Status of Women Committee on Oct. 31st, 2006

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Maybe Kim.

[Det Sgt Kim Scanlan]

I'd like to say that this issue is not necessarily new, but under the words “human trafficking”, it is. I've been involved in vice work since back in 1989. We were seeing people coming from overseas back then and being prostituted in Toronto, and they were deported after the legal process was dealt with. But I haven't noticed a huge increase in it from 1989 until now, so I ask why they aren't coming forward. I think it's because we don't offer enough to support them.

And it's not just in the sex trade. There are nannies who are abused, and people in modelling agencies. It goes far beyond that. I just don't think we have enough in place for them to trust our system to be able to provide them with that support.

There's an awful lot of money being made out there, and I don't think enough has been done to go after them. That's why I was talking about harsher penalities. We need to go for proceeds of crime and try to take them down.

[Joy Smith, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I know I have just a couple of minutes left, Madam Chair.

Very quickly, having said what you've just said, the fact of the matter is that I've talked to victims of trafficking. With the second language that they come into the country with, and with the intimidation by whoever is exploiting them, they're very much afraid. And I think the reason why you haven't gotten the trials, why you haven't gotten the convictions, is that these innocent victims are very much afraid.

I'm dealing with a woman in Toronto right now who was horribly victimized, and she won't come forward. Can you give some insight as to what we could do as a government to make sure these poor victims know that they will not be charged, that they will be helped?

[Det Michelle Holm]

I think the only thing you can say is that it takes just a lot of hard work by police officers and immigration people on the ground. I go into massage parlours all the time with a Cantonese- or Mandarin-speaking interpreter, whatever the case may be. I hand out my card and I get my face shown, and I tell them over and over and again that if they need help, this is the number for them to call and they will not be sent to jail.

So you need to constantly be in their face so that when the time comes, when the moment comes when they want out, they know who to call. That's just one comment that I'd like to make.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Ms. Mathyssen.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for being here.

I heard this as a recurring theme: that NGOs have a role to play in dealing with human trafficking in the area of protection and victim services. How important do you think it is that government fund these NGOs, these agencies in the community?

[Sgt Matt Kelly]

It's tremendously important from our perspective. We finally located one NGO in the Lower Mainland to deal with the two victims that we have in a case that's before the courts now. They were a godsend. Without their assistance, we wouldn't have known what to do.

There were times in the course of the file when we wondered where we were going to send the people, outside of considering someone taking them home. I had one detective who was going to take one of the victims home for Christmas, if you can believe it, because we just didn't think she should be housed in isolation for so long, because it took so long to get it to go to court.

So yes, NGOs play a very important role.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

You also mentioned the difficulty in establishing trust, in getting the confidence of the victims. Do these NGOs play a role in terms of doing that for the police forces?

[Det Sgt Michel Hamel]

Absolutely. If I could make a recommendation, it will take time—and I agree with my Vancouver counterparts—to build trust between the police and them. We're looking at time. But in the meantime, there are victims out there.

One recommendation the government could follow through on is to encourage the victims to go to some agency, like an NGO, that would be their link to us. That would help them at least to come out through some agency that would be in touch with us afterwards, and we could take the time necessary to convince them that we're not there to prosecute them, we're there to help them.

[Det Michelle Holm]

Following up on that comment, this is also really important. I've heard some NGOs in Vancouver comment that they don't want to bring the victims to us because they're afraid the scary police will send them to jail. We're stuck trying to convince the victim, but we shouldn't have to convince the NGOs. The NGOs have to trust the police in Canada. I think we've learned a lot in the last two years, in that we will not put a victim in jail.

It needs to be made very clear to NGOs that they can trust the police. When they have a victim, I think it's their responsibility to maintain that relationship with the victim, but also to encourage that victim to do the right thing and maybe come forward and talk to us.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'm also very interested in the prevention aspect. There are two agencies in the city where I come from. One is called Street Connection, which is a drop-in and counselling service for families in crisis. It focuses in on youth, encourages them to go back to school, connects them to job training, provides showers, and so on. There's also Youth Opportunities Unlimited, which is also for street youth, with services and counselling.

