Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on June 22nd, 2021

[Lenore Zann, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Thank you so much. I think that's all the time I have.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Well, maybe Janet could go ahead.

[Lenore Zann, Liberal, Cumberland—Colchester, NS]

Okay, thanks.

Ms. Gobert, are you there?

Is she on mute?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

No, she's not.

I can't hear you, Ms. Gobert. We'll get that solved in a moment. We need to move on to our next questioner for six minutes.

Ms. Bérubé, you have six minutes.

[Sylvie Bérubé, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am in the constituency of Abitibi—Baie‑James—Nunavik—Eeyou, on the unceded territory of the Cree and the Anishinaabe.

Everything you have said today is very harrowing. You have a lot of courage to be here before the committee today. You have gone through terrible things: exploitation and violence. Once again, I greatly admire the strength that you are showing by being here today.

Let's talk about the way trafficking young children starts.

How do you know that those children have been subjected to it? Is there a process? How did you manage to get out?

You can all answer my questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Who's first?

Go ahead, Karen. Would you like to start?

[Karen Pictou]

For me, personally, how did I get out of human trafficking? I was arrested. I had been beaten and stabbed in the stomach. My face was smashed in and my teeth knocked out, and one of my neighbours called the police. The police came, brought me to the hospital and then proceeded to put handcuffs on me. They said that the man, who was my pimp, accused me of stabbing him in the shoulder. They arrested me for assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon.

I ended up in jail in Toronto, and I finally got to call my mom. Those of you who know my mom know she's a fighter. My mom, Maurina Beadle, took on the Supreme Court of Canada and won Jordan's principle for her son Jeremy.

My mother is also a social worker. She saw those signs of what was happening to me. She tried to intervene, but I was lost. I was in love. I thought I knew the world and I didn't listen and I left. She worked with a police officer named Tony Ryta in Toronto. He was part of the Toronto prostitution task force. He kept her updated every day that he saw me on the street. He would talk to me and say, “You know, your mom wants you to come home.” I would ignore him.

That day that I was arrested was my saving grace, because I didn't go back there. I had boundaries and I wasn't allowed to leave Toronto and my house was within an area where I wasn't allowed to be, but my mom came up and worked with the courts to have me allowed to go back to Nova Scotia. When I went back to Nova Scotia, I was able to get into Tawaak Housing, which is a subsidized indigenous housing in Halifax. I proceeded to go to family court to win back custody of my two youngest daughters, who were under temporary custody orders with my pimp's sister. I won, and then my life changed from there.

If we look at the signs, we see that one of the signs is that all of a sudden a daughter or a two-spirited person is in love and keeping secrets and has lots of money and is taking off without telling their mother where they're going; talking about dreams in other cities and keeping the person they're dating under wraps, not wanting to introduce them to the parents.

There are a number of different red flags, but ultimately, I think one of my suggestions of what needs to happen, speaking from my experience and my mother's experience, is that we need to have a full support system for parents and loved ones who are trying to get their daughters out and trying to get their daughters home. My mother did it alone and was lucky for that connection with Tony Ryta. She felt that she was connected, that she knew that her daughter was alive.

That support needs to happen. By the time the police find you in one province, it's so quick to be gone to another province, and then the search happens again. Our parents, our loved ones, need support and love to be able to continue this fight.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Is there someone else? Ms. Perrier or Trisha, would you like to comment?

[Bridget Perrier]

What we're seeing is the grooming process, and the grooming process would be done by the bottom bitch. I'm going to use the terminology that traffickers use.

The grooming process consists of either getting them in debt with drugs or giving them purses or whatever. I was groomed by my own sibling. It was really easy. I was amazed that there was someone who looked like me, who spoke like me, and she was fully involved in prostitution. She had already been introduced at the age of 11. She brought her younger sister in. It was very easy.

Traffickers don't take empowered young girls under their wing. I never met an empowered young girl who got pulled into prostitution. Usually the pimps know. They know the broken home, the sexually abused, the traumatic sexual event. Any young girl or young LGBTQ person who has had some sort of trauma is very vulnerable. We have to look at that vulnerability.

