Justice Committee on May 29th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this meeting of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights as we resume our study of human trafficking in Canada.

It's a great pleasure for us to be joined by our colleagues from the other place, Senator Mobina Jaffer and Senator Marilou McPhedran.

We also welcome our colleague from the House of Commons, Mr. Rhéal Fortin.

I ask that everyone speak for 8 to 10 minutes, no more, because we want to have time for questions.

We will proceed in the order that appears on the agenda.

We'll start with Senator Jaffer.

[Mobina S.B. Jaffer, Senator, British Columbia, Lib.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, deputy chairs, and members of the committee, for allowing me this opportunity to discuss the devastating reality of human trafficking in Canada.

After having carefully read the transcripts of your previous meetings, I saw that you had already received many excellent recommendations from your witnesses. While keeping those in mind, I would like to add three of my own recommendations, which will target the fundamental causes of human trafficking.

Today I will orient my remarks on three main points of human trafficking. I have provided notes to you, but I'm not going to follow them loyally because I have to get through this, so I'm going to try to just skip through.

My three points are, one, the urgent need to educate people on child cybersex trafficking; two, human trafficking during international sporting games such as the Olympics; and three, sex tourism.

Honourable members, I'm asking you when you do this report to look outside of the normal way of doing a report. I have suggested a template because, in my 17 years here and beforehand as well, there have been so many reports. I suggest a template, just a humble suggestion. Whatever you recommend to Justice, ask them by what date they can implement and follow through. I humbly suggest that you write every recommendation that you make with the idea of implementation. That is where we will stop this trafficking.

For me, education is needed for cybersex trafficking, sex tourism, and international sporting events. All of this leads to sexual assault. The biggest thing is the demand for sex. That's what leads to sexual abuse.

For cybersex, number one, by educating people on cybersex trafficking, we raise awareness on this terrible crime and we start a conversation with people. Cybersex trafficking is a type of sex trafficking that exposes all children globally to countless predators. Underage boys and girls, some even toddlers, are forced to perform sexual activities in front of a camera.

A really sad fact is that, of 60 countries, Canada ranks in the top three for hosting websites and images and selling material containing child sexual abuse. It is absolutely shocking that our country plays a role in endorsing the explicit content of child cybersex trafficking. Unfortunately, it's a horrifying truth.

In November 2017, nine children were rescued in the Philippines by International Justice Mission and the police forces. Victims of sexual online exploitation and trafficking, these seven girls and two boys were as young as two years old to nine years old. The arrested suspect in the Philippines allegedly produced and sent sexually explicit images of very young children via social media to Canadians and others in exchange for money. There was a Saskatchewan man who was sentenced to 12 years in jail for his involvement in this crime.

Educating people by starting the conversation is key to raising awareness.

My first recommendation is that we need to put an end to cybersex. I read your transcripts, and I know that there are ways to do this. I won't repeat that. You already have that in mind, but I ask that one of your main recommendations would be that we have to stop cybersex.

My second point is that sexual exploitation is very present during international sporting events such as the Olympic Games. I come from B.C. where we had the Olympic Games, and we took every measure to have zero tolerance for people being trafficked to our country for the games.

At this point I want to recognize Mr. Nicholson.

Mr. Nicholson, you left a tremendous legacy when you took a stand that there would be no women trafficked into Canada during the games, and I want to thank you because I know you played a very important role.

I got involved in this issue in 2005 when Germany was bringing in almost 100,000 women, and they were building warehouses because prostitution is legal in Germany. With financial support from Sweden, women's groups and people like me were able to stop women being trafficked into Germany, but not quite—40,000 women were trafficked instead of 100,000.

I have two articles that I'm providing to you to give you an idea of what I am saying.

For the Olympics, with the help of then minister Nicholson and others, we were able to stop women being brought in. You would think I would be happy with that, but unfortunately we brought girls from the reserves to my city.

