Justice Committee on March 1st, 2018

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Sure.

My request is—and it's probably way off base, but before we get to the end of our study—if you could help us get a sense of the magnitude of this issue, from the community. This isn't going to be scientific. It's not going to be scientifically valid, but if you could send the clerks your experience of the number of traffickers you know in given cities, the number of people you know trafficked, and your estimation of the number of men using these services, that would at least give us a composite based in the community, which we could use to drive some political will, because without it we're going to be stuck with the Stats Can report of 350 reported cases. That is a high watermark. We're talking about a total of 500 cases reported in the last 10 years. So you're right: the stats collection is getting better, but it's not telling an accurate story.

What are the links that any of your organizations make to LGBTQ2 support organizations once we're reintegrating, because we know there's an overlay. We know there's an intersectionality, so how do we do outreach into two-spirited communities, lesbian, and LGBTQ groups to help people, after they've been traumatized, to reintegrate into society. Do you have any of those links? If not, our secretariat can certainly help.

[Joy Smith]

Diane, do you want to speak?

[Diane Redsky]

That is extremely important. There is a unique vulnerability for the LGBTQ population in regard to sex trafficking. Both our safe house and our rural healing lodge are for girls and transgender. This is an under-resourced, under-everything population, and there are limited organizations—even in Winnipeg—to partner with; but for those that do exist, it is essential that they do partner. There's a number of survivors from the LGBTQ community who are very outspoken about what needs to happen, and I encourage you...and I'd be happy to link you up with some of them to educate the committee on their unique needs.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I'd be happy to have an offline conversation about that.

Before the chair calls time, last night I saw the commercial that's on from the Ontario government, #WhoWillYouHelp, which is all about violence against women. It's targeted at men and boys to ask, who will you help when you see sexual aggression or violence against women taking or about to take place.

Can the trafficking world be changed with targeted social media campaigns or media campaigns, like #YouCanStopThis? Does that kind of intervention from governments and civil society help and what's your recommendation on that?

[Joy Smith]

I highly recommend it. Any awareness like that, whether it be the LGBTQ community or whether it be girls or boys, making the public aware of what is happening is extremely important. It's very powerful. Using media to do that is huge.

I think it has an impact on potential people who glamourize it and think it's wonderful. If you have a profound kind of advertisement, which the foundation is thinking of putting out itself...to have it a nationwide thing from government is very helpful.

[Donald Bouchard]

I'd like to add to that if I could.

[Diane Redsky]

Buying sex is not a sport.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Buying sex is not a sport?

[Diane Redsky]

Yes, that's a Manitoba campaign. It's actually a national one. It's been in multiple provinces to address the trafficking during large sporting events.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Sorry.

Mr. Bouchard.

[Donald Bouchard]

When I look back in the '80s and '90s, I remember it was so cool to smoke and it was promoted. We've managed to cure this problem, and it's really turned around completely now because of the advertising that was done against it.

Also, as you were saying before about the guys who buy sex, Mr. Rankin, if they were exposed, that would drop substantially. That was one thing on the streets back then: guys were afraid of getting caught. The traffickers were not afraid, but the guys buying sex were terrified of being caught because they didn't want it to get back to their families. Let's say in a city like Winnipeg, where I'm from, if 10 of these guys who bought sex were exposed publicly right now, we would see a substantial drop, overnight.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

Just to give the committee members a timeline, we have only about eight minutes left because then we have to adopt our budget, which should take about a minute.

We'll go to short snappers, short questions, and I'd ask the panel to answer in brief on these questions.

Go ahead, Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

All right. Maybe I'll restructure the questions I was going to ask and direct them entirely them to Ms. Gray.

I do want to say hi to my former colleague, Joy Smith, but unfortunately these are all statistical questions, so I'm now going to focus on Ms. Gray, if I could.

You mentioned in your presentation that age 13 is the average. May I assume you mean the average age of entry into this, as opposed to the average age when you take the oldest and youngest person?

[Mikhaela Gray]

Yes, the average age of women and girls who are trafficked in Canada, being forced into trafficking, is 13 or 14.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Right. You didn't mention, I don't think, how long the average lifespan of a person.... I don't mean until actual mortality, but for the period during which they are in the trade—the word “industry” was used, but I feel a bit uncomfortable with that—do you have an estimate on that?

[Mikhaela Gray]

I don't have a specific statistic, but from anecdotal conversations and what folks have told me—particularly in the context of India, where I was working with women—women in their mid-20s often become indisposed to trafficking and can be recruited to become recruiters, as folks mentioned, because they don't have other options available for them in terms of employment or reintegration.

Other folks might have a better understanding.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

This suggests that it would only be some of the women and, I assume, only the ones who have a higher degree of life skills. Those who are not really fully numerate.... You have to understand how to open a bank account and do a bunch of things in order to run what is, from a purely mechanical point of view, a kind of business. I'm assuming that not every woman has that escape hatch, if that's the right term. Some of them, at the end of when they're useful in the trade, have nowhere to go at all, right?

[Mikhaela Gray]

Yes, and based on the research I conducted, what would happen to those women if they didn't have a place to go was that they would be recruited as women who would assist with the trafficking.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay.

I have one last thing to ask you, if I could, and it's simply this.... I'm not sure, actually, if this is directed to Ms. Gray per se, but clearly this is not a lifestyle choice anybody makes because they have a wide variety of options in front of them. I made a list here of potential things that would cause a young girl—a very young girl, in this case—or a young boy, as the case may be, to get into the sex trade.

I've written down as possibilities that they're effectively homeless or quasi-homeless and couch-surfing. Attached to that, they've had to leave the community they're in because it's not safe there, and they go to a place where they have no support network. I'm guessing at possibilities here. It could be the case that there's a lack of life skills, that they just haven't learned what their rights are and where they can go to get help. I also have written down here as well the possibility that there's a pre-existing use of drugs or alcohol and, linked to that, the possibility of some mental health issue.

I realize that's a lot to throw out. I'm just wondering if there's one thing you can point at as the thing that tends to unify their background stories: what would it be?

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Joy Smith has her hand up. We can only have one, so Ms. Smith, go ahead.

[Joy Smith]

Here's what I've seen. Imagine a cute guy who a young girl is really interested in. This is in River Heights, Winnipeg, which is upper middle class, where the girls are going to a sports event at the community centre in the summer. The parents give them cellphones. They take care of them. They're good parents.

The cute guys come, but really they're traffickers. The girls don't know this. They get the girls' trust, they start taking them to parties, they give them just a little bit of drugs—not a lot, but just enough to keep them going—and then they want payback for all these gifts. That's one way, and a very common way, that individual entrepreneurs, I'll call them, get together to make a lot of money off young girls. That particular girl I'm speaking about ended up jumping off a bridge in the middle of December. Fortunately, she did not die; she took a year to recover. That is organized crime: gangs and things like that. They recruit all the time. It's just part of what they do.

In all my years, the experience that I found the most common was that someone was specifically targeting that kid. Also, I found that kids who were sexually abused are more vulnerable to being trafficked. It's like it's expected of them—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Can I just ask Ms. Redsky, because for the indigenous point of view I suspect maybe someone—

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Mr. Reid, I'm sorry. We only have three minutes left now because you've taken five of the eight.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay.