Bill C-36 (Historical)

Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act

An Act to amend the Criminal Code in response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Attorney General of Canada v. Bedford and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things,
(a) create an offence that prohibits purchasing sexual services or communicating in any place for that purpose;
(b) create an offence that prohibits receiving a material benefit that derived from the commission of an offence referred to in paragraph (a);
(c) create an offence that prohibits the advertisement of sexual services offered for sale and to authorize the courts to order the seizure of materials containing such advertisements and their removal from the Internet;
(d) modernize the offence that prohibits the procurement of persons for the purpose of prostitution;
(e) create an offence that prohibits communicating — for the purpose of selling sexual services — in a public place, or in any place open to public view, that is or is next to a school ground, playground or daycare centre;
(f) ensure consistency between prostitution offences and the existing human trafficking offences; and
(g) specify that, for the purposes of certain offences, a weapon includes any thing used, designed to be use or intended for use in binding or tying up a person against their will.
The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses. It's great to hear from you and to hear about the work you're doing, both the YWCA Halifax and the Joy Smith Foundation. I appreciate your input into this very important study we're doing.

My question is for Joy Smith. You mentioned two private member’s bills that you were able to pass as a member of Parliament.

It's good to see you again. I served at the same time as you. I also appreciated.... I guess you were far less partisan than I was, so you were able to get strong support across the aisle for your private member's bills.

Can you speak a bit to the tie-in with what you're doing now and Bill C-36? What do your private member's bills do and what is their tie-in to Bill C-36?

[Miia Suokonautio]

That was part of our presentation as well. In fairness, we also spoke with some of our local Crown prosecution here as we prepared this presentation.

First of all, where so few cases make it to the courts, it's an important.... It's this balance of harm. In some cases, Bill C-36 may be used, but we're balancing it against those who don't come forward.

We're also balancing it against the fact that other laws exist around exploitation. We've been talking about human trafficking here, but human trafficking is also its own criminal offence. That does not go unchanged if we talk about Bill C-36. Child pornography laws.... These types of things can still exist separately, even if we revisit Bill C-36. They remain there.

What's really vital for us is the evidence base. What is the evidence base when we make claims? Did this bill truly limit the number of people coming forward? All we can tell you is what we're seeing. If we rely on court data, it's only those who went to that point.

This is where I'll do a two-second plug. YWCA Halifax, together with our test partners, is doing work. We've currently wrapped up the second round of a provincial survey of people with lived experience. It is extremely high quality. It's excellent. This is what we should be using to determine our policies, not our opinions.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

At the beginning, there was some mention of the fact that there are many other laws around exploitation that would continue to exist if this law didn't exist. The experience in my community is that those other laws quite often are not used. Instead, there's an over-reliance on the provisions of C-36. In your experience in Halifax, would you say that's the case?

[Joy Smith]

There should be greater emphasis, if there is any improvement on Bill C-36, on imposing the prevention piece and getting the prevention piece out there. There's little said about the prevention of human trafficking, so we've made that one of our major focuses at NHTEC.

For Bill C-36, my very strong recommendation is that a fulsome prevention program be put in place. We can talk about partnerships with the different jurisdictions. Having been an MP for 12 years, I have found that there's little connection between the federal, provincial and municipal governments. There needs to be more liaison between the three on the prevention side, and we could have a recommendation put in Bill C‑36 to address that issue.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Okay, and on Bill C-36 in particular, in terms of penalties, how can we improve the legislation, and is there an opportunity there to also address prevention?

[Joy Smith, Founder and President, Joy Smith Foundation Inc.]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and distinguished members of this committee.

I want to recognize and acknowledge that our offices are located on treaty territory, the original lands of the Anishinabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

I am a former member of Parliament. I worked hard during my time as an MP to bring the human trafficking issue to the public radar screen here in Canada. The Joy Smith Foundation was founded in 2011 to combat human trafficking. Since then, I volunteer every single day at my foundation to continue the work to bring awareness about human trafficking in Canada and to help survivors and their families restore their lives.