I walked the streets of Vancouver during the games, and I saw girls like Grace, who was 12 years old, and another 10-year-old girl. Men passively participated in the Olympics during the day, and in the evening they hurt our girls. That is why it is very important to make sure we have a template where, whenever we hold international games, we will not have girls trafficked, and we will protect our own girls.

We stopped trafficking into Vancouver from outside, but we hurt our own girls.

My second recommendation is, whenever we host international games in our country, Immigration and CBSA have to be vigilant in making sure that visas are not given to persons who will be trafficked into our country. This needs to be one of our main items on templates, especially when games are held in our country.

My third item is sex tourism. I have worked very hard on the issue of sex tourism. It offends me, and I'm sure it offends you as well, when men from our country go to other countries and hurt young boys and girls. We can stop this. I have details in my presentation, but I will tell you; there's a very easy way to stop it. The way we stop it is to have RCMP officers embedded in the countries where Canadian men go. If those RCMP officers did the investigation that is needed, we could prosecute those men in Canada. We have the act. We have the tools to stop sex tourism, and I am urging you to ask CBSA, ask Minister Goodale, to put one RCMP officer wherever the men go. For example, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Thailand. I can tell you; I've seen it. There is one in Malaysia, and it's already made a difference, so I ask you to put in a simple recommendation, that we have RCMP officers in the embassy to stop sex tourism.

Let me tell you about Daisy. Daisy was one of these girls in the Dominican Republic, who was taken by Yolanda, and Daisy was only 12 years old. She was raped many times a day by Canadian men. With the help of the RCMP and the Malaysian government, Daisy was able to be rescued. Later on, if you want to know how this rescue mission works, I will tell you because I have been part of these rescue missions. I ask that you look at Daisy's story and many other girls' stories, to see that my third recommendation is that we have RCMP officers posted in embassies to help target perpetrators, investigate, and collaborate with local law enforcement to put an end to sex tourism.

I am absolutely convinced that if we had a few prosecutions, men would not pack their bags and go for a holiday for sex tourism. They would realize that when they came home their lives would be right there for everybody to see what kind of work they do. I ask you, please consider this recommendation.

I want to say one thing to you. When I read the transcripts, Mr. Boissonnault and Mr. Rankin spoke a lot about data. Data is important, but at the moment we only get it from the RCMP, and we get it from the courts. We don't collect it from civil society or all victims, so please do not look at data. Look at saving the lives of innocent girls.

When I go on rescue missions, I don't go in myself, but I observe. I see when young girls as small as 10 are brought out of cages, out in the open, by the International Justice Mission, which is a Canadian organization. Three months later, when I go to speak to those girls—they are young girls like my own granddaughter—when we sit in a circle and talk they caress me in a sexual way. I try to stop it, but that's the only thing they know.

Honourable members, you have a lot of power. Please help to keep those innocent girls safe.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Senator Jaffer.

We'll go now to Senator McPhedran.

[Marilou McPhedran, Senator, Manitoba, ISG]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon. Thank you for your invitation to testify before you this afternoon. I'd like to begin by providing a brief overview of my journey and my work regarding human trafficking.

When I returned to my home province of Manitoba 10 years ago, I started to meet with community leaders, including a number of indigenous women leaders, as part of developing a new human rights degree program at the University of Winnipeg. When I met with Diane Redsky, who at the time was the national coordinator of the commission on sex trafficking in Canada, I asked her what I could do as a professor to respond to the work that she was leading at the community level in communities across Canada.

She told me to create a course on sex trafficking, addressing the connection between prostitution and sex trafficking, because indigenous women leaders in particular do not agree with the popular notion that is pro-prostitution: legalize it, and everything will become fine. There's not enough knowledge that supports our analysis, because most of the work has not been done in Canada, because pro-prostitution is such a popular position, and because very often those who take that position argue that there would be less sex trafficking if there was more legalized prostitution.

