Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on June 20th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you, Ms. Khalid.

We're now going to move to MP Hardcastle.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Matas, for the work you're doing.

I'm going to continue along the lines of questioning that we've heard. I want to better understand the legislative environment right now, because you said that we have an issue where laws need to be enforced and that where laws don't exist, they need to be enacted. I'd like to get a better feel for where that is, or where you're most knowledgeable about this, perhaps in India. Are you saying that right now certain acts or activities are not criminalized?

[David Matas]

I know that in Canada—obviously I'm more familiar with Canadian laws than foreign laws—when I first got involved in all this, there was a big problem with extraterritoriality. People could be prosecuted if they trafficked within Canada, but if they trafficked outside Canada and then came back to Canada, they couldn't be prosecuted here and the countries where they went weren't interested in prosecuting Canadians, had difficulty doing it, and the laws weren't being enforced, and so on.

Your committee is dealing with all of South Asia here. There is a problem of cross-border trafficking, with girls going from Bangladesh into India or Nepal. As far as I know, that's a legal problem in that area as well. There may be laws in each country dealing with crimes committed in each country, but once you start having border crossings, you get into problems with gaps in the law.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

I'm thinking of the issue of sex tourism, which apparently is on the rise. Maybe later you can talk about how we would be collecting more data, but on the issue of extraterritoriality and people using or accessing children via sex tourism right now, could we quell that if we did have domestic laws against the use of that kind of tourism?

[David Matas]

Canada has enacted a law that's extraterritorial, but there are very few prosecutions under it, so I think that's an area of law where there needs to be better enforcement, which to a certain extent is a matter of priority. Again, this isn't only a legal issue, but a cultural issue as well.

With child sex tourism, one of the things that ECPAT has done is to try to work with the travel industry. For instance, Air Canada put a public announcement on its TV screens that you could watch, which I thought was useful.

The Accor hotel chain has put signage on their elevators indicating that they have adopted the code of conduct that ECPAT had been proposing. I saw this in Brazil. So the travel industry itself has done some things, but they could do a lot more, and I think they should be encouraged to do more themselves to combat child sex tourism.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

What would you say the Government of Canada's role could be in improving enforcement, then?

[David Matas]

In terms of enforcement, when it comes to the Criminal Code, the administration or the prosecution is provincial, because these are Criminal Code offences. I suppose what the Government of Canada could do is give more support to that.

There is the issue of passports. Right now there are no exit controls of any sort. When you leave Canada, you don't see an official; you only see an official when you enter. There are some people who may have court orders stating that they shouldn't be travelling abroad, but there's no mechanism to know that they've actually left until they have left. This has been an issue.

I think there was a law enacted recently that there is a possibility of your passport actually being taken from you if you've been convicted of a sexual abuse crime. I think that is helpful, but I would say that this, unfortunately, is an area where there's a lot of criminality, and the police tend to get overwhelmed.

I know this particularly with child pornography. There's just so much of it out there that they have to be selective in what they're going after. Part of it is having the technological wherewithal to figure out what's going on, because of course all of this is done secretly. Child pornography is different from, let's say, hate propaganda, where the idea is to spread it as much as you can. With child pornography, child sex trafficking, or child sex tourism, people are trying to do it quietly, without detection, so it involves much more of a police effort.

There's a problem here also, of course, because child victims are not very vociferous victims. They're not visible, and they're not able to articulate or speak up. When somebody robs a grocery store, it's visible and the grocery store clerk is very annoyed, but with a child, it's not visible and the child is unable to speak up. That tends to have an impact on police priorities. They don't get the kind of community pressure about giving this the priority that they should because of its low visibility and the inarticulateness of the victims.

I think there has to be some compensation for that. I think that, frankly, these committee hearings are useful in that respect, because they do give a higher priority to the issue. The committee will finish at some point on this issue, but the Government of Canada continues indefinitely. This is something that the Government of Canada could and should be doing, giving a focus, giving a priority, giving attention, and giving visibility to this issue.

Of course, I believe very much in child leadership, youth consultation, and so on, but this is an area where we can't just leave it to children. I think adults have to compensate in some ways for the fact that many of these victims are simply unable to speak for themselves.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We'll now move to MP Tabbara.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Matas, for being here today with us.

You mentioned attention and visibility just now. I wanted to focus my questions on education and socially ingrained values. I'll get to both of them at the same time.

In Southeast Asia, and really, around the world, there are socially entrenched values of marrying off children very early. How do we empower women and young girls? There's an article here that I was just reading. In Bangladesh, they've saved over 2,000 women from early child marriages. How do we continue that great work?

[David Matas]

When you're dealing with cultural values that are contrary to human rights, you need a cultural shift. Obviously, people from Canada can help, but the cultural shift has to come from within.

This is a problem also with female genital mutilation, which is both a human rights violation and sometimes a cultural value as well. What you have to do is build on the opposition that exists locally and try to empower those people.

It's a problem you can see. Sometimes it's even education of girls. There are many parts of the world where it against the local cultural values to educate girls. This was the situation that Malala was faced with in Pakistan, so the fact that she got a Nobel Peace Prize was very helpful. I think that sort of empowerment of locals who are on the front lines in combatting these cultural values is the way we can carry forward this support and help to shift cultural values. I think the message we want to convey is not that we want them to adopt our values; it is that we want the people who are there, who have these values, to prevail.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

I had the opportunity to go to Zimbabwe, and there were a lot of political talks then. There was a lot we disagreed on, but one thing the Canadian government agreed on with the Zimbabwean government was child marriage.

