Unless I'm mistaken, Madam Chair, we examined the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement during the last session. At the time, we focused on the economic status of women.
I'd like our first item of business to be the trafficking in persons and here's why. Admittedly, considerable progress has been made, but much remains to be done. We know that the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights has created a subcommittee on solicitation. Subcommittee members have been meeting and are scheduled to table their report very shortly, in December as a matter of fact.
Given that that Standing Committee on the Status of Women is not taking part in this debate, I believe it's important for us to examine the issue of trafficking in persons. I have yet to see a specific report on the link between the decriminalization or legalization of prostitution and trafficking in persons.
A clear distinction is made between trafficking in persons and prostitution. I may not have read everything out there, but I would be more than happy to look at other documents that delve more closely into this subject. However, in conjunction with the theme “Introduction to the Issue and Legislative Framework”, I'd like to take advantage of the presence of an RCMP representative to have someone explain to me if, as a criminologist, I'm right to believe that a connection exists between the legalization of prostitution and trafficking in persons. I may be wrong, but if that's the case, I'd like to know it for a fact.
I also think it's important to understand the various forms of trafficking. Is a more subtle form of trafficking taking place here in Canada, a less visible kind than the open trafficking in certain developing countries? Are there other issues of concern to women that need to be addressed? Certain immigration programs have occasionally been used to exploit women. It's important to understand what we're dealing with. Personally, I don't know much about this problem and I want to be clearer about it to form an opinion. That's why it's critically important that we have this debate and meet with all of these very interesting people who can give us some insight into these matters and help us draft our report. In my view, it's important to start out by examining the trafficking problem, which is as important a subject as economic security. We touched on this during the last session. Could we examine trafficking? We were supposed to discuss it during the last session, but didn't get around to it. We promised to revisit the issue later. I hope later doesn't mean ten years down the road.