Status of Women Committee on May 1st, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to meeting number 63 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. Pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022, members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mike and please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation, those on Zoom have the choice at the bottom of their screen of THE floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel. As a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair. For members in the room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. For members on Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. The clerk and I will manage the speaking order as best we can and we appreciate your patience and understanding in that regard.

In accordance to the committee's routine motion concerning connections tests with witnesses, I'm informing the committee that all witnesses appearing virtually have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Before we go on to the study, I just want to bring up one other thing. Danielle is saying that I'm going all off my notes.

For everybody, there is a vote today at one o'clock and the bells go off at 12:30. I did speak earlier to Sonia about the fact that we do have witnesses and the opportunity to work through the bells and to perhaps vote virtually, or something like that. Before we get into this, I just wanted to bring that up to everybody and address that because we would be asking for unanimous consent at the time to continue to proceed through the day, so that we would not send our witnesses home without being able to question them.

I'll leave that for right now, but when the bells do ring, we will need unanimous consent to continue.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on Tuesday, February 1, 2022, the committee will resume its study on human trafficking of women and girls and gender diverse persons.

Before we welcome our witnesses, I would like to provide this trigger warning. This will be a difficult study. We'll be discussing experiences related to abuse. This may be triggering to viewers, members or staff with similar experience. If you feel distressed or if you need help, please address this to the clerk or myself.

We've had a little bit of switch up. Just to let you know, there was a little bit of change this morning. I would like to welcome our first panel.

From the Exploitation Education Institution, we have Tiana Sharifi, executive director. Online we have, from Timea's Cause Incorporated, Timea Nagy, chief executive officer and founder. In person, from Persons Against Non-State Torture, we have Jeanne Sarson, co-founder, and Linda MacDonald, co-founder.

We will be providing you each with five minutes to begin. When you see me start rapping my pen, that's time to wrap it up.

We're going to start with Tiana for the first five minutes.

You have the floor.

[Tiana Sharifi, Chief Executive Officer, Exploitation Education Institute]

Thank you very much.

Madam Chair and honourable members of the House of Commons, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. Today I'm very honoured to be here in person. My name is Tiana Sharifi. I'm the CEO of Exploitation Education Institute, formerly known as SEE, Sexual Exploitation Education. I personally have been working in the field of human trafficking for 10 years and have educated over 80,000 Canadians in my time. I come to you today as someone who has knowledge and experience in this field, as a woman and as a mother.

For background, Exploitation Education Institute, while based in Vancouver, B.C., specializes in the prevention of child and youth sexual exploitation across Canada. We do so through consulting services. We were contracted last year by the international cybercrime research centre and have co-authorship of research regarding the presence of human trafficking on escort sites.

We have presented at a nationwide RCMP training...for law enforcement across Canada and are presenting an educator sector training...through the Canadian sexual exploitation summit in a couple of days, as well through our educational programs. Our student educational programs are supported by the Ministry of Education in B.C. and other school boards across the country. Just from this January until now, we have educated over 20,000 students and 7,000 adult groups, be they parents, teachers or service providers.

I share with you this experience, because I wish to shed light on how the pandemic has transformed grooming and recruitment into sex trafficking in Canada, as well as what we find makes for effective prevention programs.

Throughout my time working in this field, I've seen the issue of human trafficking and sexual exploitation shift and change markedly with the emergence of the digital space. I believe this shift must be reflected in any current and future studies relating to the issue of human trafficking in Canada.

You may be aware through Statistics Canada that the majority of human trafficking victims are Canadian citizens within our country, and that almost 70% of police-reported victims are under the age of 25. You may be aware of the traditional grooming methods into sex trafficking, including the boyfriending process, or what we would refer to as the “Romeo pimp”, or by way of their recruiters, who lure their victims through the promise of a luxurious lifestyle or basic needs, which ultimately leads to their sex trafficking.

While these traditional tactics continue to exist both in person and digitally, social media platforms and influencers, those who have a strong presence or carry a strong following online, have now shifted the very nature of grooming into sexual exploitation.

Sexual exploitation can be defined as a minor engaging in sexual activity in exchange for something. This is what we refer to as a need, an exchange for a need, whether this need is for shelter, drugs, financial security, protection or love. This demonstrates the very complex nature of this crime, which we must keep in mind, because the victimized party perceives that they, too, have benefited in some shape or form by getting their needs met.

