Mr. Speaker, on December 7 I asked the Minister of Justice a question about an RCMP document which indicated that some 600 women, many of them just girls, are lured into Canada's illicit sex trade each year. It is estimated that reporting only identifies one in ten women so victimized.
Against this dismal backdrop the minister of immigration has been providing incentives to foreign women to apply as exotic dancers leaving them extremely vulnerable to further exploitation.
The question I asked was when was the government going to get serious about Canada's illicit sex trade and take action to stop the exploitation of these most vulnerable women and children?
I recently toured facilities in my own community of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island at the request of John Horn, the director of the Nanaimo Working Group on Homelessness. We toured the Salvation Army New Hope Shelter, the Tillicum Haus society's safe house for aboriginal youth, and also one of the Haven Society houses. There are several in the area. It is a transitional housing program for women at risk of homelessness due to poverty, drugs and the sex trade. It provides supportive sustainable housing in a secure and healthy home environment in which to initiate change.
It is estimated that even in Nanaimo some 2,000 women a year seek shelter relating to abuse in the home. We are trying to deal with these problems. This problem is across the country especially in large urban areas. Gangs are exploiting women.
Against this backdrop, at the Liberal convention the agenda seemed to be to legalize prostitution, to legalize marijuana and to change the definition of marriage. Canadians are frustrated by the lack of attention to this serious exploitation of the most vulnerable among us.
Why is the government not taking action to protect women from being exploited? Why does it not look at raising the age of consent from 14 years of age? Women are being abused by pimps and by those who lure them with drugs into a vulnerable position and then continue to exploit them. We are not satisfied that the government is taking this issue seriously.