Let's take a look at this. First of all, gender is highly relevant. In the 2017 global estimates of modern slavery, a collaborative effort between the International Labour Organization, the ILO, and the Walk Free Foundation in partnership with the International Organization for Migration, IOM, there were a couple of findings. Women and girls accounted for more than 99% of all victims of forced sexual exploitation. More than one million of the victims of forced sexual exploitation, 21% approximately, were children under the age of 18. We live in a global society where women and girls are vulnerable in every society. Like any predator, pimps and traffickers exploit these vulnerabilities.

In Canada, the majority of traffickers have been male. We are seeing females charged, but it is usually in relation to working with a man. For global estimates, in 2016, the ILO estimates that 4.8 million people were victims of forced sexual exploitation. Countries that fail to address the demand that fuels sex trafficking or have legalized or decriminalized the commercial sex industry have experienced increases in prostitution and higher numbers of trafficked women and girls to meet an influx of demand.

Between 2009 and 2014, there were 396 victims of police-reported human trafficking in Canada, the vast majority, 93%, female. In Canada, the 2013 RCMP study reported that victims of all domestic sex trafficking cases prosecuted in Canada have been female. The majority have also been youth, and the majority have also been indigenous in origin. It's very important to look at, not only the gender, but also the racialization of sex trafficking.

Victims of human trafficking are generally young. Among victims of human trafficking reported between 2009 and 2014, close to half were between the ages of 18 and 24. Between 2009 to 2014, police identified 459 persons accused of trafficking, 83% male, most commonly between the ages of 18 to 34, 77%.

Ninety-one percent of trafficking victims knew the person who trafficked them, the most common relationships being 23% business, 22% casual acquaintance, and 18% non-spousal intimate partner.

There is a myth about prostitution being the revered oldest profession. We cannot normalize prostitution by thinking of it in terms of a profession. A society that respects the dignity of women does not accept a profession where rape, assault, and humiliation are very real occupational hazards. Prostitution is not the oldest profession, it is the oldest oppression.

Prostitution is a transaction that reflects inequality. As Shelagh Day states in her publication, Prostitution: Violating the Human Rights of Poor Women:

The bargain inherent in prostitution is that women have unwanted sex with men they do not know, and feign enjoyment, in exchange for money. Calling this sex between consenting adults ignores the fundamental inequality in the sexual and human transaction for the women and the men. This is not a transaction in which a woman and a man together, voluntarily, seek to give and receive sexual pleasure. Prostitution is a [business] transaction in which women provide commodified sexual services to men, in exchange for money. It is a form of social and sexual subordination—

—fuelled by our economy.

The majority of prostitutes entered prostitution between 14 and 20 years of age. In the much-vaunted Bedford decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, what was largely still not known or not acknowledged is that one of the main plaintiffs in the case admitted very clearly to prostituting her own daughter before she had reached the age of 13. There is a nature to the type of exploitation that happens that can become endemic and the perpetuation is linked to substance abuse and all kinds of self-harm.

Marginalized women, including indigenous women, particularly indigenous youth, are particularly vulnerable to prostitution and more likely to face violence, including assaults, sexual assaults, and murder.

Street-level prostitution in Canada represents between 5% and 20% of all prostitution. The rest occurs indoors. The majority of prostitutes are female, while almost all clients of prostitution are male. Gender matters.

Did you want me to close? Okay, let me then go to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

We have a vote coming up. I've been told that the vote is going to be at 4:32, so I want to make sure that we hear from all of you before then.

[Marilou McPhedran]

On my point about gender equality, gender equality is at the core of the Swedish law. I know you've been looking at that. I'm going to make just very quick points in closing.

Criminalizing the purchase of sex and subsequently implementing and practising legal measures to penalize the purchase of sex is proven to decrease instances of trafficking. The market for prostitution in Sweden decreased significantly, with street prostitution in particular decreasing by between 30% and 50%, after the prohibition of prostitution. Sex trafficking also decreased in Sweden.

Compared to Sweden, countries such as Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands have seen that the stock of human trafficking goes up with the legalization of prostitution. In comparison, it has gone down in Sweden.

I thank you once again for your attention and for having given us this opportunity to share our expertise on this topic with you. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.

Thank you. Meegwetch. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Madam Senator.

