Status of Women Committee on Feb. 7th, 2008

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Ministers.

First I'll go to Minister Nicholson. Recommendation 11 of this committee's report said that the age of consent for non-exploitive sexual activity should be raised from 14 to 16 and that a close-in-age exemption clause should be included. Since it seemed to pass so quickly and strongly through this committee, can you comment on the difficulty we're having moving it further?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

I would be very glad to do that.

What we're talking about is the age of consent for sexual activity. It's presently 14 years of age, and our proposal is to move it to 16. I've said to people that this is not just something from the 20th century; this is something from the 19th century, in my opinion. What happens--and you're in the business of talking about and trying to deal with the problem of the exploitation of individuals--is that you get individuals who are sometimes not even in this country. You can be a 40- or 50-year-old from Texas and you start emailing a 14-year-old in Canada, and if you engage in sex with that 14-year-old on a trip to Canada, the police throw up their hands because there's nothing they can do about it. I believe this is absolutely wrong and is a mistake. We don't want this country to become a target for sex tourists who come to Canada because our law is actually out of sync, quite frankly, with the United Kingdom, Australia, and many American states, which sometimes have it higher than 16. We have to bring our laws into that.

What challenges am I having? You heard Senator Carstairs. She said on television last night that she has some concerns, because this might drive certain aspects of prostitution underground. Well, good heavens, if somebody is having sex with a 14- or 15-year-old, I want that to be an offence in this country, and I don't want these individuals to be using the defence of consent.

What we put in this is a close-in-age exemption of five years so that we aren't criminalizing consensual sex between teenagers. We're getting after those adult predators, those 40- and 50-year-olds who are going after 14- and 15-year-olds. I have made the point, and I made it last summer when I didn't get this thing through the Senate, and I made it again yesterday when I was before the Senate, that children in this country are not as well protected as they should be, because that law has not been passed. So I definitely hope it gets passed. I know this had widespread support in the House of Commons, and it's legislation that this country needs and that I would like to see enacted.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

Minister Finley, there may or may not be an election coming. There are some practical implications to some of these bills not passing. With respect to Bill C-17, what are some of the practical implications of the impact of delays that would happen if an election came on planned activities in Canada over the next couple of years, specifically, obviously, the Olympics?

[Diane Finley, Conservative, Haldimand—Norfolk, ON]

This committee has indicated a strong concern about what will happen at the Olympics. Frankly, I think that is just a magnification of what can happen every day. Every single day there's the opportunity for women to be trafficked into this country, and children too, because quite often a lot of these women don't have documentation as to their real age, so they may be brought in as adult women making a choice but they're in fact children who are being exploited, exposed to sexual exploitation.

We want that to stop and we want it to stop now. We don't want to wait till 2010. We're talking about women who are being exposed to this degrading treatment on a day-to-day basis, who are being put in these situations. We believe they need protection right away. That's why we want to get this legislation through. We want to make sure that we as a country are doing the right thing by them and doing everything we can to protect vulnerable foreign workers just as soon as possible.

Frankly, I wish it had been done years ago. It hasn't been. I'm impatient to get it done now.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you.

Minister Day, just quickly, we're trying to train 400 more CBSA, 1,000 more RCMP. We can't just go to Wal-Mart and pick them off the shelf. Can you comment on some of the challenges of getting up to those numbers?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, Okanagan—Coquihalla, BC]

The funding is there to do it. The 1,000 more RCMP is well under way; the 400 more officers at the borders is also under way. When you have a strong economy, as we do in Canada, people have a variety of attractive choices, including working in these particular professions, so the challenge is there, but extra money has been set aside on the recruiting side also and on the training side. The dollars are there. They're aggressively recruiting. In a strong economy, there are challenges that go with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Thank you.

We now go to the third round. We start off with Ms. Minna.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'll go to Minister Nicholson, if I could. Personally, I want to say, with respect to the bills we were just discussing, it was the prorogation of the House that killed them for a while. We did offer to fast-track those. In addition to that, there is protection for children that exists in law. It may not be as black and white, but the protection is there.

I want to go to questions that I started with earlier.

Minister Nicholson, you referred to me earlier with respect to legalizing brothels and so on, and that was not my point at all. I'm completely on the other side of things.

I have three full recommendations that I really need to focus in on. The first one has to do with criminalizing the user and decriminalizing the prostitute; this is really what it's about. Let me just read to you. Sweden, the Swedish Parliament actually, in 1998 passed legislation criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. Under the act, which came into effect in 1999 in Sweden, prostitutes do not face criminal prosecution for engaging in prostitution; however, the consumers of prostitution can be fined or sentenced to up to six months, and then it goes on, of course, with respect to pimps, and we also have legislation for that.

Essentially what they have done is reversed the coin. Instead of charging the prostitutes when they're offering, they're charging the user. They've had major, good success. We met with them. Their success has been actually tremendous, because the traffickers and the pushers go to countries like Germany, where they've actually legalized it; it's the opposite. So we're seeing it differently.

My first question is, is the government looking at all of this in terms of criminalization?

Following that, of course, is recommendation 7, which basically reinforces recommendation 6. It says that the Criminal Code be amended to include a criminal offence of purchasing a sexual service. To support that further, recommendation 9 then refers to the defence act to be amended to include new offences of purchasing a sexual service, which is to then become compliant with that.

The question is, is the government looking at that at all, in terms of going in the direction this committee has recommended?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

Thank you.

With respect, if prorogation were the only thing that was getting in the way of the Senate passing that sexual exploitation bill, I hope there's nothing standing in their way now. I was there before them yesterday, asking them to please get it passed, because everybody wants it done, and I will be the first one to stand up and applaud if we can get that through Parliament.

I mentioned your name, I believe, with respect to a question from Madame Deschamps, only because you did raise the matter, but I think we were at the end of the seven minutes, so I didn't get a chance to get on to the subject. Again, with respect to the legalization of brothels, I think I made that very clear--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

We're not talking about that.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

With respect to the customers, there are Criminal Code provisions, and certainly I support them. As for those who procure the services of prostitution, live off the avails, people who transport individuals to prostitution--as I said to you, I'm all in favour of any prosecutions that are directed towards the john.

In answer to your question about whether we are studying examples from other countries to legalize the activity, we are not. I made it very clear that this government has no intention of legalizing any aspect of this business.

Have I run out of time, or am I just being interrupted? Whichever it is, I turn it over to you.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Madam Chair, I apologize.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

She wants to interrupt. I think there's a miscommunication.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

I apologize, but I do have to interrupt.

I think we're talking from two different sides of the coin here. I am not saying--and neither did this committee say--that we were to legalize prostitution. What we said is that women in prostitution are victims, and now we're treating them as criminals. We said we should not charge the victim and criminalize the victim, that we should create a law that says if you're found to be using, we charge the “user” and we help the victim. That's all we're doing. We're not saying that we're legalizing brothels at all. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Anybody caught in there should be charged. It's the other way around.

That's what I'm trying to get at.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

We have laws with respect to street soliciting, or soliciting in a public place, that criminalize completely the activity.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

It criminalizes, again, the prostitute.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

It criminalizes the activity, the individual trying to purchase that service, and the individual who is offering it, and that will continue to be the law of this country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Minister, she's just asking whether you will put in another law that will criminalize the johns.

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Niagara Falls, ON]

The johns are criminalized now. They are being charged in this country, and of course they should be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

Perhaps we should be studying that law to make it more stringent because--

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Sorry, you're taking my.... Am I out...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Yasmin Ratansi]

That's okay. I'm not taking your time. Your time was finished. I just gave you the courtesy. Thank you.

At the end, Minister, we will have wrap-up time, so perhaps you could just address it. Thank you.

Madame Boucher.

[Sylvie Boucher, Conservative, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I have another quick question for Minister Day. Could you talk to us a little about the role of the new Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre. What exactly does the HTNCC do?