Before I thank the witnesses and ask them to leave, I would just like to clarify a couple of things. I'll just put the questions to you and you can answer them quickly.
In your awareness package, are you also working with the hospitality industry, with taxi drivers, and other people who deal with transportation, who may quite often be in a better place to see what you cannot see? For instance, someone could be getting into a cab with someone who is obviously underage, or whatever. That's the first question.
The second question is about the Internet. I discovered when we were dealing with this, when I was Secretary of State for the Status of Women, that the Internet is where much of the commercial sexual exploitation of children and youth occurs. It's no longer on the streets, because they're too easy to recognize and be picked up. So they're either on the Internet or they're in massage parlours, which, generally speaking, are quite legal-looking and -sounding. This is a hidden issue; it's not easy to find the perpetrators.
When we dealt with this and did some research on it out of Status of Women Canada, we found that a lot of the internationally trafficked people are very afraid to come out. It doesn't matter if the local person is in jail, because their families at home are at risk, so they won't speak out because they know the cartels and traffickers are ready to deal with their families at home, and they live under that threat.
So I'd like to know what you're doing about people in the hospitality industry and taxis, and about the Internet, and about the fact that a lot of people will not speak out because of fear of retribution back home.
Let's put it this way: if you get 44 people, we know they are not the tip of the iceberg; they are the atom at the top of the iceberg. So how do you plan to deal with this, not only at the 2010 Olympics, which is what we're talking about, but in general? I think this requires a bigger and a broader policy initiative that must be brought into play.