Do agencies like this actually prevent kids from getting into awful, horrendous situations with traffickers? Would they be part of that defence against kids getting into trouble, getting seduced by traffickers?

[Det Sgt Michel Hamel]

We have a good rapport with some of the agencies in Toronto that help kids primarily, and some of them will alert us to those problems. They will volunteer the information, meetings will be set, and we will meet these young people. Some others don't want to; again it's a matter of trust, but we're working on it.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay, so should government continue to fund these agencies?

[Det Sgt Michel Hamel]

Absolutely.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'll tell the minister. These two agencies are going to close on December 1, because they haven't received their 2006-07 funding yet.

I also had some questions. There was discussion about the investigation around Mr. Ng. What prompted the authorities to investigate Mr. Ng's activities?

[Det Michelle Holm]

The girls had been assaulted in a massage parlour, ran into the middle of a busy street, and flagged down passersby to call 911.

[Sgt Matt Kelly]

So it was the repetitious assaults that led to a very serious assault on a particular day, which finally was the straw that broke the camel's back. These women were in an advanced state of trauma when they finally did contact 911. We wrapped our unit around it, and it occupied us exclusively for probably six months. That was one sergeant and eight detective constables for two victims of human trafficking—a quarter of a million dollars and all of our time, going 24/7, for two people. That's how much has to be invested in these types of files.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

You have a minute and a half.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'm also very concerned about what happens to victims when they're no longer of use to the traffickers. There's been talk about when they're detected. What in your experience happens to young women and young men when they are no longer of interest to the people victimizing them, when they can't turn the trick, when they can't provide the money, the income?

[Sgt Matt Kelly]

That's a very global sort of question. From the perspective of a pimp, an operator of a bawdy house, or organized crime, they wouldn't care what happened to them. Who cares? They're no longer of monetary value, so they discard them like garbage.

Of course those poor people are then the ones who are survival sex trade workers, quite often on the streets, or they commit suicide, or they have a drug overdose of some kind—something along that line. Their lives usually spiral down the toilet.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Judy Sgro]

Thank you.

Ms. Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Thank you very much.

Thank you to all of you for your presentations. They were certainly compelling.

I have a number of questions I want to ask, but to the Vancouver Police Department, you identified Vancouver as—I can't remember the phrase—a sexual destination. Yet at the same time you commented that many of the members of your own police force are totally unaware of the issues related to the trafficking of individuals. So I'm interested to know what you're doing to remedy that.

My other question is something that hasn't been touched on here. I asked some previous witnesses this, and it comes out of a presentation I saw last week from a member of the Toronto police department on the use of the Internet for the exploitation of children in pornography. I'm interested to know from you what the use of the Internet is, both in the recruitment and communication, and the role of Internet providers in this area. Is it a significant force? I can't imagine that it's not. Is there a way of getting at that, as you see it?

I don't know, I guess I'll start with Vancouver.

[Sgt Matt Kelly]

Yes. I used the term “sex destination city”; that's what the people who come to Vancouver to get involved in sex refer to it as. There are people across the border who come to Vancouver for that purpose.

As far as the members of our unit being aware of the sex trade is concerned, they're all very aware of what goes on in and around the street sex scene, and massage parlours and things of that nature. They don't know what to do in terms of investigating human trafficking. That was the difference there. All police departments are familiar with sex crimes, and as my friends from Toronto commented, it's nothing new. So they're aware of it. They're just not aware of our new laws. They're not aware of how to investigate. They're not aware of how to handle the file. That's where we come in as the vice unit.

As far as the Internet is concerned, we have two dedicated investigators for Internet child pornography files. They go worldwide. We have participated in files, as I'm sure my friends from Toronto have, that go all over the world. They've arrested people in New Zealand, Argentina, and Germany out of Vancouver-based files.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I'm aware of the use of the Internet for the child pornography. What I'm interested in is the use of the Internet for the recruitment of people for the purposes of trafficking. Are you monitoring that, and if so, how are you trying to address that?