Status of Women Committee on June 11th, 2009

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

Thank you very much for coming here today.

As the mother of two young daughters, this issue is of particular concern to me. I know that our government believes in the importance of protecting the victims of crime. That is why the government has adopted measures to take into account the unique concerns of victims.

I have several questions. I could spend the morning talking to you, because I find this issue extremely interesting. We have established a number of measures to combat trafficking in persons in particular. One of these is protection, either through the RCMP, border services or all the other organizations that are working on this issue and that are aware of the special needs of victims. You are attaching greater importance to protection.

How do these priorities come into play in day-to-day reality? Have you any examples to share with the committee? Sometimes you find yourselves dealing with a victim of human trafficking. Is it difficult for a victim to trust the police or other entities, after everything that she has experienced? I would like someone to answer that question, because I find this important.

[Megan Imrie]

I can give you a general answer, but I do not have a specific example. However, I can tell you that protecting the victims is very important, because these situations are very difficult. In our case, our officers do interact with possible victims of human trafficking. For this reason, we have drafted a guide and created a training course to make our officers more aware of the victim-based approach. They must be made more aware of this very difficult situation. As a result, our officers will be better equipped to deal with a truly delicate situation.

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

That's good.

Mr. Aubin, you must have had dealings with victims. How do they react?

[Supt Michel Aubin]

I am going to ask Marie-Claude Arsenault to answer that question, because she has more experience than I do in this field.

[Sgt Marie-Claude Arsenault]

Indeed, dealing with victims is one of the greatest challenges faced by law enforcement officers. They must try to obtain the cooperation of the victims, because often they do not trust the authorities, particularly in the case of foreign victims. They have been intimidated, there has been coercion, and they are afraid of their trafficker. It is difficult for them to talk about what happened with police officers. They are distrustful. We see various emotions. Some victims feel shame. For a number of reasons, it is hard for the victims to talk to police officers.

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

How do you protect the victims in real life? What protection do they receive?

[Supt Michel Aubin]

Of course, protecting the victims is the first priority, not necessarily prosecution, even for police forces. In these cases, and during operations—there recently was an operation in Vancouver—we contact the organizations that can meet the victims' needs in advance. It may be medical care, social assistance, whatever. Police forces do not specialize in these areas. So we ask the various agencies to be there for these victims.

I can tell you, drawing upon quite a broad range of experience, that often the victims get first aid, and in many cases, they go back to work for their own reasons. Often they do not realize what circles they are moving in, and they go back.

The agencies are there, primarily at the municipal and provincial levels, to take care of these victims. As for the success rate, I am not aware of any specific studies. So that is really all I can tell you.

As I was saying earlier, thanks to the program and the tools that we developed for police forces, we do know that these women, these victims of the sex trade, do not initially see themselves as victims. We have to work with them for a while before they see themselves as victims, because the coercion techniques of the traffickers are rather complex and elaborate. So, we have to work with the victims so they realize that they are victims, and in this way, we can help them move ahead, take charge of their lives and make progress, so that they do not go back to prostitution.

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

How do ordinary people or anyone here—members of Parliament working on the issues, or myself, as a mother—recognize, even partially, whether or not girls are the victims of human trafficking? As ordinary citizens, how can we recognize this phenomenon?

[Supt Michel Aubin]

That is a pretty tough question. I share your concerns, because I too have two daughters. So I will give you my personal opinion, if you don't mind.

Of course, we should always know what our daughters are up to and who their friends are. Communication is not always easy, depending on the age of the children, but parents must be aware of what their daughters are doing. That is the reality of it. It all boils down to communicating. That is all I can tell you, but that is my own personal opinion.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Aubin. That is very interesting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you very much.

We're kind of going to eight minutes for everybody.

Irene Mathyssen.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much for being here. We appreciate your expertise, and I think we're reassured that there are provisions in place on trafficking in general.

In my community there has been a great deal of concern about preparations for the 2010 Olympics. The Sisters of St. Joseph, the Salvation Army, and a very effective group of women in London, Ontario, have been engaged in this for quite some time. So I thank you for the work and the effort.

I want to start with Superintendent Aubin. You talked about the victims and the difficulty communicating to them that they are indeed victims. I suppose there's a lot of self-recrimination, in the sense that they perhaps feel they deserve what is happening to them. How do you help those victims recognize that they are indeed victims and not criminals, particularly when the police are involved? A lot of them may associate the police with criminality.

