Status of Women committee  Actually, Madam Chair, with your indulgence, I will start this off on behalf of the Department of Public Safety--

Status of Women committee  --if for no other reason than that I'm the co-chair of the interdepartmental working group, so I thought I could kick it off with some broad comments, and then we could move to the specifics with my colleagues.

Status of Women committee  Actually, I was roped into it, Madam Chair. You never want to go first, but you do it. Good morning. I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity today to outline the government's efforts to combat human trafficking in Canada and to address specific concerns that hav

Status of Women committee  I would add that from the interdepartmental working group perspective, we are also using some money that we received from budget 2006. It's the $6 million to fund research and other programs. We're looking at supporting a couple of areas with OCTIP, the B.C. office. We work very

Status of Women committee  We're certainly seeing a difference in the information sharing, awareness, and collaboration. These initiatives have been in place for a relatively short period of time, and it's hard to gauge the long-term results on them, but we are certainly seeing a difference in the level of

Status of Women committee  We're keeping the data on the specific projects, yes, data on human trafficking.

Status of Women committee  Unfortunately, I do not have any information that would allow us to compare those two events. We just know that during sporting events, up until now, we have not seen any increase in trafficking in persons. However, at least this allows us to channel our efforts.

Status of Women committee  I'll be quick. At the Department of Public Safety we do a fair bit of work with the Akwesasne community as well. Last year we did give them some additional money as part of our Akwesasne partnership initiative to combat organized crime and to look at issues of human trafficking

Status of Women committee  I would just add that we certainly don't limit our efforts to the federal departments in what we can do. There was a question on how many resources we have dedicated to this. What we try to do, and are trying to do through our efforts, is basically leverage all Canadians, whether

Status of Women committee  I would add a couple of things. One is on the broader prevention. The “blue blindfold” campaign that Crime Stoppers will do will be available everywhere and will be distributed everywhere. They will also be doing a national media campaign as well. People see vignettes on TV abo

Status of Women committee  Massage parlours would be Michel's area.

Status of Women committee  As you know, we do have our national strategy for protection against child sexual exploitation on the Internet. I chair that strategy as well. We also work very closely with Cybertip.ca. Some of the money that we received from budget 2006 was for renewing the child protection str

Status of Women committee  I'm not sure. We can certainly talk. I haven't looked at whether Crime Stoppers will be moving into that area.

Status of Women committee  Yes, they did.

Status of Women committee  With your indulgence, Madam Chair, I am Barry MacKillop, from Public Safety. Perhaps I could kick this off as one of the co-chairs of the Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons, and then we can move to the agencies and departments for their specific activities.