I'm certainly no expert on the statistics, and I don't have any data to support what you have said. I also love Ms. Wesley's passion for the work she does.
My understanding of Bill C-36 is that sex trade workers are not charged under this law. At least in my city, we do not target the sex trade the way Ms. Wesley suggests, and we don't target the sex trade workers. We have not for years. We are targeting the abusers who are involved with the most vulnerable. Very often, that's youth.
My question, if I may ask, would be how does Ms. Wesley suggest we protect the youth who are involved if we don't have laws against those who procure them and they haven't met the threshold of human trafficking?
The other thing that we do in our city is work with the victims or with the sex trade workers, if they want to work with us, to provide them safe resources. We do not force them to testify the way we historically did many years ago.
I began working in this field in around 2003, and I was working on the prosecution side—I believe my first was 2005 or 2007. We do not have the practice of forcing those involved in the sex trade industry to, one, co-operate with us or, two, testify.
My biggest concern with repealing this law completely would be how we protect people when they don't fall within the laws of human trafficking, sexual assault or assault, but are simply being recruited and there's no law to protect from that.
If a girl or boy came to their school resource officer and said, “Hey, this girl in my group home or school is really attempting to get me involved and I need help,” where's the law that applies to that situation, and how do we prevent it? That's how I would respond to that question.