Okay.
We'll move on to Monsieur Petit.
Evidence of meeting #7 for Justice and Human Rights in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gang.
Evidence of meeting #7 for Justice and Human Rights in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was gang.
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
Daniel Petit Conservative Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC
My question will be for Norma Chamut.
I will try to explain what we are looking for. We are studying organized crime in order to find solutions—either to limit it or reduce it. We really aren't sure yet where we're going. You talked about prostitution; I will use the term “human trafficking.” These street gangs—organized or not—make young women and young men work the streets because it makes money. It costs them less than buying drugs... Every day, the sex worker—male or female—works and brings in money for the gangs and for all the crooks at the top of the heap.
Thus, there is both a human problem and a drug problem. As you said, it is too hard to do this work straight, and so drugs become necessary. It is a vicious circle. Young people are recruited when they are 12 or 13; we have to admit that. Some people call them “fresh meat”, and they are put to work as prostitutes in order to bring in a lot of money.
I come from the Quebec City area. There, we have already had a scandal linked to prostitution. The clients who pleaded guilty got 60 days in jail. The young woman, a minor, will have to live with the aftermath of drug use all her life. She has lost all self-esteem. Her life has truly been ruined. The client got 60 days.
I call that human trafficking. You are taken from one city and sold in Niagara Falls. You're sent to the United States, then to Vancouver, and so on. You are impossible to trace. How many people are in that situation? Several thousand. If there were heavier penalties for the clients—I'm talking about the clients, because that's the way we will—
3:45 p.m.
Board Member, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
Definitely.
3:45 p.m.
Conservative
3:45 p.m.
Board Member, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
Definitely. I totally agree that the sentence should definitely be stronger for the male than for the person who is out there working the street.
I'm not saying that she shouldn't have any consequence. She has a tremendous amount of consequence. If she is working for a pimp and she comes back without a quota, she is beaten. And then the police: sometimes they run to the police or wherever for help, and they end up in jail longer than the man who has done this to them.
Myself, I was severely beaten by a trick, had my face shattered. I went to jail. He didn't even get questioned. I got operated on five times. But as the prostitute, I was jailed. He was not.
Should there be tougher sentences for the johns? Definitely. Should there be a website that states who they are when they're picked up? Definitely. If there is no accountability, then they're going to continue to do it, but if people have to be accountable somewhere, then they change their actions.
Accountability is a big one.
3:45 p.m.
Executive Director, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
Our organization actually was founded out of Edmontonians saying to our city, our mayor, our justice minister that we have to do something about the demand side of prostitution and exploitation.
I live in a community where street prostitution and drug trade activity had overrun our lives, and we got involved as citizens. Thirteen years later, that is still our cry, that our nation needs to do something about the demand side. It is the demand side that is fuelling the sexual exploitation of vulnerable people and human trafficking.
In 2005, when the parliamentary subcommittee on solicitation was in place, we actually dreamed of a different law than the current law in this country. We said, what would it be like if our nation was so bold that we said we will not, as Canadians, stand for the exploitation of vulnerable persons or persons in vulnerable situations, and we will target those who are profiting, preying upon, and exploiting? That's a visionary statement.
You ask, should prostitution be legalized? We both said no. We would actually like our country to take a different stance with a vision about what kind of a country we wish to live in.
Furthermore, I had the opportunity to go to the Netherlands, which is often quoted as an example, and to meet with a vice detective there. He said they thought they were being pragmatic--making it safer, all that kind of thing--but what they did, he said, was create a haven for the Russian mafia and for human trafficking. He also reflected that when the state legalized and regulated in that way, it let other citizens off the hook to care, to ask questions, to mobilize, and to become engaged in going after the root causes of social injustice and exploitation.
So we are still calling for that different stance where we educate young boys that it is not acceptable to grow up and use young women. Our organization has started what we call a “men of honour” award every year, because we want the men who are honourable citizens of every ethno-cultural community to be celebrated. Right now, the only men who get the headlines are those who rape, kill, traffic, and exploit. We want to be engaged in the education of young people, to hold up a different vision of what it means to be a person and to be in a community.
3:50 p.m.
Board Member, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
I go out and do public education and speak to kids, and I believe we need to target children. We need to get into the schools and teach them that this is not the lifestyle. Being gang-recruited and prostituted is just not a good life.
I just spoke to 100 grade eight students, and I got overwhelming acceptance from them. They support me that I'm off the street. They like to see me do that, because children are believers. They believe in the good things because they haven't been through all that stuff yet, where they've been damaged.
I believe we need to start really looking at our country's young children. Whether they're Somalian or Asian young men, it doesn't matter. Our god doesn't see colour, and we shouldn't either. And it should be all kids.
3:50 p.m.
Conservative
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—La Prairie, QC
I don't think I'll take five minutes.
I was a bit intrigued, Ms. Aulakh, about your search for definitions between the “gang” definition and “organized crime” definition. Can you develop a bit on that? You just broached it, but there's something in your research on those terms?
3:50 p.m.
Prof. Harpreet Aulakh
I looked at it from the perspective of, well, if gangs are the problem, let's see what it is. Instead of going to the other side of the table, I asked the young people what “gang” meant to them. Some of the things they said were that it's a family, it's to fit in and belong, and a place to go when there's no food in your kitchen, those kinds of things.
When I look at the other side of the table, at how the law or law enforcement defines gangs, it is all about criminal involvement.
