Yes, I am, thank you. My colleague, Norma, will pick up within our 10 minutes.
We thank you very much for this opportunity. I would like to recognize our two co-presenters and some of the root issues they brought up with regard to some of the reasons young people become involved in gangs. We certainly recognize those too.
Our mandate deals with prostitution, which we define as sexual exploitation of vulnerable people, male or female, in vulnerable situations. We have a real concern about those who prey upon vulnerable people, those who profit from vulnerable people, and those who exploit them.
We know more through story than through exact statistics about the role of different levels of criminal organizations. When I consulted with my Edmonton Police Service vice unit colleague, he said they didn't have the statistics either. This would be an area in which we would need to do more research and gather that evidence, but we all know the stories.
During my introduction into the area when I got involved in the mid-1990s, I met a young woman who had been taken to the island of Macau by the Triad. Her mother had to raise quite a significant amount of money to buy her back and bring her back to Edmonton.
We also know there are different levels of involvement, some at that disorganized street youth gang level as well. It's easy for those young people to be used by more organized criminal organizations.
In Edmonton we have bylaws dealing with massage and escort services and exotic dancing. Our city put those bylaws in place specifically to enable our police and bylaw workers to monitor for the involvement of organized crime to ensure that young people, those under the age of 18, were not being pulled into any of these, and also to ensure there was no pimping or exploiting going on.
We know at the street level as well that there are different kinds of involvement by organized crime, and no one has a handle on what's happening over the Internet.
I'm now going to defer to my board member, Norma, who will speak from some direct experience.
Thank you.