Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciated my colleague’s speech. I know that women’s rights are very important to her. We worked together on Bill C-36 concerning prostitution. There was a provision in that bill that unfortunately criminalized the victims, the women. The government proposed an amendment precisely because criminalizing victims as an objective will never put an end to any criminal activity. In fact, she supported that amendment.
However, what struck me is that Bill S-7 does exactly the same thing. It criminalizes these women, who are themselves victims of an unacceptable practice. I would like to know why the government was not prepared to reverse the trend, in this bill, and remove the provisions that criminalize the victims.
We know it, and my colleague knows it: criminalizing victims does not prevent offences from being committed.