Justice committee  Yes, Mr. Chair. It looks like there's about three and a half minutes, so I'll try to be quick.

Justice committee  Thank you. On behalf of Walk With Me Canada, we support Bill C-36. We think that the abolition of the purchase of sexual services is germane to the ability to curtail human trafficking in this country. All of the research we have seen, both anecdotally and quantitatively, shows

Justice committee  Yes. There are certainly independent operators, but there's a fairly organized model out there. You can go on the Internet and actually learn how to do it, if you choose. There's actually a book on the Internet on how to get into the business.

Justice committee  Mr. Chair, as we have experienced in the last century of organization of crime, there are levels. There are people doing the recruiting at the lower end of the echelon, who are shaking the bushes in northern Ontario and in Inuit communities and telling people to come and prosper

Justice committee  It surprised me.

Justice committee  I think one sometimes leads to the other, but the smuggling, in my specific experience of seeing it, may be a payment to get somebody to what is purported to be a better life. Sometimes that better life does end up being human trafficking—not always—in labour or sex. The traffick

Justice committee  That would be my recommendation, if I were going to add something: that the presumption be the opposite—so I say it's upside down—and that if you are testifying on this list of offences, you can testify by video link or.... It's by a screen, rather than an application. The peopl

Justice committee  Concerning the coaching or video testimony, there are tools in place presently to testify from behind a screen, etc. The problem is that these tools are turned upside down. The presumption is that you will face your accuser and that you must get into the witness box, and the onus

Justice committee  We have not been asked.... Let me restate that. There are two cases that I can think of involving people of eastern European descent who were here and who were forced into labour work—one male and one female—in the restaurant business. They were held in the basement of a woman'

Justice committee  In the language there's often no differentiation between sex and labour, so I certainly think the bill would affect both equally. What I don't have any information on is whether there is also domestic trafficking in labour of Canadians or permanent residents, for example, from

Justice committee  I couldn't agree more. By way of analogy, approximately nine years ago in this country, in a civil litigation context, the Supreme Court of Canada set what they said to be the normal rule of thumb for punitive damages at $1 million in a case called Whiten v. Pilot. Recently, a j

Justice committee  Yes, Mr. Chair. I listed the four sentencing principles, and they have to be balanced. I think that is specific deterrence and general deterrence, because if that is in the Globe and Mail or the Ottawa Sun, or whatever paper the next potential trafficker reads, it sends a messag

Justice committee  With respect to consecutive sentences, I gave an anecdotal story of what one of the labour slave's position was on that. I think you deter victims from coming away once those stories hit the street or when they're in the newspaper that one or ten.... Unfortunately, or fortunately

Justice committee  I'll attempt an answer, Mr. Chair. I don't have with me statistics on whether the criminal justice system, using general deterrence, specific deterrence, retribution, and rehabilitation, the four pillars of the Canadian sentencing principles, works or doesn't work. But at the en

Justice committee  Something in the system that gives support.... I know our courts presently have victim services inside the court, but the quick example is a woman who had to go back to Halifax. Our system doesn't provide a social worker or somebody to go with her. She now gets on an airplane by