Madam Speaker, the conversation we are having today is so important. It is wonderful to hear the many members who have spoken on the need for a day of recognition on this atrocity going on throughout Canada.
I was fortunate enough to work on the status of women committee. I was not only its chair but also its shadow minister. Since 2015, I have met some incredible women, some survivors, who have shared with me their victimization. I have had the opportunity to work with many organizations across the country as well, but we know more needs to be done.
My riding of Elgin—Middlesex—London is fortunate to have different organizations that are helping young women and girls who are being trafficked.
I would like to talk about Courage for Freedom. It is an organization that focuses on young girls and boys under the age of 18 who are being trafficked. Kelly Talon-Franklin and her husband jump in their truck and hit the roads many weekends, driving six hours to bring a young girl to safety. They will try to find her a home that is safe and has all the necessary supports to help her mental and physical health in an attempt to rebuild that young woman. In some cases, it may be a young boy. We continue to see this. The way we stop this is by working together. That is why having this awareness day is so important.
I am from a small community, Sparta, Ontario, with a population of 300. We do not hear a lot about human trafficking. However, just down the road is Port Stanley, Ontario, which has a population of 2,000 people. We know someone was attempting to traffick three young girls from this small village. It is a tourism village. We think we are safe where we are, but this does not happen just in big cities or communities along the 401 or Highway 69. It happens in all our different communities.
At the beginning of this pandemic, the MAPI, the Measures to Address Prostitution Initiative, funding was being reduced and was going to end in May of 2020. I spoke to many organizations about the issues that were happening with domestic abuse or young women and girls leaving their homes and trying to find safe places to go. During those discussions. we also found out a lot about how the MAPI funding was coming to an end. As we discussed some of the issues that were happening with shelters, the government was ending this is a program. It was at that time when we could really see the heart of Parliament come together. I was so fortunate to work with members of the Bloc, Green and New Democratic parties to continue to push the government, saying that we needed to stick up for young women and girls who were being trafficked. I am so proud of this group of people who had come together. Back in May we continued to push and did get a response from the minister on this. Was it exactly the response we wanted, no, but it did push this item forward, and we need to continue to do that.
One thing I really noticed throughout my discussions as the shadow minister was how organizations worked in silos. Some organizations are doing the same things, which may need to be tweaked, but they may also not be aware of what is going on next door.
We have the London Abused Women's Centre in London, Ontario. Many times in the House I have stood to speak about my friend and colleague Megan Walker. She will be retiring soon, so I wish her a well-deserved retirement. I know she will continue her fight for our young women and girls. I thank her for all her efforts. It was from speaking with her and other advocates that I realized that an organization two hours away from the city of London had never heard about the London Abused Women's Centre, or the Joy Smith Foundation or the organization in Vancouver that was working with women as well. I brought some women together in a smaller group, some of the best of the best. On the call were Megan Walker from the London Abused Women's Centre, Trisha Baptie from Vancouver, Kelly Talon-Franklin from Courage for Freedom and Joy Smith, a former parliamentarian, from the Joy Smith Foundation. I will share with members the relationship I have built with Trisha and why I think we need more Trishas in this world to share the awareness of what happens to these young victims.
What we see across Canada is that sometimes we work in silos. We need to bring best practices. Some of this is awareness, such as knowing what is happening in our own communities, people sharing what their organizations are doing. It cannot be just about February 22; it has to be talked about 365 days a year.
I want to share some of the notes I have from this meeting. We as parliamentarians can do a lot of work, but we need to give the tools and resources to organizations across the country that help these young victims get away from their perpetrators or at least on a way to a different path in life.
Megan Walker stated, “We try and help survivors move on with their lives. We need legislation as framework, but we need robust supports such as financing, housing and we need education, so every action we take is consistent with one of those pillars. We are trying to eliminate the silos. What I feel is missing is a group for equity, nordic and abolitionist model as the connection between prostitution and trafficking. It's men paying for the use of girls and men pushing the trafficking industry.”
This is really important. We saw the great work being done at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics on Pornhub. We have to understand there is a buyer, so how do we stop that? We put in different measures through the criminal justice system when it comes to dealing with people who have trafficked individuals.
Unfortunately, through Bill C-75, I was quite disgusted to be honest. For me, a person who is willing to victimize a young child should not have a sentence that is concurrent. These should be consecutive sentences. These people have stolen somebody's life. These things are really important to me.
Megan also talks about what we need to do for survivors and that we need to ensure we have policies and solutions. This awareness day would be an opportunity for people to talk more. Perhaps it might be more Zoom conventions or more meetings, but there is also a need for survivors to speak to other survivors. This awareness day would help remove some of the stigma for people who have been victimized and are survivors of this.
We need to ensure people have somebody to lean on, which is why I want to talk about Trisha Baptie. Trisha is a young woman who shared her story with the anti-human trafficking committee. She talk about what it was like for her when she was a preteen and started being solicited by her family members. The members from Calgary and Edmonton talked earlier today about how this is sometimes not about strangers but about intimate members of our family. In some cases, it is about step-parents or other individuals who are ruining a young woman's life. Trisha wants to have a role in the UN and be a spokesperson to talk about what it is like.
We need to ensure we have all the resources so Trisha, this young woman who has left the life of prostitution after being trafficked, can be there to help others. This awareness day and working together would help promote this. One of the biggest challenges is that people feel alone. They are ashamed for some of their previous actions, not recognizing they did not put themselves in that situation in many cases; it was somebody they trusted.
It is really important to ensure we have these types of supports, supports like professional counsellors who can help the victims, but also a peer-to-peer aspect, people who can say that they understand, that they have been in their shoes, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
I would like to thank all the members of the all-party anti-human trafficking committee for the work they have done to make this come to fruition today. I believe we have a Parliament that is coming together to end human trafficking.
