Much of what I talk about on the legalization question is when I started to look at trafficking around the world of these young women and girls. I kept trying to figure out what was wrong. It is that we are going after these nations that are totally impoverished. These girls have nothing, these young women have nothing for them, and they are prime targets for traffickers.
The answer that I'm hearing now coming out, and it's one that has me very worried, is that we can better stop this and we can better control this by legalizing the system. Legalizing the system does nothing but entrap these women even further, because you cannot tell what is legal and what is illegal. The police in Germany and the police in Netherlands and the police in Australia have given up. They don't know whether the woman on the street is legal or illegal.
We have, and we exist in, a patriarchal society. It's been going wink, wink, nudge, nudge, let's have a ball with these young women. No one is challenging what is causing this demand and why has the demand exploded. One of the reasons the demand has exploded is the Internet. I look at the Internet as the steamiest whorehouse on the planet, because everything on it is incredible with respect to the numbers of sites that open up, and you can find a woman in any village, town, or city on the planet. It's very scary.
This answer that people keep coming up with by saying legalization will control is a cruel lie. It's not true. It is very dangerous. Men have to take responsibility for what is happening. Men are the cause of the demand, and men have to be confronted with this issue. Women have to lead the charge, but men also have to be behind them saying this is wrong, it is really wrong. I don't understand how it has exploded to the extent it has.
I have travelled around the world in war zones over my 36 years in journalism. I've written about the abuse of children, of women, and of the elderly. I've never seen anything like this, the explosion of this. It seems that these men think it's their right, and no one is fighting for these women. We have to be careful in Canada, because it will explode on our doorstep if we continue to turn a tolerant eye to this thing.
One of the other things is we tend to look at prostitutes with a jaded eye. They wear gaudy clothes, they wear slimy makeup, stiletto heels, see-through stuff, and we brush them off and dismiss them with words like prostitute, whore, slut, harlot, and the men are benign--johns, clients, and customers. We have to stop this kind of thinking and turn it on its heel, because it can happen to our daughters, it can happen to our granddaughters and nieces. It can happen here. It is starting to happen here, and that's what we have to be careful about.