Last October, we launched the National Human Trafficking Education Centre, the first of its kind in Canada. The centre provides free education for parents, teachers, law enforcement, service providers and others. We have 64 instructor-led modules that are currently being put online so that Canadians can receive much-needed information about how traffickers operate and what they can do to protect themselves from these predators.

We have worked on over 6,000 files of victims and their families, to restore their lives and help the victims reintegrate into the communities and back into their families. Our prevention and intervention programs at the NHTEC will be online for easy access for Canadians as soon as we get the translations completed in French and English and into some indigenous languages.

A five-minute presentation at committee today does not give justice to the complex issue of trafficking in persons and how important Bill C-36 is to the safety of our youth. It was the catalyst that set the groundwork for so many victims of human trafficking to be able to speak out and bring their perpetrators to justice. It helped me, when I was a member of Parliament, to bring the survivors' voice to the public radar screen.

When I was in Parliament, I had two bills passed to combat human trafficking: Bill C-268 and Bill C-310. They are embedded in the Criminal Code of Canada today. I had widespread support from all sides of the House at the time I was passing these bills, and I give credit to the survivors for telling their stories.

Members from all sides of the House supported these bills, and that was critical, because it opened a nationwide conversation about human trafficking and how its victims were suffering. More than that, Canadians, including the survivors themselves, started their own organizations to combat human trafficking.

Bill C-36 must remain, and parliamentarians must do more to protect their constituents from these predators, because the traffickers are in every constituency in our country. Victims of human trafficking are the recipients of horrid abuse and often lose their lives. To legalize prostitution would be a travesty of massive proportions against our most vulnerable populations, our LGBTQ, our immigrants and our youth.

I see it over and over again every single day: the suffering of young victims of human trafficking and what they endure at the hands of human traffickers, traffickers who seek to make copious amounts of money off their victims, as much as $260,000 to $280,000 per victim per year. That is why they do it. Most of the victims enter the sex trade at a very young age, as young as 12 to 14 years, and some even younger.

Before Bill C-36 came on the scene, there was nothing that effectively reduced the demand for the exploitation of underage girls and boys from traffickers, and in criminalizing the johns who create the demand for sexual services, Bill C-36 has helped curtail the human trafficking.

Human traffickers are the third parties who promote and capitalize on the demand for sex by facilitating this practice. They initially pose as benevolent helpers, providers or protectors to those innocent victims, who are lured into the modern-day slave trade. Bill C-36 addresses this issue as one of the objectives that has helped greatly in bringing these perpetrators to justice: It recognized trafficked victims as individuals who are lured and live through the horrid human trafficking experience with horrendous physical and mental traumas on their shoulders.

For the first time in Canadian criminal law, the purchase of sexual services is illegal. This helps in bringing traffickers to justice, because this offence makes prostitution itself an illegal practice, but this is a balanced law, because these adults who choose to sell themselves for sex are protected by law and can do so with no ramifications.

Recently, in Winnipeg, we were able to lobby to shut down the licensing of massage parlours and strip clubs. This is where human traffickers often place their victims.

Thank you so very much for this time today, because I have to say loud and clear, Bill C-36 is very helpful and very successful in doing these kinds of things.

In conclusion, parliamentarians must strive to keep Bill C-36 and do so much more to ensure trafficking in persons is no longer a factor in Canada.

Meegwetch.

[Miia Suokonautio]

They didn't get the memo. They're all off having their supper already.

Thank you so much, everybody, for having us. It's really a tremendous pleasure to be here. I'm Miia Suokonautio. I'm the executive director of YWCA Halifax. Temi Abiagom and Charlene Gagnon are with me. We come to you as a team.

I want to start by saying that we're very much carrying the stories and experiences of survivors and victims, thrivers and victors. We were talking quite humbly about what a great responsibility this is.

