Justice Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Welcome to meeting number four of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights. Pursuant to a motion adopted on Tuesday, February 8, the committee is meeting to review the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website.

With regard to the speaking list, the committee clerk and I will do our best to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

I'd like to now welcome our first round of witnesses, who I believe are from the YMCA in Halifax: Ms. Abiagom, Ms. Gagnon and Ms. Suokonautio. We also have Ms. Joy Smith, founder and president of the Joy Smith Foundation.

We'll give five minutes to each panellist. The YMCA from Halifax can go first, then we'll have Ms. Smith right after. Then you'll have a question and answer period of rounds with every party.

It's over to the YMCA.

[Miia Suokonautio, Executive Director, YWCA Halifax]

Thank you, everybody.

First of all, how shocked the YMCA must be that they're not here, because we're the YWCA of Halifax.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

That's my bad. I'm sorry about that.

[Miia Suokonautio]

They didn't get the memo. They're all off having their supper already.

Thank you so much, everybody, for having us. It's really a tremendous pleasure to be here. I'm Miia Suokonautio. I'm the executive director of YWCA Halifax. Temi Abiagom and Charlene Gagnon are with me. We come to you as a team.

I want to start by saying that we're very much carrying the stories and experiences of survivors and victims, thrivers and victors. We were talking quite humbly about what a great responsibility this is.

I will do our five minutes here, but any one of us can answer questions. Temi manages our youth exploitation team, which provides direct services. Charlene is the manager of our systems approach to exploitation, working with our government and community partners.

I begin also by highlighting [Technical difficulty—Editor], but also something really remarkable that is happening in Nova Scotia. It's a movement. It's the Nova Scotia trafficking and exploitation services system—we call it TESS—partnership. It includes more than 70 partners across the province, including the YWCA. These partners have worked together for more than five years. Although this thoughtful and committed group has built consensus around practice and human rights as related to exploitation, there is no consensus among the group about the decriminalization or legalization of the industry.

We will focus our testimony or our comments on Bill C-36 itself, but will not be commenting on the broader question of decriminalizing or legalizing the sex trade, because we feel a real responsibility to our partners.

With that, in watching prior testimony from last week, we understand that there are in fact really two questions before you now. The first is this: Does Bill C-36 protect people who are being exploited? That's a very important question. Is it protecting people? The second is this: Does it cause harm to vulnerable Canadians?

On the first question, if Bill C-36 protects people who are being exploited, the short answer is no. Bill C-36 is not protecting people who are being exploited. Again, we know that you've heard expert testimony from our colleagues from across the country. In our experience, people continue to be exploited. Even when there is no pimp, they are still being assaulted when engaged in transactional sex. Even though we have special Crown prosecutors and special policing units and there are no licensed strip clubs in Nova Scotia, the issue of exploitation is rife in Nova Scotia. It permeates the child welfare system. It is a crisis among indigenous women and girls. School administrators and teachers are at odds over how to stem the tide.

In Nova Scotia's youth correctional facility, Waterville, as well as in the adult system, almost without exception girls in detention have been exploited. We are also seeing increasing cases among boys and trans women. Among the dubious distinctions of our Atlantic province is that we have the highest per capita rate of human trafficking in the country.

In short, we have no evidence that would support the claim that Bill C-36 has prevented or ended the exploitation of vulnerable Canadians in our province.

On the second question, on whether Bill C-36 is causing harm, again, our experience is very similar to what has been described in previous testimony presented to you, in that Bill C-36 has prevented people from coming forward if they've been assaulted by a john. The bill has also pushed the sex industry further underground, into increasingly unsafe conditions.

In fairness, I want to add that, at the same time, as we understand it, there have been some benefits of Bill C-36 in the courts. If there is a case in which exploitation by a third party does not meet the standard of a human trafficking charge as defined by the Criminal Code, Bill C-36 has been used instead to hold perpetrators accountable. The bill can subsequently be assistive to the Crown and police, but whether it harms or helps victims has not been proven. That a small proportion of cases makes it to the point of prosecution may in fact make this potential benefit less consequential. We must consider the balance of harms.

I know I'm going to run out of time, but maybe the YMCA comment will give me just a minute more. I have a couple of further considerations.

One is that we have to understand and be transparent about the fact that this discussion is deeply affected by our values about sex and commercial transactions for sex. Whether we care to admit it, our values are squarely in the middle of this discussion. We urge you to prevent morality from infringing upon the rights of Canadians, including sex workers. Although you may personally hold views about the impropriety of sex work, we must not allow the human rights of those involved in the sex industry to be denied because of it.