[Supt Michel Aubin]

I would say that it is not an easy question, and I'll do my best here.

We recognize that the law enforcement community that deals with it--CBSA deals with it, as well, from a border perspective--recognizes that these victims have had difficulties.

I'll borrow a little from my personal experience. I've done undercover work for six strong years, so I know what it is to face or deal with the ladies who are involved in this milieu. Many of them have other issues that lead them to this type of activity, and they get stuck in it. They're being controlled and are not necessarily recognizing it. Some other problems they may have may be family issues. There may be substance abuse. There are many things at play, and I can tell you that the law enforcement agencies, the police officers, are not equipped to deal with their needs afterwards. Our job is to direct them towards those organizations that can deal with them.

The challenge—CBSA would have a similar challenge—when we confront them is getting them to appreciate what they're involved in. If we're trying to get a better understanding of what's going on with the traffickers who are behind it and are controlling them, trying to get that from them is a challenge, because they often don't recognize them as such. They view the trafficker as a close friend, if not a boyfriend or something along those lines. It's breaking that link between them. Getting them to overcome and cooperate is a difficulty.

I can't speak on behalf of CBSA and how they do it at the borders.

[Megan Imrie]

Can I jump in?

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

Absolutely.

[Megan Imrie]

I would just echo what my colleague has said. I think it's awareness of how to ask the right questions and knowing what the right questions are. It's also the listening, the probing, and some of the non-verbals, as well. From our perspective, a lot of it revolves around questioning documents, countries, and destinations and that type of thing. It's establishing those. It's knowing the right questions to ask and really listening, in the sense of being in an open environment.

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

It's trying to make it less frightening.

[Rick Stewart]

If I can just add one thing to everything my colleagues have said, I think this is where the importance of the promotion and advertising comes in. The challenge is to get them to come forward and into the door in the first place. When they come in the door, we have an empathetic, welcoming style. We train all our officials intensively in that.

That's where the posters come in, right? They are raising awareness that there is some place you can go. You do not have to fear the Government of Canada officials if you find yourself in these circumstances. We are there to help. The more we can promote that and make people aware, the more they may remember seeing somewhere that they can get help if they find themselves in a circumstance. And maybe they'll go forward.

That's just to twin up everything that's been said.

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

Okay.

Mr. Stewart, in your remarks you said that you're engaged in outreach to the hospitality and construction industries as well as to employers to raise awareness of the responsibility of those employers to make sure that workers are protected from exploitation. I was doing a little background. In preparation for the Olympics in London in 2012, the British national spokesman, in regard to combatting human trafficking, indicated that initiatives will be taken to educate Olympic workers about the trafficking industry, the perils, and how it exploits domestic and foreign women.

I'm wondering if you could describe it. You've made mention of the initiatives being taken to educate the workers who will be in Vancouver for the 2010 Olympics.

[Rick Stewart]

Certainly. We expect that there will be a fair number of foreign nationals who will come to work at the Olympics. We're working closely with all our partners and the Olympic organizers to make sure that we have the mechanisms in place to effectively contact the employers and to effectively contract the individuals they are hiring and bringing into the country to work.

As part of that regular engagement with foreign workers in general, we make sure that we provide them with information through that whole application processing effort. We provide them with information about the rules and laws of our country and the labour code requirements so that they know what their rights, privileges, and responsibilities are coming here as foreign workers. Piggybacking, if you will, on what we already do with foreign workers to make sure that they are aware of the circumstances they're coming into in a work environment, we will use that regular avenue to share with them these specific pamphlets about the risk of human trafficking.

We have an existing avenue, and we will use it more fully to share broader-based information as it's developed and as it's appropriate.

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

Thank you.

How am I doing, Madam Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

I'll give you a minute.

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

Ms. Imrie, did you want to comment?

[Megan Imrie]

I was just going to add--it may already have been mentioned--that there will be posters and information at the ports of entry as well, so the arriving travellers and workers would be aware of that information.

[Rick Stewart]

It's very much a multiple borders entry. How many times can we raise awareness with that first contact, the next contact, and then the ongoing monitoring they're actually here?