I will do our five minutes here, but any one of us can answer questions. Temi manages our youth exploitation team, which provides direct services. Charlene is the manager of our systems approach to exploitation, working with our government and community partners.

I begin also by highlighting [Technical difficulty—Editor], but also something really remarkable that is happening in Nova Scotia. It's a movement. It's the Nova Scotia trafficking and exploitation services system—we call it TESS—partnership. It includes more than 70 partners across the province, including the YWCA. These partners have worked together for more than five years. Although this thoughtful and committed group has built consensus around practice and human rights as related to exploitation, there is no consensus among the group about the decriminalization or legalization of the industry.

We will focus our testimony or our comments on Bill C-36 itself, but will not be commenting on the broader question of decriminalizing or legalizing the sex trade, because we feel a real responsibility to our partners.

With that, in watching prior testimony from last week, we understand that there are in fact really two questions before you now. The first is this: Does Bill C-36 protect people who are being exploited? That's a very important question. Is it protecting people? The second is this: Does it cause harm to vulnerable Canadians?

On the first question, if Bill C-36 protects people who are being exploited, the short answer is no. Bill C-36 is not protecting people who are being exploited. Again, we know that you've heard expert testimony from our colleagues from across the country. In our experience, people continue to be exploited. Even when there is no pimp, they are still being assaulted when engaged in transactional sex. Even though we have special Crown prosecutors and special policing units and there are no licensed strip clubs in Nova Scotia, the issue of exploitation is rife in Nova Scotia. It permeates the child welfare system. It is a crisis among indigenous women and girls. School administrators and teachers are at odds over how to stem the tide.

In Nova Scotia's youth correctional facility, Waterville, as well as in the adult system, almost without exception girls in detention have been exploited. We are also seeing increasing cases among boys and trans women. Among the dubious distinctions of our Atlantic province is that we have the highest per capita rate of human trafficking in the country.

In short, we have no evidence that would support the claim that Bill C-36 has prevented or ended the exploitation of vulnerable Canadians in our province.

On the second question, on whether Bill C-36 is causing harm, again, our experience is very similar to what has been described in previous testimony presented to you, in that Bill C-36 has prevented people from coming forward if they've been assaulted by a john. The bill has also pushed the sex industry further underground, into increasingly unsafe conditions.

In fairness, I want to add that, at the same time, as we understand it, there have been some benefits of Bill C-36 in the courts. If there is a case in which exploitation by a third party does not meet the standard of a human trafficking charge as defined by the Criminal Code, Bill C-36 has been used instead to hold perpetrators accountable. The bill can subsequently be assistive to the Crown and police, but whether it harms or helps victims has not been proven. That a small proportion of cases makes it to the point of prosecution may in fact make this potential benefit less consequential. We must consider the balance of harms.

I know I'm going to run out of time, but maybe the YMCA comment will give me just a minute more. I have a couple of further considerations.

One is that we have to understand and be transparent about the fact that this discussion is deeply affected by our values about sex and commercial transactions for sex. Whether we care to admit it, our values are squarely in the middle of this discussion. We urge you to prevent morality from infringing upon the rights of Canadians, including sex workers. Although you may personally hold views about the impropriety of sex work, we must not allow the human rights of those involved in the sex industry to be denied because of it.

Secondly, we remind you that there are already a host of prohibitions and laws on a variety of related matters, including sexual exploitation of youth, assault, sexual assault and human trafficking. Revisiting C-36 does not mean these laws are no longer in force.

Lastly, exploitation is in fact a very difficult thing to pin down. For example, young people are being exploited in many ways in our community for simple things like housing, food or access to substances. While this act of trading is technically covered by Bill C-36, it is very rarely applied in these cases and does not address the underlying needs of youth that precipitated their vulnerability.

Finally, what do we recommend? According to one of our local colleagues, there is no way we can arrest our way out of this problem. There is no silver bullet for addressing exploitation. There is no quick fix. Pretending that we can bring an end to the sex industry is a chimera.

