I would agree with you that Canadian law enforcement has made absolutely tremendous strides in this past decade in terms of these very complex issues, and I would say there is a cultural change under way in terms of how police officers view the prostituted. However, I don't think the application of good principles that have been spoken to in committee already by some law enforcement officials are universal in any way, shape, or form.
We are dealing with a long-standing culture where prostituted women were the criminals. It takes time for that to work through the system, where we really understand that they are victims. A 29-year-old young woman on a street corner, in my opinion, is just as much a victim as a nine-year-old, and we need to start balancing how we respond to that. I think there's been tremendous success and tremendous work done, but I would like to see, as part of the cultural change, if you will, as we move towards really accepting these women as victims, that this is really embedded in police training, so that becomes universal and national, and that the culture is changed. We've had several witnesses already speak to the cultural change they're seeing in Sweden. I would love to see the same kind of thing happening on a police level.
In terms of tools, which perhaps strays back into the question asked by Ms. Péclet, I think it's fascinating that the biggest tool I believe police have is the intangible tool of a non-adversarial relationship. It is police officers having a measure of trust with prostituted women, where they're not seen as the enemy and they know it. This is the rub for me. While I totally understand the requirement of tools in the eyes of the police, there's a disconnect here because the biggest tool I believe police have to help prostituted women is trust and relationship. Proposed section 213 is problematic because that reintroduces the adversarial relationship, whereas the rest of this act would indicate the women are not in an adversarial relationship and they can build those trust relationships that are going to be so valuable.
So that's one of the things I would like to see basically part of the whole process of this, that relationships would be built that are fundamentally not adversarial.