Again, in reference to this article from Bangladesh, there have been 700,000 women who have been empowered and educated and given the opportunity to say no to child marriages, so empowerment is a big aspect.

Do you have any government NGOs in South Asia that have launched awareness campaigns to familiarize those in poor communities regarding the risks of child marriage and trafficking?

[David Matas]

I should say that we are concerned, particularly about sexual exploitation. We haven't focused on child marriage in particular. It's been more the commercial sexual exploitation, the prostitution and the child trafficking, and that sort of thing.

We have member organizations in all these countries, and some of them are coalitions in the sense that they are an organization of organizations. Of course, we're funding projects for groups and organizations like the example I gave.

So, yes, there is a lot out there that we're dealing with, but we do have allies and foot soldiers on the ground, so to speak, but it's a constant struggle because there are many people on the other side, unfortunately.

[Marwan Tabbara, Liberal, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Is there a lot of backlash against those NGOs, those on the ground, for funding these programs, or do you see a lot more support? Do you see some individuals opposing the great work that some of these NGOs are doing?

[David Matas]

As I mentioned, there are some difficulties. In dealing with a government, they don't like people outside of government interfering. Let them do their own thing. They don't like the idea of child participation because that, itself, is a cultural shift. They tend to think of children as people who should be told things rather than asked things.

Also, when children start talking, they may not necessarily say everything that you would agree with, so that sometimes raises issues. There is push-back in that sense.

I would say there isn't a concerted lobby in favour of prostitution and child sex trafficking, or child sex tourism. At that level there is general agreement, at least at a policy level, but the problem becomes more in the implementation of how you go about actually changing things. It's one thing to get an agreement in principle that people can just walk away from very happily, but it's another thing to actually implement these changes that sometimes can be disruptive.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

MP Anderson.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being with us today.

Mr. Sweet had mentioned your earlier good work on organ trafficking in China. I'm just wondering if you run across any issues with organ trafficking in your examination of human trafficking in this area in South Asia? Has that been confined to China, or have you had issues here?

[David Matas]

First of all, I thank Mr. Sweet for taking note of that.

I have been involved, in particular, regarding the killing of prisoners of conscience in China for their organs, primarily Falun Gong. There have been others as well—Tibetans, Uighurs, and house Christians—but in much smaller numbers.

I have been focused on China. I am aware of organ trafficking in other countries, including in South Asia, but it's a different phenomenon. In China it is government-run. It's institutionalized. It's in state hospitals. In South Asia it's a black market. It's criminal. To a certain extent it's like sex trafficking in the sense that it's undercover and there is some corruption, but basically it's a different exercise.

Also, a lot of the organ trafficking in South Asia is in kidneys. You can live on one kidney, so some poor people will sell a kidney. Their health is compromised with only one kidney, but they are still functioning and they value the money more than the kidney. That's a problem.

However, it's a different phenomenon in China, where people are executed by organ extraction. They're not given any money. Their family isn't given any money. The money all goes to the state.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Can I ask a similar question to what Ms. Khalid asked? What is the level of organization around the organ trafficking in that area? Would it be a small group of people around a doctor who would be willing to do this, or is it an international—?

[David Matas]

There is a problem. To a certain extent, this is a bit different from child sex trafficking. A lot of the organ trafficking is facilitated through brokers. I came back yesterday from Japan, where I talked about this issue. It happens there through brokers. With child sex trafficking, it isn't much like that. People do their own thing, so to speak, rather than work through an agent. Also, of course they are doing it purposefully and intentionally. Often what happens with brokers is that it's a screen that the patient doesn't look beyond. So the patient doesn't necessarily know exactly what's happening, because the broker paints a picture to facilitate a sale.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We've had the term “consensual exploitation” used here in the hearings, and it seems people put themselves in situations where they are being exploited. I think that would fit into this.

You talked about your microprojects. I'm wondering how they function. Do you have an issue with corruption or officials interfering with them? Do you find it's easy to establish them and get them under way, and then support the women primarily who are involved in them? Do you have a lot of detail about that?

[David Matas]

Although they are child-led and child-run, there are adult youth monitors who function as advisers, so there is a watchful eye over all of this.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Do the governments stay out of your way and allow you to do these projects, or do you find there's interference from above, where payouts or those kinds of things have to be made for these projects to go ahead?

[David Matas]

Of course we wouldn't make a payout if somebody asked for one.

The problem isn't so much that; it's just bureaucracy. You have to get someone's approval, you have to fill out a form, and it has to go to this or that person. It just takes time. The level of bureaucracy and red tape can be very frustrating and delay these projects. Some of the systems in place were presumably put there for good reason, but they just tend to slow things up and drag things down.

[David Anderson, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

We live with that everywhere.

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about impunity. You're a lawyer, and I'm just wondering about this. It seems to be a recurring theme in the testimony we've heard, that in so many of these situations it doesn't do any good to try to put a stop to it because there's impunity. People are just not charged. The justice system is too slow to process them.

Do you have any comments on that?

[David Matas]

Of course that's a problem everywhere. It's a particular problem in South Asia where the courts are extremely slow. All proceedings seem to take forever. Often what you're dealing with is a conflict of evidence, where the witness on one side is a child and the witness on the other side is an adult. That becomes difficult to deal with. As I say, the law should be there and should be enforced. But I think we need other means of getting at this problem besides just good laws and law enforcement.