Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to debate this motion today. I should say I am pleased to support this motion, because even though I do not always agree with the member for Kildonan—St. Paul, I have no hesitation about this particular issue.
Human trafficking is a scourge. Human trafficking for the purposes of prostitution and sexual exploitation is an even worse scourge. It is truly terrible.
This morning, we had a breakfast where we met with witnesses who told us something about their experiences in the field. I found it very enlightening.
We always think that human trafficking is happening outside Canada. We always think that it is not going on here. Recently, I was telling my colleague that last year, I myself witnessed a situation where someone had been taken out of her country and brought here to my city, Laval, where she was enslaved by a family. Everything, including her papers, had been taken away from her.
I played James Bond, and she was found and removed from the hell she was living in. She was a young Ethiopian woman. I was shocked that this was going on in the city where I live. Even though this was not human trafficking for sexual exploitation, it was still human trafficking. This person had no rights. Her papers had been taken away. She was living in constant fear. She had no network and no one to talk to. Even though she was not being sexually abused, we can imagine her mental, physical and spiritual suffering.
What is more, with respect to human trafficking for sexual exploitation, I fully support this motion.
It is true that Canada and the United Nations have been talking about human trafficking for sexual purposes for some time now. Canada has made commitments and signed various protocols and agreements. It has ratified some, but not all of those protocols. I hope it will ratify the rest soon.
Even though this motion does not break new ground on this issue, we feel it is crucial that members reaffirm their determination to fight, denounce and eradicate this type of slavery. That is why we support the motion unconditionally.
However, we have a few questions about the second part of the motion where it talks about adopting a comprehensive strategy to combat the trafficking of persons worldwide.
It seems rather difficult to us for a country, no matter how powerful, to adopt a comprehensive strategy for the entire world. However, Canada should and must work actively on an international level to combat trafficking and we feel it is currently doing a very good job.
We know that Canada is playing a major role internationally in negotiating the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. There are two related protocols, namely the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children—which is the protocol against the trafficking of persons—and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, or the protocol against the trafficking of migrants.
There are so many victims of human trafficking because criminal organizations are very well organized. They truly know how to look for victims, how to target them and how to take them out of a country and everything else.
We saw this situation during the war in Kosovo. Immediately after the war in Kosovo, there were a lot of problems because of the immense poverty. This was extremely fertile ground for these criminal organizations.
It was said that the traffickers used all sorts of strategies to get people, women and children, young women in particular, that they could use as currency. They were even buying women from their families. The traffickers use all sorts of recruitment methods and do not hesitate to simply kidnap their victims or buy them from their families.
In most cases, the victims are women who are looking for a way to go abroad and who are attracted by the words of an acquaintance or by a misleading advertisement.
Some of these women are led to believe that they are being recruited for legitimate employment, such as the case of the dancers in Ontario that we saw last year. These women came here, thinking that they would be able to find legitimate employment, only to find themselves working in strip clubs in abysmal conditions. We could probably qualify this as human trafficking, because I am certain that, when these women left their countries, they did not imagine themselves in such a setting once they arrived here.
Some women are also told that a husband is waiting for them in another country. Others know that they are going to have prostitute themselves or that they will be forced to work to pay back the exorbitant fees charged for their transportation and employment, but they are misled about the working conditions. They become trapped in a complex web of dependence.
Traffickers usually try to get control of the victim's legal identity by confiscating her passport or papers. Her entry into or stay in the destination country is usually illegal, which places her in a situation of even greater dependence on the traffickers. A system of indentured labour is widely used, which allows traffickers to control the victims and indefinitely make a profit from the victims' work. The use of physical violence, abuse and intimidation is frequently reported.
Traffickers are seldom caught and rarely prosecuted. Sanctions against these individuals for such crimes are relatively light compared to those for drug or arms trafficking. This is due to, among other things, the small number of cases brought before the authorities, a situation which is easy to understand. Victims are often treated as criminals by the authorities in the host country, and they are arrested, prosecuted and deported.
I am pleased to say that we now at least have provisions enabling women who are victims of trafficking to have up to 120 days to obtain medical services, both physical and psychological. However, that is not enough and I hope that we will soon have better measures to help these women, these victims of human trafficking.
The information about Kosovo that I just provided comes from various magazines as well as various documents from Durban, South Africa, where a great deal of interest is also being taken in human trafficking.
In Quebec, we started taking care of this issue a few years ago. Three congregations took the lead in developing human trafficking awareness sessions. They were the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, the Congregation of Our Lady, and the Sisters of St. Anne. These congregations even put together a play called Lost in Traffic with the Parminou theatre company, and they formed a committee to lobby elected representatives. I think that is extraordinary. It is important because when groups engage in lobbying, their arguments have to be relevant, convincing and forceful and they must ensure that the elected representatives they talk to can support their cause and get results.
The committee decided to approach the government on the basis of the international agreements it has signed and ratified over the past few years, including the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, which came into effect in Canada in September 2003, and its supplemental protocols, the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, which came into effect in December 2003, and the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air, which came into effect in January 2004. Collectively, these are known as the Palermo protocols.
I do not have time to go into details.
Since signing the convention and its two protocols, the Government of Canada's legislative action has been directed primarily against traffickers and organized crime. Very little progress has been made in protecting the victims, women and children. To this day, Canada still has not ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, which it signed in November 2001. But at least the government is working on it.
I hope that, together, all parliamentarians will agree to give hope to these women, to these people who are victims of trafficking, so that they can have their lives back and see better days.