Thank you.
I want to, first of all, address that international question, since our organization does a great deal of work in countries that either have legalized prostitution or they might as well have, because they sure as heck are not implementing their own laws.
I've never met a trafficking victim in a developing country who has chosen to enter that profession. I don't think any young woman wakes up and decides one day that's what she's going to do, when the other option is to go to school and have a job and learn a vocation or trade. That false dichotomy about these choices doesn't exist. So that's really the starting point.
You'll find studies on both sides that say that it helps, that it hurts. This is a bit of a side debate, and I want to encourage the committee to focus, at least in this study, on the issue of human trafficking as it currently exists in Canada. There's another committee, there have been other committees that have looked at the legalization of prostitution. It's an issue that will be controversial and one for which there's no consensus among the members here, that I'm aware of. So I would encourage the committee to focus on the human trafficking issue.
The second thing is that we do have a definition that over 100 countries have agreed to. It's in the UN trafficking protocol, and it's in the report that we provided in our first brief. That's the definition; that's what we have to work with. We need to study it more. These are all, if not excuses, reasons to delay more. They're not going to help these people who are today in Calgary, Toronto, Vancouver, and Windsor. In every one of your ridings, whether you know it or not, they're there, and that really needs to be driven home.
So where can the committee go from here? There are other witnesses. If you're serious about a national rapporteur or a national office, you need to talk again to the RCMP, with their trafficking task force. We don't have one super police agency in Canada that does it all, so they're the one to talk to on a national level. They liaise very closely with the local police organizations.
As I've mentioned before, Vancouver is an excellent area, both because of the risk it's facing, but also because the work that's being done there is a real microcosm for action and things that are being done. So I would encourage that as a place to start.
Additionally, I don't think the options between whether we have a rapporteur or an office is really all that constructive. I think what we need to do is, first of all, agree we need to have better intelligence information on human trafficking in Canada. That's the first step. Then we have to have a coordinated approach within the government to address it, and realize that the current system is fulfilling neither of those two.
That's a significant enough recommendation. I would encourage some unity in the report that comes out. More is likely to happen that's good for victims. Rather than going to the minutia of what exactly the mandate is...it's good to propose it, but if you're seeing disagreement as your deliberations continue, I encourage you to go broad or get a bit more general.
We're not going to have any action until this gets higher on the political agenda. The fact that it's in a parliamentary committee is fantastic. It needs to go to the next step. It needs to be in the House of Commons and at the cabinet table.
Thank you very much.