Secondly, we remind you that there are already a host of prohibitions and laws on a variety of related matters, including sexual exploitation of youth, assault, sexual assault and human trafficking. Revisiting C-36 does not mean these laws are no longer in force.

Lastly, exploitation is in fact a very difficult thing to pin down. For example, young people are being exploited in many ways in our community for simple things like housing, food or access to substances. While this act of trading is technically covered by Bill C-36, it is very rarely applied in these cases and does not address the underlying needs of youth that precipitated their vulnerability.

Finally, what do we recommend? According to one of our local colleagues, there is no way we can arrest our way out of this problem. There is no silver bullet for addressing exploitation. There is no quick fix. Pretending that we can bring an end to the sex industry is a chimera.

Instead, if we are serious about addressing exploitation, we must understand that commercial sexual exploitation preys on vulnerability, and fundamentally vulnerability is best addressed in the context of the social determinants of health, not the legal system. It involves adequate income, good housing, food security, support for families, education, self-determination and much more. These more than anything else will give us the best hope to address exploitation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you.

I will be using little cards for any other witnesses. I'll give a 30-second warning and an “out of time” warning. Just keep that in mind. I don't like interrupting.

It's over to you, Mrs. Smith, for five minutes.

[Joy Smith, Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and distinguished members of this committee.

I want to recognize and acknowledge that our offices are located on treaty territory, the original lands of the Anishinabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

I am a former member of Parliament. I worked hard during my time as an MP to bring the human trafficking issue to the public radar screen here in Canada. The Joy Smith Foundation was founded in 2011 to combat human trafficking. Since then, I volunteer every single day at my foundation to continue the work to bring awareness about human trafficking in Canada and to help survivors and their families restore their lives.

Last October, we launched the National Human Trafficking Education Centre, the first of its kind in Canada. The centre provides free education for parents, teachers, law enforcement, service providers and others. We have 64 instructor-led modules that are currently being put online so that Canadians can receive much-needed information about how traffickers operate and what they can do to protect themselves from these predators.

We have worked on over 6,000 files of victims and their families, to restore their lives and help the victims reintegrate into the communities and back into their families. Our prevention and intervention programs at the NHTEC will be online for easy access for Canadians as soon as we get the translations completed in French and English and into some indigenous languages.

A five-minute presentation at committee today does not give justice to the complex issue of trafficking in persons and how important Bill C-36 is to the safety of our youth. It was the catalyst that set the groundwork for so many victims of human trafficking to be able to speak out and bring their perpetrators to justice. It helped me, when I was a member of Parliament, to bring the survivors' voice to the public radar screen.

When I was in Parliament, I had two bills passed to combat human trafficking: Bill C-268 and Bill C-310. They are embedded in the Criminal Code of Canada today. I had widespread support from all sides of the House at the time I was passing these bills, and I give credit to the survivors for telling their stories.

Members from all sides of the House supported these bills, and that was critical, because it opened a nationwide conversation about human trafficking and how its victims were suffering. More than that, Canadians, including the survivors themselves, started their own organizations to combat human trafficking.

Bill C-36 must remain, and parliamentarians must do more to protect their constituents from these predators, because the traffickers are in every constituency in our country. Victims of human trafficking are the recipients of horrid abuse and often lose their lives. To legalize prostitution would be a travesty of massive proportions against our most vulnerable populations, our LGBTQ, our immigrants and our youth.

I see it over and over again every single day: the suffering of young victims of human trafficking and what they endure at the hands of human traffickers, traffickers who seek to make copious amounts of money off their victims, as much as $260,000 to $280,000 per victim per year. That is why they do it. Most of the victims enter the sex trade at a very young age, as young as 12 to 14 years, and some even younger.

Before Bill C-36 came on the scene, there was nothing that effectively reduced the demand for the exploitation of underage girls and boys from traffickers, and in criminalizing the johns who create the demand for sexual services, Bill C-36 has helped curtail the human trafficking.

Human traffickers are the third parties who promote and capitalize on the demand for sex by facilitating this practice. They initially pose as benevolent helpers, providers or protectors to those innocent victims, who are lured into the modern-day slave trade. Bill C-36 addresses this issue as one of the objectives that has helped greatly in bringing these perpetrators to justice: It recognized trafficked victims as individuals who are lured and live through the horrid human trafficking experience with horrendous physical and mental traumas on their shoulders.

For the first time in Canadian criminal law, the purchase of sexual services is illegal. This helps in bringing traffickers to justice, because this offence makes prostitution itself an illegal practice, but this is a balanced law, because these adults who choose to sell themselves for sex are protected by law and can do so with no ramifications.

Recently, in Winnipeg, we were able to lobby to shut down the licensing of massage parlours and strip clubs. This is where human traffickers often place their victims.

