Thank you very much, Mr. Brock. I really respect your experience.
First, I'd like to talk about the statistics. They're extremely troubling. Back in 2015, human trafficking, if you look at the latest StatsCan report.... There were about 300 reported cases per 100,000. In 2019, it's up to 500 reported cases, so that's a 40% increase in just four years.
We know that because of COVID and all kinds of different things happening right now in our country, the numbers are just going up, so it's incredibly disturbing.
You mentioned Senator Ataullahjan's comments in the Senate. I thought she did a very good job.
The reality is.... Where in the world do we have victims, sometimes child victims—I think 25% of people being trafficked are under the age of 18, and they sometimes, quite often, depend on their trafficker for basic necessities of life, such as food and shelter—having to prove in a court of law that they actually feared their traffickers?
Changing this definition, this long-overdue definition—by the way, we decided 23 years ago to make this change—puts an extra tool in the tool box. It's certainly a very complicated issue. It's not going to be the be-all and end-all, but it's going to give another tool to prosecutors in order to enable more victims to come to court. Now there isn't this unfair burden of victims' having to prove that they feared their perpetrators, which in many cases, even the example I brought forward, just isn't the case.