Maria Mourani

[Criminal Code, November 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his excellent question. I think that model is an excellent one.

Canada needs to address the issue of purchasing sexual services. Sweden has done it and Norway has followed suit. They started with a basic principle: prostitution is a form of violence and the women, men and children trapped in the system are victims.

They created a law called “Women's Integrity”. What a great name. They invested resources in it and they worked to make their society understand that purchasing any form of prostitution—through a massage parlour, a strip club, or escort service—contributes to human trafficking and the exploitation of women.

They have created an egalitarian society where no human being may buy another. I dream of the day when we have a law here in Canada that makes it a crime to purchase sexual services and decriminalizes those victimized by prostitution by giving them safe havens and resources to get out of the trade, not to keep them in it. I dream of that day. I know that Canada is a great country that can take that vision and bring it to North America.

[Criminal Code, November 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Indeed, trafficking takes many forms, and forced labour is a much more significant aspect of it in some countries. In Canada, 80% to 90% of all human trafficking is for the purpose of sexual exploitation. This is why I am placing so much emphasis on this. This is currently the most significant phenomenon in Canada.

I agree that a small part of this exploitation occurs in the context of domestic work, for example, and the bill covers all kinds of human trafficking. All forms of human trafficking are abominable, but it is essential not to lose sight of a very important aspect of human trafficking worldwide.

Fully 80% of human trafficking in the world is done for sexual exploitation. It is important to understand that prostitution is linked to trafficking. We cannot separate the two issues and say that we have prostitution on one side and human trafficking on the other. That is not true. That would be burying our heads in the sand.

Prostitution and human trafficking are intertwined. All countries that legalized prostitution have seen human trafficking grow exponentially. We should be wary of this trap. We should not talk about prostitution as if it were an issue separate from human trafficking. That is a trap.

[Criminal Code, November 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, this is the reality in nearly every province in Canada. The average age of entry into prostitution is 14. I have met sex workers who were recruited when they were just 12 or 13 years old.

According to the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada 2008 report, a pimp can earn $280,000 annually or about $900 a day from one girl. This shows just how enormous the battle before us is; it will require a great deal of political courage.

I urge all of my colleagues, men and women alike, to think very seriously about the kind of society we want our children to grow up in. Soon, perhaps next year, we will have to have a closer look at a fundamental question that many societies have faced recently: are we ready to legalize prostitution in Canada? We will have to answer that question, because the Supreme Court decision in Bedford v. Canada will be coming soon.

I believe that Canada can lead the way on this issue in the Americas. I believe that prostitution is not a job, but rather a form of violence against women. The legalization of prostitution is a scourge in many countries around the world, especially in Europe where there has been a constant and significant increase in human trafficking and child prostitution.

I want to live in a country where our daughters are not treated like objects to be bought and sold. Legalizing prostitution means that all women can be prostituted. Contrary to what one may think, prostitution is not a women's issue. It is a problem initiated by men, a system of exploitation that, unfortunately, has been set up by men and for men who go to prostitutes. As someone who takes the lead in most debates, it is interesting to see that women are taking the lead on this issue.

Here is a fairly interesting example that shows the true face of this fight. A female MP in France is fighting to criminalize the purchase of sexual services, as is currently the case in Sweden and Norway. France therefore wants to go after the men purchasing these services, who are often referred to as clients. They are not clients. They are people who support prostitution and who go to prostitutes. They are just as responsible for this system as pimps. Believe what you will, but after this fight began in France, hundreds of men signed a petition in which they claimed the right to purchase sexual services.

The petition was titled “hands off my whore” and the petitioners included writers, actors, a lawyer, a journalist and many others. This showed the real face of prostitution in France.

Grégoire Théry, a member of France's high council for gender equality, has said that johns are not poor, sexually deprived men. They are well-connected men of power who will not stand for the government prohibiting them from exchanging money for sexual acts.

I know that we have to have this debate in this chamber. I am therefore asking all the women in the House, who make up about 20% of MPs, to stand up and refuse to legalize this form of violence that we call prostitution. We need to have this political courage for our children, our sisters and our daughters.

I also invite all of my male colleagues to support the female representatives in the House when the time comes to consider this issue. I am asking them to do so for their daughters and their wives, but particularly for their sons so that they can grow up in a country and a society where human beings are not for sale.

I would like to thank all of my colleagues for supporting this bill.

[Criminal Code, November 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am trying to give my speech.

[Criminal Code, November 26th, 2013]

moved that Bill C-452, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (exploitation and trafficking in persons), be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, as you know, this is not the first time we are debating this bill. It received the unanimous support of the House during the previous debates, and all along I have tried to ensure that it remain non-partisan and that it bring people together. The humour in this is not lost on me and I take a philosophical approach as this bill reaches the final stage while I sit as an independent member.

