Status of Women Committee on March 20th, 2023

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Where does this fear of talking to police forces come from? In life, police forces are supposed to support and protect us. I think that is their mission.

Why is that not working for these victims? If they don't know you, if they don't know about you or the hotline, what happens if they can't go to the police? What causes them to fear going to the police?

[Julia Drydyk]

As a tool to coerce their victims into the commercial sex industry, traffickers will often try to isolate individuals from their networks, their friends and their family. They're lied to. They're told that they will get in trouble or they will get arrested.

I also cannot overstate the stigma and the shame that are imposed on victims and survivors as part of their trafficking, because they are engaged in the commercial sex industry. If you look at the issues of sexism and the oversexualization of women as well, and how they are told to feel guilty and bad about it, that is one of the things that are holding people back from coming forward to law enforcement.

In reality, law enforcement is quite low on the list for survivors who contact the hotline. The first thing is usually to find emergency housing and case management. That's where you have a service navigator who's walking with you to access basic needs and services, as well as supportive counselling. It's usually several calls in, or sometimes years down the line, when an individual feels ready to engage with law enforcement.

Where we see the most positive outcomes for the individual is when they're able to access those community supports to exit their situation and start rebuilding their lives. We hear this from survivors daily. The stigma and the shame that are imposed on them make them feel isolated and unable to access help.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

I understand.

If I understand what was mentioned earlier, there will be enhanced training for RCMP members. When it comes to violence against women, there needs to be a specific approach.

Madam Chair, I think my time is almost up. Am I right?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You're almost done. You have about 10 seconds.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

All right, I'll stop here.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

All right.

We're going to pass it over to Anita Vandenbeld.

Anita, you have six minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you so much to both of our witnesses for being here today.

I have a few questions about the awareness and education piece.

Before I do that, I want to pick up on something that, Ms. Drydyk, you said. It has to do with the housing.

One of the stakeholders in my riding that I've engaged with is the Child and Youth Permanency Council of Canada. One of the things that they're doing is on the danger period when children age out of care. Children who are in the child welfare system, when they turn 18, they have no family, they have no resources and suddenly they are out in the street. That is the moment. Many of them, of course, are indigenous and racialized. That's when there is nothing for them and many of them end up trafficked. In my constituency they are looking for a way to create housing, maybe special dedicated housing that would be trauma-informed in terms of locked doors and things like that.

I'll start with Ms. Drydyk, but I can see that Ms. Clark is nodding as well. Can I get you both to answer about that particular piece?

[Julia Drydyk]

I'll start.

Housing is the number one biggest need that's requested for a referral service through the hotline. This often looks like emergency housing when they're trying to exit, but it's precarious housing and lack of affordable housing solutions overall that are putting our youth in this vulnerable situation. It's disgusting to say out loud, but traffickers actually look for individuals who aren't having their basic needs met in order to lure and groom them into sex trafficking.

While a lot of the awareness materials talk about luring and grooming someone with expensive purses and clothes, unfortunately more often than not it's also the promise of a safe place to sleep and the promise of unconditional love. While there are absolutely needs for trauma-informed shelters across the country, we also need to be looking at the affordable housing situation.

I want to say on the emergency shelter issue that we're seeing it crumble across the country in small communities and large. We will even get calls in the middle of the night from survivors looking to exit in cities as big as Ottawa and Montreal, where there's not a single shelter bed available in the city to house them. That doesn't even mean that they are necessarily trauma-informed or suitable for the needs of survivors. Really, we're seeing the housing system's collapse directly aggravate the experiences of human trafficking in our country.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Clark.

[Kyla Clark]

I would add that one of the barriers we're coming across is substance use. A lot of housing that is available requires somebody to be in recovery with no active substance use.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

What about the particular piece about children aging out of the child welfare system?

[Kyla Clark]

Yes, that's been an interesting avenue, I would say. We do have a couple of organizations here in Ottawa that have a house for women who have been trafficked.

On the aging out, working with CAS they have been willing to keep kids on their caseload up until 21. That has helped give us extra time to develop those life skills so they can be successful.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you so much.

My other question is about the awareness. Both of you talked about education and awareness. You mentioned the transit system, which is something I wouldn't have thought of. There's obviously in the general public not much awareness about the extent of this but also about where children are being targeted.

We obviously have to reach people where they are. I've seen night clubs where in the women's bathroom there are posters, and the men wouldn't necessarily see that these posters are there. Things like that. I wonder if you could tell me more about how we reach the people who need to know about this and also how we reach the people like the family members who don't know that they need to know about this—but they do.

I'll start with Ms. Clark.

[Kyla Clark]

We do have a 24-7 support line as well. We get a lot of calls from concerned parents just trying to figure out what this could possibly be and what's been happening.

I just lost my train of thought. I'm sorry.

I think it's boots on the ground. It's going where the youth are hanging out. Locally, the Rideau Centre is a big one. The Gloucester Centre is a big one. It's even working with mall security and having them able to recognize the signs of grooming and things like that.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Ms. Drydyk.

