Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to rise in the House to speak to this bill.
As a parliamentarian and a human being, I find certain topics more difficult to talk about than others. The subject of this bill is one of those topics. The fact that human trafficking still exists goes against all that is good in the world. This is the 21st century, and I sometimes wonder if we are evolving in the right direction.
But we cannot give up. That is what Jack Layton told me. He told me to stay positive and he was right. Despair does no good. Like my colleagues, I believe that human trafficking is a heinous crime. The Criminal Code should be updated so that we can attack this crime head on.
The reality is shocking. According to 2009 figures from the UNODC, 79% of trafficking victims in the world are forced into prostitution. According to 2005 figures from the International Labour Organization, 80% of trafficking victims are women and children, particularly young girls, and between 40% and 50% of all victims are children. Women and girls represent 98% of sexual exploitation victims.
Moreover, at the national level, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada indicated in its 2001 report that, in Canada, the average age of entry into prostitution is 14. According to 2004 figures from the U.S. State Department, every year an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 persons are victims of trafficking from Canada to the United States. It is estimated that traffickers bring approximately 600 women and children into Canada to service the Canadian sex industry.
Canadian victims of trafficking in persons in their own country is a problem often overlooked in studies and statistics on this issue, particularly as regards the sex trade. Just like some people who enter Canada to flee abject poverty in their country can find themselves in a work environment where they are exploited, Canadians faced with poverty and a lack of education or employment opportunities in their home community are also pushed towards sectors where exploitation is common.
Women across the country, including a large number coming from poor communities, leave their homes to engage in the sex trade. They may have been lured by someone offering them employment, education or other opportunities, or they may have left of their own will and were spotted at a bus depot by individuals looking for this type of vulnerable newcomers. A young woman may also decide to go and live elsewhere with a boyfriend who convinces her to engage in prostitution to provide for the couples' needs.
As a father of two energetic and vibrant daughters, Sophia and Gabriella, I simply cannot accept this situation. It is totally unacceptable in a modern, democratic and prosper country like ours. These crimes, like all problems of that nature, affect the most marginalized elements in our society. In Canada, they particularly affect aboriginal women and girls, who leave to settle in urban areas and engage in the sex trade.
The RCMP finds that victims in the majority of recent convictions for trafficking in persons involving Canadian women and sexual exploitation were aboriginal women and girls. Therefore, any plan must absolutely include our aboriginal people and nations. We must listen to them and respect them. First Nations, Inuit and Metis people, and particularly aboriginal women's groups, must participate actively as full-time partners in the fight against trafficking in persons. That is what the Kitigan Zibi and Lac Barrière Algonquin First Nations in my riding want. They deserve no less.
It is unfortunate that the Conservatives cut funding for those groups that fight such crimes. Sometimes, I wonder what we are doing here and what parliamentarians of the past did. I admit that, since I was first elected, I have sometimes been disappointed in the work we do as parliamentarians. There is such a waste of time. If, since 1867, we have not been able to eliminate crime as serious as human trafficking, what are we doing here?
Are we useful? Did parliamentarians of the past spend way too much time eating and drinking at parties, because of their love of power?
My studies in political science may have left me quite cynical about politics, but we must do something. We must act.
However, we need more than this bill. We need a plan to mobilize the human, police, electronic and material resources that would enable us to go at the root of the problem, to help victims and to support the work of police services, in order to eliminate these horrible crimes in our society, regain our Canadian pride and have the right to consider ourselves civilized.