I want to thank everyone who shared their skills and put their hearts into creating this bill, including police officers, the women's groups that work with victims of trafficking, and the criminal law experts and parliamentary law clerks. I thank everyone. I would also like to thank all of my colleagues in the House for the support they have given this bill, speech after speech, stage after stage. I thank them for agreeing to send this bill as quickly as possible to the Senate.

We will not be able to fix the problem of human trafficking unless we address the root issue, which is prostitution. We all know that more than 80% to 90% of human trafficking victims in Canada are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. The September 2013 report from the Service du renseignement criminel du Quebec revealed that the sex industry in Quebec is doing better than ever. This report highlighted a huge increase in the number of massage parlours: there are more than 200 of them in Montreal. The report states that 39% of the victims caught are minors and that 91% of the victims are women. The numbers are similar in other Canadian provinces.

The average age—

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to go back to the fact that after meeting with representatives of the federal and provincial governments, first nations leaders and aboriginal peoples from Quebec, Ontario and western Canada, in October 2013 the UN special rapporteur urged Canada to establish a national commission of inquiry to shed light on this matter.

I heard my colleague say that the government is concerned by this situation and that it is unacceptable. However, what these women want to know, as do all the institutions that have approached the government—Amnesty International, the UN, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, the Native Women's Association of Canada or the Quebec Native Women's Association—is when will the government launch a national commission of inquiry to shed light on this matter. When? We just want a date.

[Aboriginal Affairs, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, it is estimated that since the 1960s, nearly 600 aboriginal women have been murdered or gone missing in Canada. The Native Women's Association of Canada says that many cases were not documented and that this sad finding is probably much higher than it appears.

Therefore, the precise number of missing and murdered women remains a mystery, since the RCMP does not compile data on murdered women according to their ethnic origin.

As part of the Sisters in Spirit research and education project, the Native Women's Association of Canada has collected information on the disproportionate number of missing and murdered aboriginal women and girls in Canada. The final report of this research project referred to the disappearance or death of over 580 aboriginal women and girls in Canada since 1960.

According to the report, 153 of these victims were murdered between 2000 and 2008. Therefore, in eight years, 153 aboriginal women have been murdered. Compared with non-aboriginal women, aboriginal women are more likely to be victims of homicide. They represent about 10% of the total number of female homicide victims in Canada, although they make up only 3% of all women in the country. They are also at greater risk of being murdered by a stranger, and what is truly horrible, their murderers are much less likely to be convicted.

The Native Women's Association of Canada is not the only organization speaking out against this situation. Amnesty International has issued two reports—one in 2004 and another in 2009—on the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women, and those reports talked about the need to protect their rights.

In October 2008, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women urged Canada to look into the cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women and to take the necessary steps to remedy the deficiencies in the system. That is serious.

In February 2013, the Canadian Association of Statutory Human Rights Agencies, the umbrella organization for the federal, provincial and territorial human rights commissions, urged Canada to establish an independent and inclusive inquiry into missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada.

More recently, in October 2013, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples asked Canada to take action. James Anaya called on the federal government to launch a national inquiry and said that Canada “faces a crisis when it comes to the situation of indigenous peoples”.

I believe that it is high time to shed light on this matter. The families have the right to know. Not only will this commission of inquiry allow us to understand what is happening but, more importantly, it will ensure that it never happens again.

[Drug-Free Prisons Act, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech, and I would like to ask him a question.

While reading the bill, I realized that it would simply enshrine the current practice in law.

Inmates must submit to a urine test when they arrive in jail or are allowed an unescorted temporary absence. The same types of tests are done when inmates from some minimum-security prisons go to work or come back from work, when an inmate is granted parole or a statutory release, and during a supervised release in the community.

The bill provides no concrete way to keep drugs from entering the prison system or keep inmates from using drugs, or to help them recover from a drug addiction. It simply confirms what is already in place.

I would like my colleague to comment on that.

[Citizenship and Immigration, November 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in the case of Ms. Djemai, who was threatened with removal in spite of her poor health, Justice Roy, a Federal Court judge, in his decision to stay her removal, stated and I quote:

...it is clear that the assurance of support...is based only on emails exchanged...but those emails do not support the statements made by the CIC physician.

Since the issue here is the survival of a human being, will the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration dismiss Dr. Patrick Thériault, the negligent CIC physician, and review the way his department operates?

[Petitions, November 20th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the other petition I wish to present is from another group of citizens.

It has to do with ADM and the noise caused by aircraft flying over Ahuntsic. The petitioners are calling on us to take an interest in this matter. They would like two positions to be created on ADM's board of directors to be filled by representatives of the people, as well as two other positions on the Soundscape Consultative Committee. The petitioners are calling for some interesting changes regarding management of the noise caused by aircraft flying overhead.