Thank you so very much for this time today, because I have to say loud and clear, Bill C-36 is very helpful and very successful in doing these kinds of things.

In conclusion, parliamentarians must strive to keep Bill C-36 and do so much more to ensure trafficking in persons is no longer a factor in Canada.

Meegwetch.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Smith. We appreciate your testimony.

I'll now go to our first round of questions, beginning with a six-minute round with Mr. Morrison.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Chair; and thank you to both the YWCA Halifax and the Joy Smith Foundation for being here this afternoon.

Ms. Smith, I have a fairly extensive background in crime prevention and crime reduction. I want to get into crime reduction a bit later, but for prevention, especially, we're talking with youth, 12 to 14 years old, and I know how difficult it is to get into prevention. It takes 20 years, in some cases, for a cycle to go through to actually have an impact, and I think a lot of people just get to the point where they give up. It's so important for us to really look at focusing on the prevention; in other words, deterring the 12- to 14-year-old girls and boys now from getting into that particular predicament.

Reading through your review, it looks like you really are trying to do that. Can you help us in the panel here to understand what your plans would be and how you could start working on the prevention? That, to me, is the Holy Grail.

[Joy Smith]

You're totally correct. Education is our greatest weapon to combat human trafficking, and we need to work together to end that. We go into schools all across this country, from coast to coast to coast, with our prevention programs. In those prevention programs, we talk about how the traffickers work, how they can be lured over the Internet, all the factors to prevent this from happening. Our youth in Canada are very smart, and if they get this information, they do very well.

We have countless evaluations. We evaluate all our presentations and we have thousands of them. Over and over again, we hear from students, “Thank you for this presentation; I'm breaking off with my boyfriend because he suggested...,” and they describe the inappropriate things the individual was suggesting. Once they learn about how traffickers work, the prevention piece is huge, and that's a major part of our programs in the National Human Trafficking Education Centre.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

On the prevention side, how are you working? There were some negative comments on law enforcement and their involvement, and maybe they aren't trained appropriately. I know from experience that within the RCMP, for example, there was extensive training and trying to work with youth groups and help out.

You mentioned a bit about that. Are you actively involved with the training of some of the law enforcement agencies in your area?

[Joy Smith]

We are, and not only in our area but all across Canada. We just finished a huge amount of training with the RCMP in the Windsor area. There's a lot of trafficking that happens off the Great Lakes.

We work hand in hand with law enforcement. Policing is changing in this day and age. It's changing so they look at how they can connect with the community, how they can connect with youth to prevent bad things from happening. Therefore, we do a lot of training of RCMP and also municipal police forces across our country, and it's very well received.

We're in a new era now, and I'm very hopeful. I think we can end human trafficking with the knowledge that students get to protect themselves, as well as with the training of the judiciary and of law enforcement, and we're very active in that area.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Okay, and on Bill C-36 in particular, in terms of penalties, how can we improve the legislation, and is there an opportunity there to also address prevention?

[Joy Smith]

There should be greater emphasis, if there is any improvement on Bill C-36, on imposing the prevention piece and getting the prevention piece out there. There's little said about the prevention of human trafficking, so we've made that one of our major focuses at NHTEC.

For Bill C-36, my very strong recommendation is that a fulsome prevention program be put in place. We can talk about partnerships with the different jurisdictions. Having been an MP for 12 years, I have found that there's little connection between the federal, provincial and municipal governments. There needs to be more liaison between the three on the prevention side, and we could have a recommendation put in Bill C‑36 to address that issue.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

In closing, I want to thank you so much for your volunteer work. What a great project.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Morrison.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I'll go to Ms. Brière, for six minutes.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to welcome the witnesses and thank them for being with us today.

My question is for the YWCA Halifax representatives.

You said that Nova Scotia had the highest per capita rate of human trafficking in the country, according to the most recent figures from Statistics Canada.

Do you think a multidisciplinary approach is a better way to raise awareness and more effectively support victims?

[Charlene Gagnon, Manager, Advocacy, Research and New Initiatives, YWCA Halifax]

I can take that question, as I'm doing a lot of work around the systemic responses to human trafficking and sexual exploitation in Nova Scotia.

We are definitely implementing an interdisciplinary approach to dealing with this issue. In addition to our wonderful partners within law enforcement, the public prosecution service and victims services in Nova Scotia, we have brought education and health to the table. In the last year, we've been able to embed a core learning component around human trafficking and sexual exploitation in the grade 7 curriculum across the province of Nova Scotia. We also, of course, work with our numerous grassroots on-the-ground service providers, which are working with and providing supports to survivors, victims and those who identify as sex workers. It's important to note that not everybody uses the same language as we do in terms of how we talk about and label this issue, so we try to be inclusive of all experiences of people who are sex trade-engaged, whether they identify their experiences to be exploitative or trafficking or not.

