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—