Instead, if we are serious about addressing exploitation, we must understand that commercial sexual exploitation preys on vulnerability, and fundamentally vulnerability is best addressed in the context of the social determinants of health, not the legal system. It involves adequate income, good housing, food security, support for families, education, self-determination and much more. These more than anything else will give us the best hope to address exploitation.

[Sandra Ka Hon Chu]

Yes. Thank you for the question.

I want to quote the Supreme Court of Canada in Bedford. It's a case we intervened in almost 10 years ago. The Supreme Court said at the time that a law that prevents sex workers from taking basic safety precautions is “a law that has lost sight of its purpose”. I think that is what we have here with PCEPA. You heard about the research I've conducted. You've heard from other researchers. There's extensive evidence since the passage of PCEPA that shows the law absolutely prevents sex workers from taking very basic safety precautions, and that has affected their safety. It has fuelled exploitation.

When you conflate sex work with human trafficking, it means that it's all meaningless. What is exploitation when everything is conflated? I often hear also from sex workers that they are often the people who can identify situations of abuse or exploitation within their industry, but when they or their clients or their peers and managers are all criminalized, they will not go to the police. You heard the reporting statistics. It's horrendous how few sex workers, especially indigenous and racialized sex workers and migrant sex workers will go to the police in any circumstance, even in the most violent situations they might experience, because people are preying on them with impunity. They won't go to the police.

I think the only answer is to fully repeal the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you, Chair.

You know, it's become clear that we could easily spend three hours with this panel, because there is so much great information being provided and so much expertise and real-life experience.

I think we have to be very clear as well. Bill C-36, which was a response to the Bedford decision, makes it very clear that selling your own sexual services is protected from criminal liability. It's already decriminalized. What people who are calling for full decriminalization now are saying that, obtaining sexual services for consideration, those who buy, sell and exploit.... As Cathy Peters and other witnesses have identified, the vast majority being exploited are women. That this should somehow be legal, that we should decriminalize the purchase and sale of Canadians, mostly women, many people, of course, reject outright.

You made a number of statements that I want to hone in on kind of quickly. One, you mentioned Canada's potential to become “America's brothel”. You drew on your experience in B.C., where you said that the legislation that was passed in 2014 is not being enforced. You're seeing evidence of how different provinces are treating it.

Could you explore that a little further and how the failure to enforce this law leads to more victimization?

[Dr. Claudyne Chevrier]

Thank you very much.

You are right, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act was implemented in response to the Bedford decision. Unfortunately, the intention behind the Bedford decision was not followed. I am not a legal expert, but this is my opinion. As I explained earlier, sex workers—that is, people who sell sexual service—are still considered criminals.

I followed the discussions on Bill C-36, in which Senator Donald Neil Plett was one of the participants. I heard that the goal was to make it so difficult for everyone in sex work that it would force them to move on. But that's not what happened. Instead, the situation has been made very difficult for sex workers. New barriers have been created that prevent them from accessing the services they need.

The goal of reducing demand is a very strong idea among prohibitionists, among people who are against sex work. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that this works. For example, Sweden adopted a similar legal framework, in 1999 I think, and it did not work. The only data we have is that the demand may have dropped a little bit at first, but it has not continued to drop in a sustained way.

However, we know that there has been an increase in violence and harassment against sex workers. As a result, they now have to hide more from social services and the police.

I don't think this approach works. Furthermore, I feel that it goes against the idea that I have been advocating and that is supported by the research evidence, which is that we need to focus on the safety of people working in the sex industry.

Regardless of what some people think or feel about the sex industry, it exists and will continue to exist. Citizens who work in the industry have a right to be safe. They must have access to the same resources as other citizens.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for coming and giving evidence. We are very grateful to them.

I will in turn address you, Ms. Chevrier.

