Justice committee  I agree, and it was addressed a little bit earlier already, that there is a systemic gender inequality present in both western countries and around the world. I don't know if I have anything else to add. I think that there are systemic things that can be put into place to equaliz

Justice committee  I think when we were in Sweden we were talking to a man and he was talking about gender equality, which is a very strong value in Sweden. He was saying that we need to start asking the question, as men, what do men have to gain from gender equality? It's a good question to ask an

Justice committee  Just really quickly, to add to that too, I think it is really difficult to actually catch traffickers because the supply chain is pretty long and often crosses borders. So when you start going after their profit, that's when things start to change. Going after johns would be easi

Justice committee  Yes, I think I would agree with that. It's still commodification of a person and an exploitation, in many cases, of a position of vulnerability.

Justice committee  At various points in the Bedford case, and in the past few days in this committee, there has been a debate over the average age of entering into prostitution. Some argue it's 14; some say 18. When Mr. Lowman said before this committee that it was a preposterous claim that the a

Justice committee  One thing that we learned on our filming journey is that laws have normative effects. We interviewed a police investigator in Sweden who was in his twenties when the sex purchase law came into effect. He remembers how it started a national conversation, even with his friends, abo

Justice committee  Well, obviously, we can't dive into the intricacies of every facet of this issue in 10 minutes. We encourage each member of the committee to see Red Light Green Light at some point over the summer. Please feel free to get in touch with us through our charity's website, hopefort

Justice committee  We met Juliana, who was trafficked from Brazil and forced to work in a sauna, in Switzerland, which has a legal prostitution context. Despite being a legal brothel, the conditions inside the sauna were horrific, and hidden from the eyes of police by a legal facade. When we asked

Justice committee  In some legal regimes, sex workers have panic buttons in their rooms and train each other how to get away from violent clients. While not every john is violent, it's not unreasonable to say that violence is inherent to prostitution. This is because of three things. It thrives on

Justice committee  Accordingly, we think that the intent of Bill C-36 is sound: to decrease demand for paid sex. This being said, we believe that section 286.1, regarding selling of sex around children, is too ambiguous. An amendment or further specification could bring the bill in line with its gr

Justice committee  About four years ago, people across Canada started to ask a question that we didn't have an answer for. That question was, should prostitution be legal? We wanted to focus on sex trafficking and to keep prostitution as a separate issue altogether. But as we continued to meet wi