Yes, we are very much of that opinion and are creating a community of practice here in Nova Scotia that is interdisciplinary. It is bringing a number of different stakeholders, systems and partners to the table for us to really take a holistic approach to this issue and not just focus on it as being a problem with pimps and perpetrators. The underlying root causes of human trafficking and exploitation are key to prevention, in our view.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

The United Nations definition of “trafficking in persons” refers to the following elements:

…threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability….

Could you give us some real-life examples of what that looks like in your area and, if you can, other areas?

Lastly, could you talk about the subtle ways used to exert control over victims?

[Temitope Abiagom, Manager, Nova Scotia Transition and Advocacy for Youth (NSTAY), YWCA Halifax]

Control comes in a variety of forms, so there is no single way by which youth are being controlled. We are seeing trading, which was highlighted in our presentation. Trading, for youth and young people, means trading basic needs—housing, income and food—for sex. That's one of the forms we see. Also, we are seeing a number of cases of trafficking, in which they are tricked and lured. They are being controlled, and we are also seeing the issue of power dynamics with the people they trust.

Those are some of the things that go on in terms of sexual exploitation and human trafficking with the youth in Nova Scotia. We see many cases in rural communities. We see them in marginalized communities. We see it in the school system, and most especially we see it in the child welfare system. In the work I do on child protection, I see that many of the youth who come through our doors have either been involved in child protection themselves as youth or have parents who have had involvement in child protection.

These are some of the underlying, root causes of the control. It goes back to the vulnerability, which we talked about in the presentation, which is most often the root cause of control.

[Élisabeth Brière, Liberal, Sherbrooke, QC]

Thank you.

I have 30 seconds left.

I'd like to know whether the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline has made a difference, from what you've observed.

If Ms. Smith could provide a brief answer, it would be appreciated.

[Joy Smith]

I believe all partnerships across this country are extremely important, and the hotline, of course, is one of those partnerships and an extremely important component. You know, it takes a nation working together, everybody working together, to stop human trafficking and prevent this kind of horrendous crime from happening. As far as the hotline is concerned, there are a lot of really good things that are happening there as well.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Smith.

Now we go to Madame Michaud.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for joining us and sharing their expertise.

I'm trying to educate myself more on this far from straightforward issue. I've started reading an essay on the subject by a Quebec author. I haven't gotten that far yet, but I did read that even feminists are split into two camps: those who want to abolish prostitution and those who support sex workers. All that to say, finding solutions isn't easy.

Ms. Gagnon, you said that you weren't necessarily going to take a position on the matter, and I understand, but you said that we, as committee members, needed to consider two questions. One, does the bill adequately protect people who are being sexually exploited? Two, does the bill cause them harm?

You answered both of those questions. Your recommendation to address sexual exploitation is to work on a number of fronts at the same time, including social housing and education. It might not be possible to put an end to the sex industry, in your view.

I'd like you to talk about the other fronts we can work on to address this issue.

If legislation is one of the solutions, what can we, as parliamentarians, do to make a difference?

[Charlene Gagnon]

Here in Nova Scotia, we are really trying to adopt a public health approach to dealing with and addressing this crisis that we have here in the province. A public health approach can look at this issue more holistically and centre the experiences, the victimization, the violence and the trauma that can happen within the context of the sex trade when it is coming about through exploitation and trafficking.

I really appreciate your position of trying to balance out the variety of opinions on the legal status of sex work in this country. As a partnership, we have reached consensus on how to approach the issue, what we need to do in terms of prevention and how we should be providing supports to individuals on the issue, but we have not been able to reach consensus on the legal status of sex work. We feel that we don't really have to. Sometimes that stalls the work that needs to be done to support people who are coming to us for services, programs and assistance, however that looks, so by implementing a public health approach to the issue [Technical difficulty—Editor] upstream again.

I totally agree with Joy Smith that prevention is key in order to have any kind of effect in stemming the tide of people who get involved in this. It helps us take a holistic approach, because here in Nova Scotia as well, we're dealing with an issue of what has been referred to as peer recruiting, which is where victims also hold the position of being what the criminal justice system would define as an offender. When you have youth who are influencing and encouraging other youth to participate in the sex trade and we take a justice-based approach, it can be really difficult to pull apart who's a victim and who's an offender.

By taking a public health approach, we can deal with all of the trauma and all of the issues that are presenting themselves to us and focus in on supporting youth and young adults who are engaged in the sex trade.