Bill C-36 was enacted in the context of the Bedford decision, which found that certain provisions of the Criminal Code at the time imposed dangerous conditions on prostitution. The bill had three major objectives: to protect those involved in prostitution who were considered victims of sexual exploitation, to protect communities from the harms caused by prostitution, and to reduce the demand for sexual services.

In light of your testimony, we understand that this bill has not protected people involved in prostitution. In fact, it has put them in even greater danger. I would like you to tell us more about this aspect.

I'd also like to hear you talk about the third objective, which is to reduce the demand for sexual services. Where do you think this goal came from? Do you think it has been achieved?

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Okay.

With the time I have remaining, I'd like to focus on the criminal penalties under Bill C-36.

As you know, Bill C-36 criminalized certain types of behaviours, which resulted in mandatory minimums, dealing with adults, of anywhere from four to five years, depending on the circumstances.

Do you feel that the changes in the legislation under the Criminal Code have had a required deterrent impact as a result of that legislation change?

[Dr. Claudyne Chevrier]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm happy that I was finally able to join.

I'm here to share some insight from the research I conducted on sex work in Winnipeg, Manitoba, over the last decade. I completed a Ph.D. in community health sciences at the Max Rady College of Medicine at the University of Manitoba in 2020. My dissertation topic was on access to health and social services for cisgender and transgender women and non-binary people selling or trading sex in the city.

The methodology I used was ethnography in order to talk about access to health and social services. I needed to characterize what's happening politically and socially around sex work in Winnipeg and, of course, that's framed in the legal context, which for the entirety of my data collection was the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

My research indicated that sex workers and people who sell and trade sex have poor access to health and social services, experience a lack of safety, serious stigmatization and barriers in accessing what they need. This relates to a general climate of indifference and stigma, which is framed by the current legal context. My research points to, among other things, the fact that policies, programs and laws should focus on approaches that prioritize the safety, health and well-being of sex workers on their own terms. One of the ways towards achieving that is the decriminalization of all aspects of the sex trade.

Before I tell you a little more about my research, I want to give you a clearer picture of who it is I talked to. I did formal, semi-structured interviews with 39 sex workers and people selling sex, 12 interviews with stakeholders and over four years of participant observation with sex workers' rights activists in the city. That's in addition to document analysis and literature review of local, national and international literature.

Of the sex workers and people who sell sex whom I spoke to, the average age was 36, and the range was from 20 to 55 years old. Among this group, 52% indicated that they were indigenous, aboriginal or Métis, and 17% said they were white. I asked everyone where they mostly meet clients, and the most common answers were on the street, in bars and online in order to meet in person. I am telling you all of this to give you an idea that I spoke to a very diverse group of people.

I want to give you one example from my research that is about the climate of a lack of safety for sex workers in Winnipeg under PCEPA. It also happens to be an example of a very important documented dynamic in Winnipeg, which is the aggressive silencing and erasure of sex workers' voices if they do not see their experience as exploitative. This is shown in my dissertation, and it's noted in other research as well. I won't talk about it too much here, but I wanted to point it out.

The example is that, in 2017, at a town hall meeting, Chief Danny Smyth of the Winnipeg Police Service, answered a question from a local sex workers' rights advocacy group, the Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition, about the safety specifically of sex workers under PCEPA and he stated that he believes that "My general view around the sex trade is that most people involved are being exploited in one way or another." He then added that he refers to them as “exploited persons, whether they be men, women or children”.

Chief Smyth plainly stated that he does not think that sex workers exist in Winnipeg. I invite you to think about what that means when the chief of police does not think that you exist. Sex workers who were present who heard that said that it meant to them that they are not to expect recognition or protection from police services. This is especially true for populations that are already over-policed, like indigenous people and other racialized groups.

My research documents the unacceptable experiences of discrimination and stigmatization that most of my participants encounter in health and social services. Not everyone described experiences of discrimination, but everyone was concerned about it and used strategies to avoid it and to keep themselves safe from it. Stigma and the fear of it touched everyone.