While traditionally we would define vulnerable populations of sexual exploitation to be those who lack their basic needs, such as for drugs, shelter, family—for example, youth who run away or who are in foster care—the digital space has shifted this traditional label. When online, youth seek to meet their higher level needs, such as belonging, self-esteem and self-actualization. These are the needs that all minors and adults are constantly striving to meet. Therefore, we are finding that minors who typically would not fit the traditional mould of being at risk have now become so by means of the Internet.

On one hand, the pandemic has exacerbated the vulnerabilities that come with being online. A nationwide isolation has led to a greater need for connection amongst children and youth. Our organization has heard first-hand about an alarming number of children and youth who admit to having sought romantic relationships or flirtatious encounters through social media platforms that they are on. This has only increased since the pandemic.

On the other hand, particular platforms whose popularity only grew since the pandemic are now grooming minors with the promise of a luxurious lifestyle by means of influencing. Platforms such as TikTok, YouTube and Instagram have demonstrated to our younger generation that anyone could potentially come into fame or fortune, with much of this being directly connected with their hypersexualized content and objectification on these platforms. The more scandalous and sexualized you are, the greater your likelihood of likes and follows.

I wish to disclose that I am on TikTok. I find it both entertaining and informative, because the algorithm understands that I'm a mother and my interests.... I get that particular information. However, if you are a youth, the algorithm that you are provided with—and I know I'm supposed to wrap up now—is very different.

All I want to end on here is that self-exploitative platforms, which include TikTok, OnlyFans—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Tiana, we'll get some of this during the questions.

[Tiana Sharifi]

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I am sure there's a lot more to come.

We're going now to Timea, who is online.

You have five minutes. You'll see me flashing cards up here.

Go ahead. You have the floor.

[Timea E. Nagy, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Timea's Cause Inc.]

Thank you so much.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak before you today.

My name is Timea Nagy. I was trafficked to Canada from Hungary 25 years ago, and 10 years later, I became an advocate.

As an advocate, I lent my survivor voice to several federal and provincial law changes related to HT. I sat on a number of national and international task forces. I have done hundreds of interviews for research projects funded by the government. Most of the time, I lent my voice, time and resources on my own budget, hoping that the research outcome would be heard and that fundamental changes would be made.

I started Canada's first privately funded safe house, where we offered 24-7 mobile victim care for victims and the police. I assisted hundreds of victims and investigations. I won more awards than I can count. I became the face of human trafficking in Canada—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Timea, I have to interrupt for a second. We need you to move the microphone up a bit more toward your mouth—not at your mouth, but a bit farther up, toward the nostrils. There. We're good.

I know you have so much to offer, but could you slow down just a tad, so that we can catch up?

Go ahead, Timea. You have the floor.

[Timea E. Nagy]

Thank you.

We achieved a lot as an organization, and yet we didn't receive funding year after year, so we closed our agency in 2015. During my time as an advocate, I reached over a million people with my story and trained over 200,000 professionals and service providers. Working with victims, police, service providers, banks and governments, I came to the conclusion that our government was only interested in band-aid solutions. I have sat in this very seat year after year, telling government officials the same thing over and over again, only to realize that real changes aren't going to come.

Human trafficking is a symptom of everything that is wrong with our society and systems today. Our CAS is in desperate need of reform. We have a housing crisis; an unhealthy, toxic, unsafe pop culture; endangering online content in the name of freedom of speech; and a sitting government that is in favour of defunding police, a catch-and-release bail system and fully legalizing prostitution. Let's not forget the grant system, which is designed not so that everyone can thrive but to keep them broke and constantly struggling for funds. This grant system is pitting organizations against each other instead of encouraging them to work together.

You may say that we should look at all of the great work you've done and tell me how serious this government is about fighting this crime. If that's the case, then my question is this: How come we still don't have mandated training in Canada for law enforcement or service providers? Did you know that approximately 70% of our frontline police officers are not even trained in human trafficking? There are police officers who don't actually know the signs of human trafficking.