When there are two different views, how can we tackle the problem? That's my conflict. Within the research there is a tremendous amount of conflict between what a gang is, what we can define, and the level of organization from gang to gang and from organized groups to organized groups.
While sitting at the back when the previous speaker was here, I overheard about putting up a list on how we can define a criminal organization. I think the speaker did make the right point: it's dynamic. The organization is dynamic and it changes from time to time. Membership is fluid with a common goal, strong leadership, great rules, and penalties when they deal with those who don't obey those rules. But the next time the person goes to prison for whatever crime, the next person moves up into the leadership and that leader is different.
3:50 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—La Prairie, QC
We're talking about the definition of gangs--for example, young people who need that feeling of family--but does that apply to young adults or adults? Do you find the same inconsistency?
3:50 p.m.
Prof. Harpreet Aulakh
My research was limited to the adults who are in gangs, but I saw they joined the gangs when they were young people and they moved on as an adult. Not all of them move on, some of them get out when they've had enough. I cannot see that.... Well, maybe for those who have stayed for a long time, I would assume it's more for the money.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—La Prairie, QC
When you talk about the gang that identifies by ethnicity, like Fresh Off the Boat, for example, I'm presuming that Fresh Off the Boat was an epithet that was given to them because they were of ethnic origin, not necessarily fresh immigrants. They themselves identify themselves as ethnic gangs, and it becomes a vicious circle.
How do you separate the ethnic identification from the social identification?
3:55 p.m.
Prof. Harpreet Aulakh
I don't know if this will answer your question, but we label the kids, and the kids take those labels very easily. But very quickly they take those labels and mould them into new ones--for example, Fresh Off the Boat into Forever Our Brother.
From my research in Saskatoon and Edmonton, I found that even with Fresh Off the Boat, most members were ethnic immigrants. But the Calgary Herald published a full page of the members of Fresh Off the Boat and Fresh Off the Boat Killers who had died in the past four years, and many white people were in there. Aboriginal gangs were predominantly what I looked at in Edmonton and Saskatoon, but they have Chinese and black people in there.
I think when we go into the field, the gangs are more ethnically mixed as opposed to what is portrayed here.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
Alexandra Mendes Liberal Brossard—La Prairie, QC
So it's not really an ethnic problem. It's not a question of ethnicity or recent immigration.
3:55 p.m.
Prof. Harpreet Aulakh
No, it's not. They might have more members who belong to an ethnic minority group, but they are not predominant; it also includes white people.
3:55 p.m.
Liberal
3:55 p.m.
Board Member, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
My kids all hang out with a lot of gang members, and they're of every race. I think it's every kid who's been pushed aside. They want to have that sense of belonging, being involved, and being part of something. All of us do. I don't think it matters whether they're 15 or 30. You talk about motorcycle clubs. A lot of those members are guys who have never fit in anywhere. They buy a Harley, they get their rocker, and all of a sudden they're part of a family where they never fit in before. I think that's the same with youth gangs. I think any kid who's been pushed away or told to shut up one too many times just wants to fit in somewhere.
3:55 p.m.
Bloc
Monique Guay Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
I know that these are often very fragile young people who get recruited, because they are abandoned and unloved. They are recruited and get involved in street gangs.
I can talk about Quebec. We know that the leaders of the street gangs are not young; they are often much older. They use the young people to do the dirty work, like selling drugs on the street. So, young people make a little pocket money, because there's no money in their homes, because they live with single parents, because there is poverty, and a thousand other reasons. If necessary, they recruit other young people, and that is a real problem.
We must find a way to tackle this problem, a way to handle it. In Quebec we have developed a strategy. Groups of young street workers, working 24 hours a day, have been trained specifically for outreach to young people who have been recruited by street gangs. They try to get them out, so they can return to more normal lives. They help them find the services they need to get back into society.
I don't know if that happens here, too, or if you have had a similar experience, but I would like to hear what you have to say about it.
4 p.m.
Executive Director, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
In Edmonton we have what's called a community solution to gang violence. We mobilize the whole community to work on this. That would be at the city-wide level. Then there are initiatives in different neighbourhoods in different parts of the city to try to engage young people and help them.
I know that within the aboriginal community in Edmonton, they've made this a very high priority, because so many of their young people are at risk as they come into the city. We have positive initiatives, but we still have challenges.
4 p.m.
Board Member, Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton
Poverty is a big one. As long as you have poverty and hopelessness, you will have these things. How do you get rid of them? That's a good question. We will always have poverty, and most of the kids who end up in these gangs come from poor homes. They really do.
I know lots of young gang members myself. They come, and I feed them. They're allowed to have a shower at my home. They come and talk to me when things are not good for them.
I know one young man who at 18 had already killed three people. How is he ever going to change? I take him to church with me. I pray for him. I love him, because a lot of people don't. He comes from an extremely poor family.
It was the first place where he felt accepted and made money. Now he's 26 years old. He's been away from the gang for four years, and he's a father. Hopefully, that will help change him. But as a youth, and as a young man who never had anything, who was always hungry, always dirty.... I watched this boy grow up. I was on his street. He's a different guy. But a lot of what he looked for was that acceptance, that belonging. That sense of belonging is a big one. Poverty is one. How do we deal with poverty?
4 p.m.
Prof. Harpreet Aulakh
In our gang research, we spoke about why kids get into gangs. It's push and pull. Pull is an attraction. The push is pushing out all those things they don't have in their lives. We always tend to work on reducing the attraction, be it in law enforcement or by not glamorizing it. We place emphasis on those pull things. We need to look at that.
4 p.m.
Conservative