Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the committee for agreeing to hear the perspective of the women we represent.
Like many individuals, groups and countries that are following this debate and watching what we are doing here in Canada, Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle, or CLES, cannot but salute the decision to criminalize the purchasing of sex in Canada. Even though the bill is imperfect, we regard this as a victory for abolition, not prohibition. This bill calls upon Canadian society to stop considering prostitution and the industry that exploits it as inevitable and a victimless crime. For the first time in Canadian legal history, a government is inviting us to examine prostitution as a crime against the person, a form of violence against women that is incompatible with the quest for social equality, in particular the equality rights of women who are among the most marginalized.
CLES has been in existence for nearly 10 years, and for 6 of those years, we have been in daily contact with women who have been or are in prostitution. We believe in the necessity of building a world without prostitution. We offer support, guidance and an ear to female victims of sexual exploitation. We fight with them for recognition of their rights and to ensure their security, including the security of not being prostituted and of receiving support to leave the business when they want to.
We organize the women so they can act to bring about the change they want in their lives and those of the women around them. We do preventive work to combat the trivialization of prostitution and to publicize its impact on the physical and mental health of those who are dealing with this reality, but also on access to equality for all women. We consider ourselves part of an international movement that is working tirelessly to denounce the secular and patriarchal tradition of prostitution.
I won't get into the details of the brief, but we invite you to look at Bill C-36 from a perspective that sees government action as part of the struggle against the commodification of human beings, in the interest of equality for all.
We shall focus first of all on the concept of security. In our view, the Bedford ruling relied on a very narrow interpretation of the security of person concept set out in every human rights charter in the world. I urge Canadian society not to adopt that limited view. The Bedford ruling encouraged the privatization of the safety of women in the prostitution industry. It was recommended that women hire a driver or bodyguard, rather than address the lack of safety of those women at the source. We find it unacceptable to reduce the concept of security to its simplest form, in Canadian society today.
Like others have done before us, we urge you to refuse any form of criminalization of prostitutes. My colleague Rose Sullivan can elaborate on that. Women have a voice. But very often, when women who work in the prostitution industry criticize prostitution, or when women who have left prostitution speak about it in a negative light, they manage to snuff that voice out.
We encourage you to listen to what women in prostitution have said. Over the past year, CLES has done a study, which we would be happy to provide to the committee. After speaking with 109 women in 6 cities across Quebec, we learned that 45% of them were still active in the sex industry when they answered the questionnaire or took part in interviews, and that 80% of them wanted to get out of prostitution but did not know of any organizations to help them. That view needs to be taken into account.
Furthermore, of the 109 women who answered the questionnaire, 90% had been or were victims of violence at the hands of men in their immediate circles, be they family members, clients or pimps.
The women we talk to on a daily basis, as well as those who responded to our research call, are demanding more justice, more consistency, more services and more recognition that they are living or have lived one of the forms of violence against women that are most trivialized, and yet still taboo in the year 2014.
While we support Bill C-36, one fundamental change must be made to act upon undertaking to decriminalize the victims of sexual exploitation. The Nordic, or Swedish, model relies on three integral parts, the first being the total decriminalization of prostitutes, female or otherwise. The second is the criminalization of the purchase of sex. And the third is education aimed at changing society's attitudes and perception around prostitution. The success of Bill C-36 inevitably hinges on those three inseparable components.
I will conclude by stressing that we are at a crossroads, and certain choices are necessary. No one, no political party, can skirt the fundamental question. Do we believe that prostitution and the sexual exploitation it represents have their purpose in our society? If not, we have to act and go much further than what Bill C-36 would do. We have to want more for women than prostitution; we have to want more for the women who are in prostitution.
Of course, we support the $20-million investment made by the government, but it is not enough. We would like to see more funding, to be sure. We want to stress how important it is that the money go to groups that work towards the same objectives set out in the preamble of the bill, in other words, stamping out the view that prostitution is an inevitable reality that cannot be changed.
And I feel compelled to point out, in no uncertain terms, that a number of organizations around the country working to keep women in prostitution currently benefit from government funding as well as endowments. These organizations encourage women in prostitution who are unhappy with their current working conditions to go elsewhere or to become pimps themselves. Let's call a spade a spade. Some groups endeavour to keep women in prostitution. Bill C-36 seeks to block such efforts by the industry to legitimize the sex trade in Canada. Selling sexual services to others is neither a legitimate business nor compatible with the pursuit of gender equality.