What about our nurses, health practitioners, doctors and mental health professionals? To my knowledge, we have about three long-term safe houses in Canada to serve up to 40 individuals for up to two years. That is for approximately 50,000 victims. How can we possibly sit here and say that we are very serious about fighting this crime when there's no mandatory training, no sustainable funding and no national collaborative effort? Where is our national strategy? We had one. I'm not sure what happened to it. We have begged and pleaded for years with all governments to put real funding behind a national prevention strategy for our kids. We still don't have one. Instead, we are left to go to schools on our own time with our own resources to make uncoordinated efforts to prevent kids from being trafficked. That's something the government should have done years ago.

We also have a sitting government that is revising mandatory minimum legislation, such as the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for trafficking in individuals under the age of 18. Instead, federal judges choose not to use the punishment because it's too harsh. I would like them to tell that to the victims as well.

We have also created a habit of giving out millions of dollars to organizations that have never worked with victims of human trafficking but that look fantastic on paper. We survivors are also asked to lend our voices and expertise to build programs and policies, only to find out that our suggestions are constantly cut out. Programs, safe houses and services are getting kick-started and funded that we don't actually need or that we as survivors don't actually benefit from.

The system is designed to treat the outcome of the human trafficking crisis and is designed to keep the victims in the system. Survivor leaders with programs designed by survivors for survivors are constantly being denied funding. Did you know that—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Please hold for one moment.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

The translation is not coming through. The French is coming through on the English channel.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Okay.

Danielle, I'm just looking for translation....

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

On my English channel, French translation is coming through.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Timea, please wait one second while we sort this out.

Dominique, would you speak in French so that we can test the system?

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

All right.

Good morning to everyone. Happy Monday, I hope you have a good start to the week and a productive week.

We have an exceptional chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You're awesome. Thank you so much. You are exceptional. Fantastic.

Timea, I'm sorry about that holdup. We'll go back to you so that you can finish.

[Timea E. Nagy]

Thank you.

Did you know that it costs $785,000 for the next 20 years for any sitting government to take care of a victim once they are being victimized? If we have approximately 50,000 victims in Canada, please do the math. How much money does it cost the government or us, not to mention the emotional toll that the victim has to go through in rebuilding their life?

It is pretty simple: We either make serious efforts to put serious investment behind the cause to effect real change, or we are going to continue to treat the symptoms and not the root causes.

If we can put $300 million into quit smoking campaigns, I'm pretty sure that we can find the funding to fund effective changes.

In closing, we have enough expertise. We have done the research. We have held enough hearings like this. We know what the problem is and we also know how to fix it.

My question today is to the government and the committee before me: Are we going to make some real changes this time, or are we going to spend the next 10 or 15 years again talking about the same thing, continuing to act out of crisis and making empty promises?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Timea.

I'm going to pass the floor over to Persons Against Non-State Torture.

Linda, I believe you're beginning. You have the floor.

[Linda MacDonald, Co-Founder, Persons Against Non-State Torture]

Thank you.

I'm Linda MacDonald, and this is Jeanne Sarson. We are activists and retired public health nurses with over 30 years of expertise supporting women who were trafficked and tortured, mainly by their parents when they were little girls, other human traffickers, spouses and in prostitution and pornography—all involving informal networks and organized crime.

We coined the phrase “non-state torture” to differentiate the torture by the everyday person versus persons employed by the state. Referring to the “patriarchal divide model” on the first page of our brief submitted to you, I point out that some acts of torture occur by both state and non-state torture. The only difference is the perpetrator.

Some of the acts listed are electric shocking, water torture, forced drugging, dehumanizing psychological torture and sexualized torture like gang raping.

Gang rape is a very common torture act. The woman or girl is raped on the first day of captivity by as many as five or more men. This is called “breaking in” by the traffickers, with the goal to destroy the woman's or girl's relationship with herself. This brutal act is so shattering that women often become suicidal. Nursing research shows that the more severe the violence, the risk for being suicidal increases.

As a nurse, I cared for a woman named Lynne, who was trafficked to Ontario from Nova Scotia by her husband and his three male friends. She was kept in a windowless room, fed nothing but water and rice, handcuffed to a radiator and tortured by a steady stream of men for four and a half years. Some of the men were police in uniform. She was raped with guns, knives and was forcibly aborted five times. She was dehumanized, never called “Lynne” by them again, only being referred to as a piece of meat. With non-state torture informed care, she healed, regaining her dignity and sense of self.

In Canada, these horrendous acts of torture, when inflicted on women and girls, are called “assaul” versus “torture”, which is clearly discriminatory.

