Evidence of meeting #89 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was trafficked.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
I'm going to go to Mr. McKinnon and Ms. Khalid, who both have questions.
Ms. Khalid, do you have a short question?
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
I'll let Mr. McKinnon go first because he hasn't had a chance.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Thanks, Chair.
This is a quick question for Ms. Gray. You spoke of freedom businesses as a useful tool to help women transition away from that life into a more normal life. Could you describe what a freedom business is? How does one recognize one, how does one find one, and how does one set one up?
4:55 p.m.
Graduate Student, Faculty of Education, York University, As an Individual
Thank you for the question. An example of one of the freedom businesses I've visited is Freeset, which employs 250 women who were trafficked. They're taught a variety of skills, such as learning how to put textile printing on clothing, and sewing. There are other freedom businesses that are cafés and restaurants, where the women are service providers in the sense of customer service and waitressing and that type of thing.
In the States there are also freedom businesses that we could look to as a North American model. In terms of someone setting one up, from my understanding, there's nothing in place for that particular activity to exist in Canada. However—
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
4:55 p.m.
Graduate Student, Faculty of Education, York University, As an Individual
It's an opportunity for women who are trafficked to receive an income and to have a community of women with lived experience who can relate to them. As well, it offers freedom through counselling and also gives them life skills training.
One of the freedom businesses I visited, for example, taught women how to use ATMs. They can give women the opportunity to find an apartment when the time comes. They really walk alongside these women to help them reintegrate into society, which is therefore freedom for them.
4:55 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
Ms. Gray, you spoke about the importance of including academia in the conversation with respect to research and data collection, and I really appreciate that because I think that is lacking.
The task force recently ended. Ms. Smith, I think you may have more experience or more knowledge about this. To what extent was data collection a big priority in that?
Ms. Gray, how can data collection be improved in terms of collecting it from across the region?
4:55 p.m.
Graduate Student, Faculty of Education, York University, As an Individual
I'll speak to the second part of the question, how it can be improved.
A point I tried to make is that we need to look at this issue through an interdisciplinary lens. So we're talking a lot about reporting statistics, which is important to understand the magnitude of the issue, but what are we doing in psychology? What are we doing in social work? The front line workers, how are we assessing the effectiveness of the programming that they're providing? From education, what needs to be embedded in curriculum as an awareness campaign? How do we reach youth on social media?
I think that data collection really needs to look at mobilizing, and I mentioned the academic community because that's where you can find folks doing work that intersects with these areas. I know folks who are doing great work in youth homelessness at York, for example, and they could provide information on trafficking. So just finding mechanisms and avenues for folks who are doing research in those areas related to trafficking would be helpful.
5 p.m.
Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.
I'm sorry; would you give me the first question? I was just listening to Mikhaela.
5 p.m.
Liberal
Iqra Khalid Liberal Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON
How effective was the national task force on human trafficking, and in what ways could it be improved with respect to data collection specifically?
5 p.m.
Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.
I think data collection has to be a big part of it. The strength of the national action plan was in providing programs for victims of human trafficking—education, things like that. It wasn't centred so much on data collection as it was on that aspect of it. I think we haven't arrived at a really good data collection program because the focus hasn't been there.
Human trafficking is an extremely complex issue and permeates all of our Canadian society. To have improvements made, as I said earlier, we need to go to the NGOs that take care of the victims every day, go to the police forces and others, and collaboratively put this data collection together.
The national action plan was a very good beginning. I think we need to grow on that foundation and be sure that we put in more elements to help us. We're improving from 20 years ago. At least Canada is talking about it now. When we first started way back then—I'm sounding old—nobody felt there was any human trafficking in Canada. Our understanding is very much different now.
I'm very confident that by working together and being very specific, we can do a much better job of data gathering, but we have to focus on it, and it has to be one big topic that we all talk about and contribute to, to make it successful.
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Thank you so much to our panel. You've all been incredibly helpful.
Ms. Redsky, Ms. Smith, Mr. Bouchard, and Ms. Gray, we really appreciate your advocacy on this issue and your assistance to the committee.
Members of the committee, you have a budget before you for the 34 witnesses we are going to be hearing while we are in Ottawa. Twenty-four of them are coming here and 10 are by video conference.
Mr. Nicholson, would you move the budget?
5 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Anthony Housefather
Is everybody okay with the budget?
(Motion agreed to [See Minutes of Proceedings])
It is unanimously approved.
The meeting is adjourned.
