-36?

[Michelle Miller]

Yes. You are asking two questions; one on prevention and one on what she needs now.

On prevention, I would support guaranteed livable income, detox beds, access to treatment, job training and education, and affordable housing. Certainly in my city, I know those are incredibly important things.

As far as what that woman would need now, she needs some of those same things. She needs access to a way to exit. She needs immediate housing. She needs access to detox beds. She needs support. She needs job retaining.

I would also like to ask, how does this bill affect her? I'd like to talk about a generation later and talk about, potentially, her daughter. I think it would affect her daughter in that with Bill C-36, we're sending a clear message and a clear social norm that women are not for sale and that it's not okay to buy women.

For instance, right now in Sweden, where a similar law has been in place for 10 years, there are 10-year-old children who don't know the normalization of buying and selling women's bodies, so I think that her daughter would be less vulnerable and men would be less likely to be buying her.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

I still have time? Okay, great.

I'd like to ask Ms. Miller the same question.

You talked about a car that was cruising around and picked up that woman. If Bill C-36 is passed tomorrow, what would happen to that young woman? How could she be helped?

Provisions have been in place for years and they haven't helped. So what about that aspect?

The question we need to ask ourselves today is this. What do we need to do to wipe out situations of inequality and poverty, which are the root cause of the problem?

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Bridget, if you don't mind, I'd like to call you by your first name.

I want to tell you how much I admire you. Coming here to tell your story is never easy. And I'd just like to thank you for sharing your experience with us. I'm sorry you had to go through what you did and that there are victims of human trafficking who need your help.

It's really commendable, so thank you very much for everything you do.

My question goes beyond Bill C-36.

Let's say that Bill C-36 is passed tomorrow as it currently stands. It is clear that provision 213 criminalizes sex workers. Would you be willing to accept the criminalization of women if the bill were passed as is?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you.

I have one question for Michelle Miller.

Can you tell the committee how addressing the demand will help all the women that you work with? Does Bill C-36 drive women underground?

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

What strikes me now in 2014 is that finally the voices of the survivors are coming forward. As a survivor and a person who has gone out and rescued yourself and a lot of young children and supported them, as I know you have, and also, on the Willie Pickton file—and you know that I worked with a joint victim of Willie Pickton's murders—what is something you want to say to the government right now because you're here in support of Bill C-36? How can we better get the voice of more of the survivors, the people who have been there, to come and speak out like you have so eloquently for so long?

[Chris Atchison]

Yes. It's vitally important that we have an ongoing understanding of this industry if we are going to regulate it and provide services to people involved in this industry. So it's vitally important that however we go about regulating this industry, we keep those doors of communication, those channels of communication, open. I don't see that Bill C-36 is doing that. In fact, I think the restrictions on communications and advertising will make it even less possible to access an already difficult population, and an even more difficult population, being the people who purchase sexual services, will become almost impossible now. Sex workers will become more difficult and clients will become impossible.

[Sean Casey, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Could you comment on the absence of any measures in Bill C-36 with respect to research and data collection and/or any allocation specifically within the $20 million dedicated to research and data collection, please.