Thank you.
I really want to thank all of you for inviting me here to address the issue of human trafficking and the Olympics. It seems to be very topical and seems to be in the news a lot. I've been called by different agencies, as well as the media, to give some press conferences or interviews on this issue.
I feel that we are very prepared for this. We work very closely with a lot of other agencies, those being CBSA, the RCMP, and OCTF, the Organized Crime Task Force, as well as other municipal departments. The vice unit, which is one of many units that fall under me, deals strictly with investigations regarding bawdy houses, as well as Internet luring—those are the big ones that we investigate—and those who live off the avails, the pimps who are victimizing these women and really taking advantage of them.
So far we haven't seen an increase in trafficking and we have no intelligence to indicate otherwise. However, we've had some cases--the most recent one was about two and a half years ago--where we did an investigation at a massage parlour and one of the women who was working there had been trafficked. Most of the other ones we see right now in our bawdy house investigations are Asian-based, and they appear, through our investigation and through interviews with these women, to be there of their own free will and they are there to make money.
We do a lot of education and training with outside agencies, as well as with our own members, in regard to these types of investigations. We work very closely with a lot of outside agencies such as WISH and PACE, these groups that support sex trade workers.
We have other avenues to work with and to go to in regard to support. For instance, the Salvation Army just opened a 10-bed safe house at Belkin House, which really assists us. If we have a bawdy house investigation, typically we don't know how many women will be in there, but in the ones I've dealt with, there could be up to six to 10 women. That's a problem at one o'clock in the morning. Where do we place them? Now we have a place we can put them that's safe and where they can get support and be fed, and there are all these other support mechanisms there to really help these women.
Anyway, that's what we're doing on the ground here. As I said, we get lots of support from the other agencies, such as the RCMP and CBSA, and we work very closely with them. We have a very good working relationship.