Thank you.
In my experience, in my practice, I generally represent complainants in sexual assault and human trafficking in three specific pretrial motions.
Mr. Caputo, thank you for mentioning section 278, which is one of them.
An important thing to realize is that the protections that a victim of a sexual assault, a complainant in a sexual assault matter, are afforded in the Criminal Code are not provided to human trafficking victims unless part of the charges in the indictment include a sexual assault.
I would ask the committee to look at that question at some point and ask yourselves if there is a way that those protections could be extended to victims of human trafficking. It would seem to me that the underlying basis, the underpinnings of why we have those sections that protect victims of sexual assault, completely applies to the vulnerable victims of human trafficking.
At the moment in Ontario, we have a line of cases where courts have gone both ways on the question of whether those protections can be provided to human trafficking victims—but this is being litigated, litigated, litigated. The preponderance of decisions say yes, they should be entitled to those protections, but we also have a few cases that go the other way, so we need clarity in that area.