I'd like to thank the committee for having us. I want to begin by thanking all women survivors who have come to testify at your meetings. I want to acknowledge their contributions, and particularly Andrea Heinz, who is here with us today.
The Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle (CLES) is a group that's been working with sexually exploited women and girls in Quebec for over 15 years. We support around 200 women per year, as well as their loved ones who come to us for help in supporting the women or girls in their lives. We meet with women who want to get out of prostitution and others who do not. However, they all want to prevent other women from going into prostitution. That should tell us something.
Since we have just five minutes, I will go straight to the fundamental issue that we feel Canada is facing, particularly you as the members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
Do we in Canada wish to say that men—because the buyers are mostly men—have the right to purchase sexual services from women and girls—because it's mostly them being purchased?
If the answer is yes, we want to see total decriminalization of prostitution and the purchasing of sex. This will have a huge impact on women and girls. Countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and New Zealand have made this choice to varying degrees. They are all now experiencing an exponential increase in men looking to buy sex and, as we heard earlier, even in young men wanting to become pimps. This leads to more human trafficking, and some of these countries are currently changing their response because they are seeing the impact of full decriminalization.
If more men want access to commercialized sex, more women and girls will have to accept it or be coaxed into it. Beneath prostitution lies an industry we don't talk about enough that's greedy for profit and wants to maintain the concept that men have the right to buy sex and women are doing it by choice.
We already know that some of the most marginalized women, indigenous women, migrant women, women from racialized communities, are overrepresented in the sex industry. Totally decriminalizing this industry and the purchasing of sexual services makes that tolerable and and keeps it invisible. In addition, we've noticed that, though they would never question the fact that a reality like that exists, women from these groups are often manipulated by those lobbying for total decriminalization in order to defend this patriarchal practice under the guise of keeping women safe. It's outrageous!
If the answer to our question is no and you want to put an end to this patriarchal practice, you will be interested in what's happening in countries like Sweden, Norway, Iceland and France, which have chosen the so‑called equality model rather than the “Nordic” model. The 2014 legislation was inspired by this model, by the way. It seeks not only to repress, but also to prevent entry into prostitution, to question this practice, apparently the world's oldest, to support those who are struggling with prostitution and want to get out of it, and a majority of them do.
The equality model also seeks to target those responsible for exploitation, the buyers and the pimps, the ones who have a real choice in this situation. France passed its law criminalizing the purchasing of sex in 2016. It was assessed in 2020. I urge you to look at the reports they produced. The assessment is positive, despite the fact that the law has not been uniformly enforced across every department of France and that too little money has been invested, among other things, to support pathways out of prostitution. The assessment is therefore positive, and the law has been upheld and reinforced.
The Quebec government has already answered no to the question I asked you at the outset. It adopted an equality policy in 2007, which states that prostitution is a form of violence against women. We have to start from there. Quebec has since adopted a government strategy to address sexual violence and, most recently, a new action plan against the sexual exploitation of minors.
We're counting on you and the fact that you understand the situation our society is facing. We must reject this practice, which places women in unsafe situations and also goes against equality for all women. We believe—