Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As you have indicated, my name is Robert McDougall. I am currently in charge of the South Asia division in Global Affairs Canada, and I'll be providing remarks on behalf of the department. My colleague David Drake, the director general for counter-terro

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  The first answer to that question is I don't know. If you wish me to speculate, having spent some time in India, it's probably a combination. It is a very traditional society. Among other things, they still have arranged marriages and other social phenomena that involve young ch

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  We don't have independent statistics on that. There is a recent assessment available, which was put out by the U.S. authorities and which I don't have with me, but we don't have an independent Canadian evaluation of that. The overall impression I get, and it's only an impression,

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I would say that's probably likely in almost any country, India as much as any other.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  India is certainly changing a great deal. The middle class in India, particularly the urban middle class, is becoming much more important at a much larger percentage of the economy and the society. But it is still a predominantly rural country, so I think conservative social norm

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  They are just numbers. In the section where I talked about Global Affairs Canada's anti-crime capacity building program, I believe I gave a number of $2 million. It should have been $5.1 million. I can give you the notes on where they come from. In the section where I talked ab

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  As I said, India seems to be a source and transit country as well as a destination in some cases. The short answer to your question is no, I don't have the numbers, but I'll see whether we can find them for you.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm not a development specialist, but my understanding is that it was ended at the request of the Indian government, not because India had anything against Canada or Canadian aid, but simply because it changed its policy on accepting bilateral aid programs from across the world.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I can give you only a partial analysis there. As far as I'm aware, and I was the High Commissioner in Bangladesh a few years ago, the human smuggling trade out of Bangladesh is largely workers, not sex workers, and they are largely going into India, because the economy is much m

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  If I can parrot the wise words that Mr. Drake just mumbled in my ear, it's not so much a pull factor as a push factor. It really is that you have people who are dirt poor. India is doing much better now than it was 20 years ago, even as an economy and a nation, but it still has a

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I wouldn't belittle the fact that there are constraints, physical and otherwise, that force people to do things. I don't have details. If you want, we can pursue that issue. I have never actually probed into that degree of detail on the subject.

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I'm sure this is a valid point. It's something to look into. I don't know the answer. To begin with, I'm not sure how that 77% would compare to, for example, dismissal rates in other countries. One of the problems you do have in this whole area, as I mentioned tangentially in my

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  You have to decide what you want to do. The workers who come in from Bangladesh, for example, are filling a need in India. They're there because there are jobs there to be done. They're being taken advantage of by the people who employ them and by the organizers of the mass movem

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  I think the general answer to your first question is, it's a matter of priorities and having too many things we could be doing to help and not being able to help all of them. There's no question that human trafficking is a really bad problem and that the sex trafficking end of it

Subcommittee on International Human Rights committee  It's a sure point. I think we can say that there are certain areas we are focusing on, to follow your lead in your earlier point. We are able to move over on it. Women's and children's rights and sexual and other violence, domestic violence, is an area in which we are focusing a