I know Detective Ryta really well. Back then he was in the morality unit. He used to try to do things to scare us out the game, and we'd just look at him. What happened to me was I was in jail. I got out of jail three days before my son died. I had to go through losing a child who.... My son had leukemia and he was very vulnerable. I could have brought him home any kind of illness. I had to pinky-promise him that I would never go back to work. I kept that pinky promise, but I had good parents. Still I remember not being able to breastfeed my first child because of the dissection that had happened to my body.

I'll pass it off to Trisha.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Be very quick, Trisha. We need to get to our next questioner.

Are you okay? I've got the same thing.

[Trisha Baptie]

Sorry.

If you want to see grooming, it looks so different today from what it did 30 years ago. You need to go online. That's where it's happening. It's happening on Snapchat, on Twitter. It's happening online. The best resource to find out what grooming looks like right now is a website called.... It's by Gail Dines, and her website is.... I'll get it to you guys. I will. It's absolutely the best website for dealing with that.

As for how I got out, I don't think there's a story there. I met great people. They helped me. I got out.

What I want to talk about is my friends. They had to move mountains to get out, because they were indigenous. Here in Vancouver, aboriginal housing is right next to our Downtown Eastside, which is right next to our drug dealers, and then the services to help them get out are two blocks away from the stroll. Apparently this is so they feel safe in the neighbourhood and they can find resources in the neighbourhood.

I would argue that this keeps them in. My friends who lived in.... I was able to live with my kids in a neighbourhood outside of Vancouver. No one ever put me together with my kids. For women in aboriginal housing and use aboriginal services.... They are using services and they are trying to get out, but it's also a way to keep them under surveillance, and they're never given a chance to get out from under that thumb unless they have people who are really rallying and working with them.

I think that's very unfair. I think it's unfair that I get to leave the area of my exploitation and they have to live there. We need to be looking at things like that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thanks very much.

Ms. Blaney, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Chair, and I want to thank all of you for your testimony. I think the history of indigenous women being trafficked is Canadian history that goes so far back. I think of my granny, who was in residential school and at 16 got married off to a carpenter in the community who was significantly older than she was. I remember hearing that story and thinking, “That explains some things.”

I want to thank you all for telling that story, and for also understanding how systemic it is in our system.

My first question is going to come to you, Karen. You talked about the government cutting money while you're being asked to do even more. I heard testimony from everyone about the lack of resources and not knowing where to put people who are trying to escape trafficking.

I wonder if I could come to you first, Karen, and then I will come to you, Madame Gobert, because I haven't heard from you yet. I would love to have you answer that question, and then I'll continue on.

[Karen Pictou]

Certainly.

Shortly after I began this role just a little over three years ago, we received $100,000 per year for a three-year period through our national umbrella organization, NWAC, as federal core funding. However, leading up to the end of that agreement, there still is no decision being made, so now we are faced with the fact that if we do not get money into our bank account from federal core funding, we will lose a large portion of the capacity that we currently have at the Nova Scotia Native Women's Association.

We have secured long-term provincial core funding. However, that only pays for our rent and the salary of our core staff, which would be three individuals. It certainly is by no means enough [Technical difficulty—Editor] this work.

I might also mention that the only other thing that is keeping us afloat at the moment is the short-term funding that we've received from WAGE for a couple of different projects. Part of the problem here is that although the project proposal-based funding continues to keep us in a state of survival, when we're in a state of survival, we cannot look at those long-term goals. How do we plan five to 10 years out if we don't even know if we'll have funding to exist then or if we'll have the programs and services that we need to support? We need 100%.

For the Jane Paul centre, we have received five years of funding from the Department of Justice, so we have three years left. That is in the amount of $150,000, which does not even pay salaries. It literally pays the rent, utilities and insurance to keep the doors open.

We need a commitment from Canada that these programs and services and the organizations delivering them are important and deserve an investment of sustainability, because we know this issue is not going to go away overnight. Simply put....

I guess I'll just leave it there. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Ms. Gobert, could you try again with your mike?

That's good. Go ahead.

[Janet Gobert]

I can't speak from personal experience, but as a community initiatives coordinator in dealing with this group of women, housing was definitely an issue.