[Jeanne Sarson, Co-Founder, Persons Against Non-State Torture]

I will follow Linda. My points relate to the universal non-state torture questionnaire that is on page 2 of your brief that we submitted.

There were 49, mostly women, respondents, and 24% were Canadians. The 48 non-state torture acts reflect victim-centred language they used to tell of the non-state torture crime done to them.

There are interconnections between the physical, sexualized, psychological and mental non-state torture crimes listed. For example, being sat on makes breathing difficult. It is physical non-state torture, which becomes sexualized non-state torture with oral raping because it compresses the chest and women fear they will not be able to breath and will die. This is psychological non-state torture.

This also relates to choking, strangulation, forced ingesting of the perpetrators' body fluids and the fear of vomiting and being forced to ingest their vomit terror, and horror and fear of going crazy and being pathologized as mentally ill versus being respected as victims of non-state torture crime and human trafficking.

Survival responses include understanding dissociation, suicidality, self-cutting and struggling with everyday coping. Sexualized health issues can include surgical vaginal repairs, hysterectomies, repair of rectal prolapse and sterility.

Recommending Criminal Code amendments to criminalize non-state torture crimes would hold traffickers accountable for the non-state crimes they inflict. Criminal Code amendments would educate society about the severity of human trafficking and foster developing non-state torture victimization, traumatization-informed care and promote the healing ability of women and children.

We are submitting seven other of our published articles and a chapter to advance human trafficking education and knowledge, and we will leave you a copy of our book, Women Unsilenced: Our Refusal to Let Torture-Traffickers Win as resources.

Thank you for listening to the voices of women.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to start with our first round of questioning with six minutes for each party. We'll start off with Anna Roberts.

Anna, you have six minute.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses for being here. This is an important study, and through our research a couple of weeks ago, we were able to visit many areas across the country to learn a lot. I agree with every single one of you: I don't think that as a government we are doing justice to female victims.

I'm going to start my questioning with Timea.

It was a pleasure to meet you a few weeks ago, Timea, and thank you for the book. It's very heartfelt and very sensitive. I can understand why you are doing what you're doing to help victims.

I have a couple of questions for you. First off, you mentioned that there is a lack of funding. Would it be possible if we as a government were to implement a law to ensure that, for all perpetrators and users, all the assets were seized and that money were put back into helping the victims? That's my first question.

My second question is, why are judges not applying the maximum sentences to these perpetrators? As a mother of a daughter, I would possibly go crazy if something like that were to happen to my own child, so why are these judges not understanding the importance of maximum penalties? Let's be honest; if you follow the money, and if you don't punish them for what they've done, they're never going to stop.

Can I get your comments on that, Timea, please?

Thank you.

[Timea E. Nagy]

Yes. Thank you so much.

First of all, if we are to have a law whereby the proceeds of crime would actually end up going back into victim care, then we would have to fix the grant system first. You take the money out of the trafficker's hand, then a john's hand, and everybody's hand, and then you put it in a pile, and the pile will end up in a broken grant system, and a broken grant system is the one that is going to eat up the money again, and the money is not going to go where it needs to go.

My suggestion is that if we take the money away from the proceeds of crime, we just have to reform the granting system so that the money would actually go to the rehabilitation of the survivors and/or directly back to the victims who worked really hard and made $300,000 to $400,000, or $500,000 for the trafficker.

So that's one, and to answer your second question, I actually don't know why. I have done a little bit of research on it. The judges who have decided not to go for the harsh sentences have said that these would be too harsh. Then I don't understand why we have laws. Why do we have laws if the judges are not implementing our laws? That used to be what their feedback was, that it's just too harsh. It's too harsh of a sentence for a young individual to go to jail for 10 years for trafficking somebody.

That's the answer we used to get.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

So you—

[Timea E. Nagy]

And again, we have a sitting government that is not interested in being very effective in implementing these laws. They are not putting pressure on the judges, at all, to implement the law that has passed.

[Anna Roberts, Conservative, King—Vaughan, ON]

You mentioned the catch and release.

Are a lot of the perpetrators getting out there and revictimizing the victims so that they won't testify? Is this why they're getting away with it, because if we're going to let them out on bail, then there's nothing stopping them from antagonizing the victims and their families. Would you say that's accurate?