I now give the floor to Mr. Fortin.

[Rhéal Fortin, Québec debout, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak here today.

As you can imagine, this issue — which we have often addressed in the House — concerns us very much in Quebec. The issues seem quite well defined. The solutions also seem quite well defined, but for reasons I do not understand, the government does not seem to want to move forward, which concerns us greatly. I will explain what I mean.

In Quebec, the problem of prostitution is especially concerning for young girls of 18 years of age or less. Our Montreal youth centres have become recruitment points for prostitution. There have in fact been numerous interventions over the past few years. As a member of Parliament, and as a lawyer in my previous life, I had the opportunity of meeting with many of the workers who work with these organizations, who say that they are concerned, and have been for years.

Before the 2011 election, Bloc Québécois MP Maria Mourani presented Bill C-612 on this topic, but the bill died on the Order Paper following the 2011 elections. It was presented again in 2013. In 2015, Ms. Mourani's Bill C-452 was adopted unanimously by the House of Commons. It was then passed by the Senate and received royal assent on June 18, 2015.

What did this bill say? First, it created a presumption that an individual living in the same apartment as a person practising prostitution is reputed to be living from the avails of prostitution, and reputed to be a pimp. This reversed the burden of proof, which meant that these young girls, often very young, as my Senate colleagues have said — young girls who were sometimes 12, 13, 15 or 16 — could avoid having to testify about the guilt of a pimp, who scared them and controlled them. This made it very hard for them to give this kind of evidence. And so the burden of proof was reversed.

The bill also made it possible to seize goods acquired from the avails of prostitution. There was an issue of consistency, and also the matter of consecutive sentences, which seemed to us to be an important deterrent in the fight against prostitution.

Bill C-452, which dealt with these important issues, received royal assent in June 2015. Everyone had hoped that during the summer, it would be enacted, and we could finally tell young girls that we would provide some effective protection. Unfortunately an election was called at the end of the summer, and when the new government took power in October 2015, Bill C-452 was shelved and forgotten about for a time.

Subsequenty, as you know, considerable pressure was applied by my party and its members, and by civil society, and finally the current government decided to introduce another bill, C-38, on February 9, 2017. Bill C-38's only objective was to bring Bill C-452 into effect. It did nothing else. It indicated that we were in agreement with Bill C-452 and that its clauses 1, 2 and 4 would be adopted immediately; as for clause 3 regarding consecutive sentences, that was not certain. People felt that this clause would not survive a constitutional challenge. So the coming into force of consecutive sentences was postponed to a later date.

In February 2017, everyone hoped that the bill would be tabled and that it would be passed quickly. Unfortunately, today, in May 2018, a year and several months later, nothing has yet been done, and moreover, another way of doing nothing is to simply push things forward. And so Bill C-75 was introduced, a mammoth bill, as you know. Bill C-38was included in it, and it will be dealt with at some point.

Since 2011, we have not dealt with this seriously. I am embarrassed to say that I am sitting in a Parliament that is not taking this issue more seriously. We keep postponing it. There were bills C-612, C-452, C-38 and C-75.

Are we in agreement or aren't we? We adopted a bill unanimously, it received royal assent, and then we let things go. Personally, I think it is indecent and embarrassing that these young girls who are counting on us are still having to deal with pimps. People don't just depend on us to extend apologies and say that what happened to them 100, 50 or 200 years ago was very sad. They are counting on us to help eliminate daily, current problems they are facing.

Sometimes there is no solution. It happens. In certain cases, solutions are complicated and take time. However, we are talking here about a problem to which there is a solution we agreed on and had adopted.

Can this order be issued?

That is what I had to say today, Mr. Chair. I'll stop here. I think my message is clear.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much, Mr. Fortin.

I also thank all of our witnesses. This was very enlightening.

