Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity today to speak to Bill C-304, the private member's bill put forward by the hon. member for New Westminster--Coquitlam--Burnaby.
The hon. member has spent a number of years working with youth. He has expressed a lot of concerns about street prostitution and the impact it has on local communities and on the prostitutes themselves. I appreciate his concerns and agree with the goals he has expressed today. He wants to improve safety in local communities, on our streets, in neighbourhoods where there are schools and so on. I support the goal of stopping violence against and exploitation of sex trade workers or prostitutes, particularly juveniles.
However I have a somewhat different perspective. If the goal is to stop exploitation as the hon. member said in his opening remarks, I have difficulty understanding how we could do so by making criminal sanctions against prostitutes stronger. If we want to stop exploitation why would we look at further criminalization? The hon. member says the bill is focused on the need to address the situation of juveniles on the street. However nothing in the bill is directed toward juveniles. If that is the primary goal it is not expressed in the bill.
If Bill C-304 were approved it would give more power to the police. It would give them the discretion to go from a summary offence to an indictable offence. It would give police authorities more power in the hope they could somehow solve the issue.
This is where I fundamentally disagree with the hon. member. It is a mistake to think we could deal with safety or the exploitation or juveniles on the street by handing the police more powers. For years police departments have campaigned for much stronger criminal sanctions. They have campaigned for fingerprinting as the hon. member mentioned. They were upset the day the old vagrancy laws were taken away because they were a powerful tool to round up anyone they had the slightest suspicion about. These things are a huge invasion of civil liberties. While the bill's goals may be good, the narrow mechanism it proposes for dealing with offences pertaining to prostitution under the criminal code is the wrong way to go.
I represent the riding of Vancouver East. As I am sure many members know, we have a most horrible situation unfolding in the national media. People are aware that 50 women, mostly prostitutes, have gone missing. Many are aboriginal women. The hon. member said if his bill had been in effect the women may not be missing or dead. If it had been in effect it would not have improved their safety whatsoever. It would have pushed them into a more criminalized lifestyle.
One of the problems we are facing is that when women on the street involved in the sex trade are subject to abuse and violence the police are often the last people they go to for protection because there may be warrants against them. They are already in a criminal environment.
Bill C-304 is the wrong way to go. During this important debate about the laws pertaining to prostitution we need to have an honest examination of the issue.
I have written to the Minister of Justice. I called on him to look at and expand the work of the working group on prostitution. I called on him to bring forward the idea of a special committee that would publicly look at the issue. I called on him to recognize there are hypocrisies in the law as it stands today. As the hon. member pointed out, prostitution is not illegal. It is illegal to communicate for the purposes of prostitution, keep a common bawdy house and so on, but in reality engaging in prostitution through an escort service or body rub parlour is completely ignored. Although it is “illegal” there is no public attention to the issue and no outcry about it. It points out the hypocrisy of our laws.
Rather than the bill before us today I would like to see an examination of the criminal code to look at ways to decrease violence and exploitation of women on the street. It is a huge mistake to say making the offences indictable would somehow improve the situation of the women and the safety of the neighbourhoods.
I thank the hon. member for bringing the matter forward. However I do not support the measure being suggested in the bill. I have talked to a number of colleagues who share the same opinion. I listened carefully to the parliamentary secretary's response. I would encourage the Minister of Justice to pay attention to what is happening in the downtown east side and to the fact that the women went missing over a period of time and nothing was done. We need a public inquiry into the police investigation that did not take place. I and many others in the community have called for it.
More particularly we need to examine the role and impact of federal laws pertaining to offences around prostitution. We need to ask whether they are contributing to an environment that makes the lives of the women more unsafe and safety in the communities harder to attain. We need to have that debate. It will not take place merely as a result of Bill C-304.
I urge the Minister of Justice to respond to the very real concerns coming out of the community. He should to look at the work done by the working group on prostitution. He should recognize the double standards that exist in the law today and say yes, we must stop the exploitation of juveniles. We should call it what it is. It is the abuse of children and we should have strong criminal sanctions against it. However making it a generally indictable offence would not offer a solution. If anything it would create a more unsafe situation for local communities and women on the street.
I thank the hon. member for bringing the bill forward. Regrettably, it is something I cannot support.