There are so many answers to that question that I don't think time is going to allow us. I am finalizing a brief that I will be submitting post-presentation to committee for your review.
The first thing I want to answer is by saying that with PCEPA we have had a means to discover acts perpetrated against oppressed persons and against minors in the short time it's been on the books. One thing we need to consider is that of those 427 victim survivors who have been of minor age—whom I've had the privilege to support and journey with, along with their families and their communities—regardless of whether charges were laid there's grey data that we don't have on this issue.
The majority of them didn't have agency at that point and didn't understand that it wasn't a decision they made to involve themselves in the sex trade. For most of them, it took years of care with trauma and supports, and it's ongoing.
I'm going to be 60 this year. I remember the early nineties, when Kelly Mombourquette was murdered as a 14-year-old. The papers stated that she was a problematic child in the system and that she was a child prostitute. We've come a long way from that. We don't need that kind of media reporting.
However, most people who have experienced human trafficking in the sex trade do not know that there was a differentiation because of industry. It's teaching those in all industries, working with those who are in the sex trade to understand what's happening, getting that information out there and supporting their rights for safety regardless of what we think about other things. We're all human beings. We can talk about this like they're the 427 case files that I've worked on since 2013, or we can talk about it like they're persons.
I have a 12-year-old girl who did not know she was escorting. She did not understand what was happening. By the time she was aged 15 and had allowed a sex buyer to insert a sponge for her to perform, she was suffering from sepsis and infections. She had no clue about what had happened to her. Yes, she was sex trafficked, but it happened within the sex industry. We have to understand those intersectional points and how it puts more oppression forward.
I had the opportunity to work with the Anishinabe community as a welcomed guest in Manitoulin Island, the largest unceded territory in Canada, to see what was happening and what they were saying. I was made aware that there is no word for prostitution in the indigenous culture. That's colonized thinking that's infiltrated their communities and taken a foothold.
Regardless of what we believe about all of this, I'm not talking about morality. I'm talking about having an understanding, about a sex buyer knowing that somebody is 12 years old. How are we going to differentiate? How are we going to identify if we don't have acts against perpetrators to do the investigations appropriately?
How are we going to put this into our universities as a course...on the sex industry? Is it going to be in our high schools as a course that you can take? Is it going to be part of the middle school guidance counsellors' conversations with our children as they're preparing for high school? How about that kindergarten person in a little sharing circle, talking about their vision of growing up and being in a profession? Is it going to include saying that they want to be in the sex industry? We need to understand that we have a bigger responsibility than just individual rights in this conversation.
I implore you to do your homework. Prevention does work. I trained over 5,000 professionals last year. I didn't endorse arrests or witnesses. I talked about the trauma that is in both sectors of this conversation, where we have to be presenting solutions.