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—