This is a very serious issue. What Megan described is just so dead-on. There needs to be a consultation greater than what we're hearing right now in terms of going across the country and talking to different people. You know, there needs to be an in-depth consultation specifically with survivors of human trafficking to understand what they really go through and what they need to have to be rehabilitated.
l believe the third piece is prevention. We just took it over in the foundation, and we've developed school programs, but this has to be a government-supported initiative throughout post-secondary and elementary schools. The kids that are being subjected to this trafficking are very young. The youngest one that I ever dealt with was five years old. No child ever gets over that kind of thing, no matter what kind of rehabilitation is done. They have triggers—smells, words, everything—that bring it up over a lifetime, so the prevention piece is something that needs to be addressed as well. I think the federal government has to take a look at that.
I think also that enhancing the charges against these people would help, because if there's light sentencing, the perpetrators just keep on doing it, and they leave the whole community in a wake of destroyed young lives. The recommendations that Megan brought forward, I thought, were very good.
However, in addition to that, there needs to be the prevention piece as well, and the federal government is in charge of post-secondary schools. I know in some of the conferences that I've done.... At one conference, I was in Calgary. There was a young girl that came up, and she had been trafficked and controlled within the university itself, so it's all over the place, and this awareness is far too little. People in Canada now still do not understand human trafficking.