Approximately a year ago at the friendship centre, we opened a men's shelter. However, we've seen a transition happen with the client base that was accessing it. Right now, we're in the beginning steps of transitioning it into a women's shelter for those who have been affected by human trafficking.

As Karen said, funding is definitely an issue right now. We are using funds that we have received from head office for the fourth round of COVID funding. Yes, we do have short-term funding from WAGE as well, but I guess our issue is that when we look at transitioning this to a women's shelter, we're looking at little blocks of funding, so right now we would only be looking at operating for a one-year period.

Is it absolutely necessary that we have long-term funding? Yes, it is. We cannot offer service without keeping these women safe, so without having that shelter for these women, our work is pointless.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you for that.

Ms. Perrier, you talked about people having to stay in your house because there's nowhere to send them. I'm curious as to whether you could talk about the concern you have around a limit of resources and not having a place to send folks so that they are safe.

[Bridget Perrier]

There's a lot of money. I'm seeing millions of dollars for initiatives, but nobody has opened up an on-site, three-siloed safe space for women. I can't send these women to battered women's shelters, because first of all, they're putting the other women at risk. Cross-contamination happens, and I don't think that's where healing begins. We need to have our individualized area and treatment centres.

To be really truthful—and I'm here to speak the truth—it's a big cash cow. Human trafficking is the new thing, and people are eloquently writing proposals, getting millions of dollars and doing nothing. A prime picture is Thunder Bay, as well as Toronto. In Ontario, we have nowhere to send indigenous women who are exiting the sex trade unless I farm them out to Manitoba, but they're at capacity too. Therefore, we have nowhere for them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Thank you so much.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

That's my time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

We're going to go on now to the next round, and I think, judging by the clock, we'll have at least one intervention from each of the parties represented on the committee.

Gary Vidal, you are up first. You have five minutes.

[Gary Vidal, Conservative, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too want to thank our witnesses today. I'm not going to pretend to be able to even acknowledge the pain and the suffering that you've experienced in some of your journeys. I can't even imagine that. However, I want to thank you for coming and sharing your journeys with us to help us understand this as parliamentarians and try to move forward in a way that might offer some solutions for the future. I appreciate that.

Over 50% of the survivors of sex trafficking in Canada are indigenous women and girls, even though they make up 4% of the population. This is obviously a huge challenge.

You've referred to a number of things as you've each spoken. We've talked about the child welfare system. We've talked about public policy changes. We've talked about exit strategies. We've talked about a number of different things. What I'm looking for from each of you is just a recommendation that would be very significant from a prevention perspective. I get the challenges exit-wise, but how do we stop it in the first place? What are some really practical things that the Government of Canada could do that would help to prevent young women and ladies from even being put in this place?

I think I'll start with Ms. Gobert because she hasn't had an awful lot of opportunity today, and then each of the other witnesses could take a minute of my time and answer that question if they can.

[Janet Gobert]

Sure.

When we talk about empowerment.... I'm not sure which witness said that the empowerment of girls means they will not be able to be trafficked. That is something that has been discussed over and over again within our board. What we were looking at in that regard is going into the schools. I know it has been done over and over, but switching it to have a cultural aspect to it is what we're going to be attempting to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Bratina]

Who'd like to go next?

Go ahead, Karen.

[Karen Pictou]

First off, in Nova Scotia one simple way to prevent future human trafficking is to stop the Goldboro LNG mining plant that is scheduled to happen. The Mi'kmaq of Nova Scotia will own a work camp with 5,500 temporary workers that will be located just outside the borders of Paqtnkek First Nation. I guarantee you that there is no training we can do and that there are no policies that we can put in place to keep our women, girls and two-spirit people safe. If and when indigenous women, girls or two-spirit people are harmed from this project, it'll end up being the Mi'kmaq who are liable, because they own the work camp.

This needs to end. We do not need this. The Mi'kmaq will not benefit enough to risk our lives and to gamble the well-being of our communities in order to house this project. I guarantee you that stopping the Goldboro plant will prevent human trafficking in Nova Scotia.