Thanks, Madam Chair, and thank you very much to our witnesses today.
This is a very emotional, powerful study, as many of them are that we do here in status of women. Coercive control is what we're looking at.
I'm going to start with you, Ms. Singh. Thank you for your testimony. This committee did a human trafficking study, and in my community of Peterborough, Ontario, we have the third-highest rate of human trafficking in the country. Young kids, in particular young girls, are at risk, so I appreciate your testimony around human trafficking and the connection with coercive control.
You focused a lot on education, which I think is incredible, because it's the upstream end, basically, being upstream as opposed to intervention. One of the things and one of the points of how we operate here is to get recommendations from witnesses into the report, but a lot of education is provincial jurisdiction, so what I would be asking you is where you see the federal government's role.
As much as I think educating kids in school is critical, I think one of the pieces I would also ask you about is educating parents. You have a lot of parents who don't know how to use social media, and they freely allow their children access to it. We have stories of kids who are sitting literally beside their parents on a couch, watching a Raptors game and being human trafficked, and the parent has no idea.
Another woman I spoke with, who runs Little Warriors out of Alberta, an incredible organization helping child survivors, says that for the first time in their 10 years they have parents trafficking their children, not for drugs or money, but because they can't afford to eat. It's shocking, absolutely shocking.
So as much as I think we need to reach the children to educate them, because I often think they're so much smarter and quicker than we are, where do you see the federal government's role in reaching parents who don't know any different? Kids who are exposed to unhealthy relationships, kids who see a coercive control marriage or partnership but have no idea that that's what that is, because that's their normal.... Where do you see the federal government's role without intervening in your freedom and your ability to live your life?
I'm sorry. That's a big question.