Justice committee  For this individual, the case went to a mistrial. They recently announced that the new trial date would be in September 2014. So after waiting a year and a half to testify against her five traffickers, a mistrial was declared. She will have to wait another year and a half to te

Justice committee  I would just say that we could reprioritize: He goes to jail. I think that trafficking absolutely has to be addressed from a Criminal Code perspective.

Justice committee  Yes, horrific.

Justice committee  I should just say that Deborah's Gate is entirely privately funded, so we are at the mercy of the community supports around us. So if there were going to be a way to further augment the amazing work that's already been done, having resources to be able to support these initiative

Justice committee  I think we need to remember that this is about dignity, testifying with dignity and being a witness with dignity and our ensuring that we recognize that somebody is describing horrific details to complete strangers—often before male juries and judges. So it's a form of retraumati

Justice committee  I was actually able to share with a few of our residents who are facing trials the fact that I would be here today speaking on their behalf and talking about the fact that you folks in this room are willing to look at consecutive sentencing. What they said to me was, “Just tell t

Justice committee  I would say that we have only recently had any success encouraging victims to testify, because only recently have we had the support and community understanding of what trafficking is in relation to the Criminal Code. We've only recently been able to work with law enforcement off

Justice committee  Deborah's Gate is a safe house for survivors of human trafficking. We have 10 beds available to women who have been exploited, both from within Canada and from outside of Canada. We exist to create a safe place, first and foremost, so it's an undisclosed location. It's a place

Justice committee  That's probably something I could echo from the survivors I work with on a day-to-day basis. They say, “What am I doing this for? Why am I testifying? Why am I spending 55 hours telling my story if I know he's going to get a year to two years with time served? How does that help

Justice committee  It absolutely makes sense that we need to equip law enforcement as much as possible to be able to respond to this crime. A lot of what we're asking for is to do just that, but we're also asking for the information to be communicated effectively to those who are responding to this

Justice committee  I would say that absolutely it's very difficult to prove trafficking in court because of the psychological damage that occurs throughout the grooming and recruitment process. It's a very targeted, manipulative practice. It's predatory. They choose women and girls who have a need

Justice committee  I would just say, on behalf of the victims whom we serve on a day-to-day basis at Deborah's Gate, that certainly the efforts of Mrs. Smith and Bills C-268 and C-310 have created opportunities to better support these victims. Our message here today is that we want to continue to s