Madam Chair, I'd like to speak on a point of clarification, if I may. I'll be very quick.
I've had two of our colleagues now mention what I said with respect to the word sexy. I apologize for that. I was simply being facetious; I was not actually trying to say that it's a high-profile issue. That was not my intention at all.
However, what I was trying to say is, I've seen poor women in Africa—young girls, 13, 14, or 15 years old—who have no choice but to give themselves up to prostitution because they're AIDS orphans and are looking after three or four other siblings or themselves, or they've been thrown out because they're now living with an aunt who already has five or six children, and she is ill, and therefore they don't get fed.
It's economics. I'm trying to say we cannot address any of these young women's problems if we don't deal with their economic security, or financial or whatever, to keep body and soul together so they don't have to go in that direction. I've seen them; I've talked to them. It hurts badly to hear such comments, because that's not at all what I meant.
I was hoping we would actually deal with some of the core issues also on the foreign situation—not just Canadian. We could talk about foreign aid and how women and girls are affected.
But I guess we've lost that fight today, and I have to tell you that I feel very sad, because I see ahead of me another 35 years of women's poverty, and it won't address the issue of trafficking, I'm afraid.