Evidence of meeting #68 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was million.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Frances McRae  Deputy Minister, Women and Gender Equality and Youth, Department for Women and Gender Equality
Cathy Peters  Educator, As an Individual
Kelly Tallon Franklin  Chief Executive Director, Courage for Freedom
Bonnie Brayton  Chief Executive Officer, DisAbled Women's Network of Canada

5:50 p.m.

Educator, As an Individual

Cathy Peters

That summit was absolutely wonderful, and I think you introduced the beginning of it, and thank you so much.

I think someone who stood out was Dr. Ingeborg Kraus. I would recommend that everybody here look her up. She's a German psychotrauma therapist globally. She's the one who prints out the German brothel menu. She has started an organization called Scientists for a World without Prostitution. I would recommend looking at her research. She really addresses what's going on in Germany, and if you want to see what full decriminalization or legalization of prostitution looks like, just go to Germany.

I would say out of everything I heard at the summit, her presentation was absolutely compelling. She made the point that every day in Germany, 1.2 million men buy sex. It's unbelievable that 250,000 to 400,000 women are prostituted in Germany. She then compared that to Sweden, which has the same equality model of law that we have here in Canada, and there are fewer than 1,000 women who are prostituted. That is absolutely remarkable.

I would say that Dr. Kraus was exceptional.

5:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

Thank you so much.

Your time is up.

5:50 p.m.

Bloc

Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC

All right.

5:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank Cathy, Bonnie and Kelly for coming up and providing us with such extraordinary testimony today.

Before I let everybody go, we need to spend a little money. Everybody will have received a budget indicating the money required for the study of the main estimates. The total budget was $1,000. I'm looking for approval and a vote to accept the budget so that we can do what we have done.

All those in favour?

5:50 p.m.

Some hon. members

Agreed.

5:50 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio

That's great. Fantastic.

Seeing no other issues today, I would like to wish everybody a great holiday weekend. We will see everybody in a week and a half from today.

Take care. The meeting is adjourned.