Justice Committee on March 27th, 2018

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses today for sharing their testimony with us.

I have a quick question for you, Ms. Lacey and Ms. Mosley. We have heard across the country that there are two solitudes—there are people being trafficked and there are women and men who are choosing to be in the sex trade. Just so that we can get a picture of this, can you tell us to the best of your knowledge what percentage of women and men in the sex trade here in Ottawa are being trafficked and what percentage are doing this of their own volition?

[Jodi Mosley]

I have been informed that if we look at the stats that...like, working in a strip joint, as we said, 70% of women who are working in the sex trade are actually being trafficked.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

What percentage of men?

[Jodi Mosley]

We don't have those stats yet. They're not coming forward. What we do understand is that it's more clandestine for men. It's harder to admit and it's more shameful, so we don't have those stats right now.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

That's fine.

[Jodi Mosley]

But we do know that 90% of people who are being trafficked are women.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I have a question for you. The Action Coalition on Human Trafficking in Edmonton said that 55% of the people they deal with are being trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation, 45% for labour, and 10% is a mix of both. What's the breakdown here in Ottawa, to the best of your knowledge?

[Jodi Mosley]

I don't know that.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay. No problem.

To the task force, thank you for being here and for your emotional and frank testimony. I appreciate that this is not easy work. Thank you for doing it.

What is the work that you or any of your counterparts do for the hotels that are complicit? Do you do any outreach to the taxi people or the Uber drivers? Do you do any outreach to the health care professionals that Ms. Leach talked about, in terms of sensitizing them to who may be coming through their doors?

[Sgt Damien Laflamme]

With respect to the education with the hospitals, we've done several presentations to CHEO as well as to the Civic Hospital. We anticipate more of these education and awareness presentations in the future.

Your questions were threefold....

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

What about the hotels?

[Sgt Damien Laflamme]

We currently sit with a lot of the hotel associations and we conduct presentations with them. We have an initiative that we're trying to spearhead at this particular point with them. We were planning on having flyers or posters put up in hotels, with their consent, whether it's in a room or in public areas, to say that the hotels....

We do suspect that some hotels have employees who are complicit. I don't think hotels per se are complicit. It's very difficult to extract information, because under freedom of information, they're not necessarily obliged to provide us with any information, for that matter.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

FINTRAC is now providing you with financial information. We have been advised to look at legislation protecting the pimps' and traffickers' phones so that it doesn't take a year's worth of work to try to compel getting information from their phones. Is there something similar we could do with hotel information? I'll just let you ponder that.

The other piece is this. It came up with our taxi driver when we were in Edmonton. After chatting with him for a bit, he said, “I think I dropped a woman off at Travelodge South who was trafficked. She said she was from Vancouver. She had a francophone accent. She kept talking in French. She said, ‘Pick me up in 48 hours. I have to go back to Vancouver.’” He said he had never thought of it that way, and that I should talk to the taxi association and to the Uber drivers. He also said, “What happens, though, if I call? Will the police arrest a woman who's doing this of her own choice?” I said that was really up to each jurisdiction. It's not a problem to sell sex; it's a problem to buy sex. He said, “If somebody is being trafficked and I call the cops, could they help that woman or man?” I said, yes, that's what we're learning.

He found it very interesting, because he didn't want to be part of the chain that delivered someone on the human trafficking chain.

[Sgt Damien Laflamme]

We frequently receive “crime stopper” tips that we act on, and those, as you know, are anonymous. A lot of the time they corroborate information that we either know or suspect.

There is an initiative that I'm aware of in Houston, where they've provided a lot of education to the taxi drivers and Uber drivers. I believe they're also posting ads in their vehicles. It's an initiative we're hoping to undertake as well. I would suggest that if we were in a position to present to those types of groups, if they wanted to bring information forward that was confidential—

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

You could act on it.

[Sgt Damien Laflamme]

—we could act on it. Absolutely. We could deal with the information as source information or through crime stoppers.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

You said you reached out to 21 sex trade workers, and two took you up on the offer to leave the trade. What was that conversation like when those two women—I'm assuming they're women—said that they wanted to leave and then you helped with the support group around them?

[Sgt Damien Laflamme]

Yes, they were women. The particular woman I was making reference to, who moved out of province, we had dealt with on three separate occasions in the fall.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

So it was your fourth ask.

[Sgt Damien Laflamme]

We had contacted her and approached her through a proactive initiative. We reached out and offered some services, at which point she indicated to us that she was actually independent, was travelling the country, and this was the means for her to pay for the travel and sightseeing.

On the third attempt, she realized that she was dealing with the same group of people, that we were not chastising her or putting her down, and that we were offering her services. We went over a lot of the safety plans that we usually discuss with all the sex trade workers. At some point, I guess the lightbulb came on, and she realized that we were there for her. She decided to take us up on our offer, and we were able to get her a plane ticket home within the next 12 hours.

[Randy Boissonnault, Liberal, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Mr. Rankin.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

There so much incredible information and so little time.

I would like to start with you, Dr. Benoit. First, I'm delighted you could join us from Victoria. I want to salute you for the enormous contribution your research has made over 20 years.

You said two-thirds of the sex workers you interviewed said they had little or no confidence in the police, and you gave three or four reasons for that. The logical question is that if the police need to do better, what do you recommend they should do to improve their ability to detect potential victims of human trafficking?

[Dr. Cecilia Benoit]

Some of the suggestions have already been mentioned, but in particular, I think police could have better liaison relationships with community organizations. Of course, that would include the organizations that are represented today, but also sex worker organizations in the community who come in contact with a lot of people who are looking for other services. They could be health services, food, or safe sex supplies. Those groups have contact as well with people who may be in danger for human trafficking.

In Victoria, where I'm located, the police have done a wonderful job to try to increase sexual assault reporting for sex workers in the community. They have done that by connecting closely with different health and social services as well as the local sex worker organization to assign police officers to work with these organizations and to receive training around how to be respectful, non-judgmental, not to use stigmatizing language, and to increase the reporting for all kinds of victimization such as sexual assault, but also if there is human trafficking.

There is a lot that police can do in some jurisdictions. It seems that here in Ottawa, but also in Victoria, the police are making some strides in that way.

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

As a social scientist doing your research, you started your remarks by giving us some idea of the kind of evidence you have been able to gather. We have heard in different places, from Statistics Canada and from people on the front line, the community service providers, about the difficulty in acquiring useful statistics on human trafficking and related activities. Has that been your experience, and if so, do you have any recommendations on how we can improve the gathering of statistics?