[Julia Drydyk]

I think we need multiple methods and different ways of starting a conversation in communities and at home. We absolutely need to be meeting youth where they're at. As much as it's very hard to be having conversations about sex and this type of sexual activity with our youth, we need to start having these be dinner table conversations because simple messaging isn't enough.

Unfortunately, we are still trying to fix some of the problems that came with really poor education previously, where someone appears to be handcuffed to a radiator with a man's head looming in the background. I've heard from survivors that thinking that human trafficking needed to involve kidnapping or forceable confinement actually kept them in their trafficking situation longer.

This really needs to be about having open conversations in our schools, in community centres and in the media that talk about the spectrum of unhealthy relationships, intimate partner violence and gender-based violence, and that give youth the tools to identify it and exit sooner rather than later.

We did a comprehensive campaign last year—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excellent. Thank you. I have to cut you off. We do have more questions.

I'm going to pass it over to Luc Thériault.

Luc, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to thank both witnesses. That was very interesting.

Earlier we had people from the Border Services Agency, the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I was a little dismayed to see that if we were to rely strictly on these measures, we would not achieve much in the fight against human trafficking.

I understand that the clandestine nature of this activity and the fact that victims are duped by a so‑called good Samaritan who only has malicious intentions contributes to their isolation. It is almost impossible, as witnesses told us, to detect them when they cross the border.

You work closely with victims. I understand that the steps we take upstream are necessary, such as outreach efforts, and that downstream we need to take care of the victims. However, I would like to know what to make of their statements and their perception of policing, so that we know what the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the police services and the Border Services Agency could do more or less of.

Is there an answer to that that might have emerged from conversations you had with victims or from your work with them? If not, that's okay. I'll have more questions for you. Perhaps Ms. Clark, who is in the room, can answer first.

Would you have something to say in reply to that question?

[Kyla Clark]

I can add some thoughts.

Generally we're seeing that youth have had many encounters with police already up until that point...before the exploitation. That's sort of where this disconnect happens. It's based on their previous experiences.

I think that if service providers and law enforcement could work together more effectively, then we wouldn't be retraumatizing the victim by having them tell their story six or seven times—whether it's a police officer, the hospital or this person or that person. I know that in Ottawa the officers go in plain clothes. They don't make the victim come to the police station. They can meet them in the community and try to bridge the gap in that way.

Thank you.

[Julia Drydyk]

The vast majority of individuals who experience trafficking where the CBSA is involved are those migrant workers who are coming into Canada through temporary foreign worker permits and are largely experiencing labour trafficking in our agricultural and manufacturing sectors. We recently conducted research with 77 migrant workers from across Ontario, and the biggest call to action they had—or among the biggest—was to get information about their rights before they arrive in Canada, at arrival and after.

Unfortunately, the telltale signs of exploitation don't normally occur until after they have actually gone through the turnstile at immigration and realize they were sold a completely different bill of goods than what they signed up for when they were coming to work in our farms and in our manufacturing sector.

It really is about making sure that they have information about what their rights are, making sure that it's information in their mother tongue and at appropriate literacy levels, and making sure that they're getting that information consistently, because often it is a spectrum. It doesn't start off as labour trafficking or as sex trafficking. Usually there are earlier stages of exploitation, perhaps poor working conditions or unpaid wages. It's that, combined with the element of coercion and fear, where you see it fall within the Canadian Criminal Code definition of human trafficking.

Really, we need continuous supports and services and proactive educational campaigns targeted to those individuals in order to see a difference.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

We know that the pandemic has exacerbated a lot of the factors that cause this, including isolation, I would expect.

What impact has the pandemic had on your organization? Have you experienced an increase in cases, a lack of resources? Are you still feeling some effects from the pandemic? Can you describe the current situation as it relates to the pandemic?

Ms. Drydyk or Ms. Clark can answer. I always address both witnesses.

[Julia Drydyk]

I can definitively say that human trafficking did not go down during the pandemic. We've seen a significant increase in calls and cases identified over the last few years, but part of that also might be as a result of our targeted education awareness. Following last year's Human Trafficking Awareness Day, we've seen a 50% increase in calls to the hotline, but we're not sure if that's attributable to COVID, the general state of affairs or because there's more awareness out there.

What I can say is that the biggest impact we've seen has been on our frontline service delivery partners. When the pandemic hit, over 80% of services either closed entirely or had to drastically change the way they were operating. We saw some great commitments from all level of government to fund additional services, but those are drying up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to pass it over to Leah Gazan.

Leah, you have six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much.

My first question is for Madam Drydyk.

Can you share how your organization defines sex trafficking and sex work? Is it the same, or is it different?

[Julia Drydyk]

Put very simply, human trafficking is the exploitation of someone else for your personal gain, so not all consensual sex work has anything to do with human trafficking. In fact, they're completely different.

Where we look at human trafficking is when there is another individual who is threatening, coercing and enforcing someone into the commercial sex industry and where they are profiting. It's also where you see individuals not feeling able to exit, again, because of the fear and the threats imposed on them.