Colleagues, my understanding is that the bells will start to ring at 4:02 and that the vote is at 4:32. Can I get unanimous consent that we'll continue when the bells start?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

May I suggest that we probably have to leave at 4:15 or 4:16 to be safe to get there for 4:32? Would everybody be okay if I give five minutes to the Conservatives, five minutes to the Liberals, and five minutes to the NDP for this round of questions? We'll treat everybody the same, and then we'll have to go for the vote.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Anthony Housefather]

Thank you very much.

We'll start with Mr. Nicholson.

By the way, thank you for your very kind comments about Mr. Nicholson. We all enjoy it when a colleague of ours is saluted.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Senator Jaffer, for those comments.

Thank you to all of you for your testimony here today.

Mr. Fortin, this is a very interesting point that you've brought up, and I think you're the first one who has focused on this with respect to the consecutive sentences. I do remember that this was passed by Parliament, and it was on the basis that if you traffic one person, or you traffic 20 people, it's actually a more serious offence if you traffic 20 people. The idea of consecutive sentence was a reflection of that. Now you know, of course, what we're dealing with here in Bill C-75, that this is not going forward, but thank you for making that point.

I don't have much time, but, Senator Jaffer, again, thank you to you and your colleague, Senator McPhedran, for all the work that you are doing on this. You're making a difference on this.

One of the things that you did say was that Canada should prosecute these Canadian men who are going overseas to sexually exploit women and children in these countries, and of course, Canada should. Part of the challenge, you may know, is trying to get evidence on these people when the victims are in southeast Asia, in the Caribbean, or somewhere else. One of the things that we have spoken about over the years is getting the countries themselves involved with these prosecutions. Again, that's not very easy.

Don't you think that is another way to perhaps expedite these things, rather than the more complicated way of getting this person out of there and trying to put together a case here in Canada?

[Mobina S.B. Jaffer]

That would be the ideal way, but the challenge is that the person has already left and come back to our country. As you know, we have the sex tourism legislation so that we can prosecute those people here. The reason I say to have the police officer there is that these people are serial. They go often, and they go to the same places. It is my belief—and I've been wrong before—that if the police officer was able to do a very thorough investigation, if the person saw what was against him, we could get some guilty pleas. Even if we don't get the guilty plea, the fact that we charge them here, people who pack their bags and think that they're going for a sex tourism holiday.... Just three or four examples would make the difference. I think if we can get the investigation done there, ideally, it would be great, I agree with you, if the prosecution happened there, but they come back here and then they hurt our children here. So, it is important that we do the thorough investigation.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I think your point about getting law enforcement on the ground looking into this is absolutely vital. We have investigations with respect to fraud, with respect to trade, and with respect to all different issues here.

[Mobina S.B. Jaffer]

We have investigations with respect to drugs.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

That's right, but there's nothing more important than things like this, trafficking in human beings.

[Mobina S.B. Jaffer]

And they go hand in hand.

Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but they go hand in hand, right?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

They do go hand in hand; I mean, those people who are involved with it.

Senator, did you have a comment on that?

[Marilou McPhedran]

Yes.

I want to build on Senator Jaffer's response to point out, first of all, that prosecutions of this nature have occurred in Sweden, including of a cabinet minister.

I also want to talk about the clarity of the direction to the officers stationed in our embassies, because they're already there. Certainly in South Asia, most of our embassies have RCMP staff, often in the same quarters as the ambassador and staff. It's the clarity of the direction that this needs to be part of their mandate, and the reporting relationship back through their chain of command, that would make a very significant difference here. It's entirely possible.

[Mobina S.B. Jaffer]

If I may add one thing, with the RCMP officers who are there, they have too many things.... They have drugs issues, smuggling issues, and fraud issues. I'm saying that there should be one RCMP officer just for this.

There has been a pilot program in the past. What has happened is that when they're just focused on this, we do get.... We have had one prosecution in B.C. as well, but that was fortuitous. It was somebody who was found out on TV, if you remember that funny face. However, that was just fortuitous. That wasn't our investigation.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

That's right. However, it was the result of the co-operation with other countries around the world on that, which is necessary.

[Mobina S.B. Jaffer]

Absolutely.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you.

I think those are my five minutes, Mr. Chair.