--where you were going with it.
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I looked at the work plan and I thought it was a good one. I would like to very much proceed on the whole question of economic security for senior women.
We talk about the issue of human trafficking, and when we talk about a study on that, I'm not quite sure what it's encompassing, whether it's encompassing the international trafficking of women, whether it's encompassing the trafficking of women from a certain region of the world, or whether we're looking at it on a worldwide basis, because it is a far-reaching topic, as we all know.
Maria Minna made the comment that women traffic because they're poor and they enter into sexual activity for dollars because they're poor and have no other resources.
I always come back to somebody who was in my office about a year and a half ago who was involved in a status of women organization in Vancouver, and it has stayed with me because she said when she now looks out her window she sees 70-year-old women on the street. And why are 70-year-old women on the street? It is because they have no other way of gaining income, either through public programs or through their own inability to enter the workforce; we don't know what their histories are.
When I looked at this plan I was struck by the absence of aboriginal women in the plan, but I also think back to that visit we had in my office, and I think of the women who are on the street in the city of Winnipeg, women who are struggling to have educational opportunities, to find opportunities for economic security for themselves, for their children, for their families. It strikes me that the underpinnings of all of it is economic security so that women, whatever country they live in--and my focus right now is on Canada--don't have to go on the street.
I would strongly urge the committee to look at the whole issue of economic security and let's make some strong recommendations.
I notice that Ms. Mathyssen has put forward a potential motion for a subcommittee on human trafficking. I realize that it's extra work for the researchers and it creates double duty for some members of the committee who would choose to go on the committee, but let's deal with that on a parallel bar.
Define the parameters of it. Are we going worldwide or are we looking at Winnipeg or Canada? Are we looking at parameters that are manageable, but always recognizing that the only reason or the primary reason that women are in prostitution or that women traffic is because they have no alternative for any kind of economic security for themselves and/or their families?