Feelings that ranged from mistrust to outright anger and fear of the police were expressed by 12 of the people I talked to unprompted. One person I talked to, I called her “C” in my dissertation, was as 49-year-old indigenous cisgender women who worked outdoors. After she told me that she would never report a sexual assault to the police, I asked her if she would be willing to share why with me, and she said: “Because I don’t like the police. It’s like because you’re in that area they look at you like a “nobody”.... I don’t even trust them. They’ve done things to the workers that not any normal person would. They just tend to degrade the workers on the street I know that.”

People I spoke to asked for services to be more compassionate, to use appropriate language, to educate themselves on the varied realities that exist in sex work, to hire more sex workers and, above all, to respect their humanity.

This was the most devastating result—

[Jennifer Dunn, Executive Director, London Abused Women's Centre]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My name is Jennifer Dunn, and I am the executive director of the London Abused Women's Centre.

In Tuesday's session for this study, it was said that what is needed is less law, fewer statistics and more information from the ground from the most directly impacted, so thank you for having me here today.

The London Abused Women's Centre is a feminist organization located in London, Ontario, that supports and advocates for personal, social and systemic change directed at ending male violence against women and girls. We are non-residential and provide women and girls over the age of 12 who have been abused, assaulted, exploited and trafficked with immediate access to long-term, trauma-informed and woman-centred counselling, advocacy and support.

Over the next few minutes as I talk to you about our work, I will be referring to our centre as LAWC. I will also be using the term “sex industry” from time to time. The sex industry includes women who have been prostituted, sexually exploited and trafficked. LAWC does not use the term “sex work”.

During LAWC's last fiscal year, over 4,600 women and girls who were abused, assaulted, exploited or trafficked were provided with individual counselling and group support. During this same time, LAWC also answered over 5,000 calls for support.

LAWC has been providing services to women and girls involved in the sex industry for nearly 25 years. Since 2015, LAWC has supported over 2,800 women and girls involved in the sex industry and over 1,800 women and girls who were at risk of becoming involved in the sex industry. This number includes at least 68 girls who reported that they were under 18 years of age.

Young women and girls between the ages of 12 and 21 are at the highest risk of being sexually exploited, groomed and lured into the sex industry, often by traffickers who manipulate them into believing they are in a relationship. LAWC recognizes prostitution as male violence against women and incompatible with women's human rights; it is the demand for prostitution that fuels sex trafficking.

The Nordic or equality model—in Canada's case, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act—decriminalizes women in the sex industry while criminalizing sex purchasers and traffickers. This same model provides support services and safety planning to those wishing to exit and to those who are not able to exit. It also educates communities about the impacts of prostitution and sexual exploitation on the lives of future generations.

Canada needs this legislation to protect the most vulnerable before the trafficking laws need to come into play, and the best approach to reduce sex trafficking is to continue to decriminalize the women and girls being exploited while criminalizing the sex purchasers and traffickers.

Some women and girls come to LAWC because they are being abused by their intimate partner. After a few sessions, it is revealed that the woman's intimate partner is also her trafficker. Many sexually exploited women and girls attending LAWC identify that they have endured horrific torture and abuse from sex purchasers and traffickers. They report suffering from significant mental health issues and physical trauma from these experiences. They come to LAWC looking for support.

Some women and girls became involved in the sex industry independently, but report that they quickly ended up under the control of someone else. Women have reported that they were lured into the sex industry. Some entered for survival.

Women report being suicidal, and some die by suicide. Some women have significant substance use issues, because they are introduced to an addictive drug as a way for them to cope or a way for them to be controlled. Most women report that they are forced to have unwanted sex with multiple random men, with some women saying that they must meet certain quotas day after day.

You may never hear from those who are most vulnerable. They may not even know that the issues directly impacting their lives are being talked about at this very moment in the House of Commons.

Since 2014, after the change in the legislation, there have been fewer homicides of women in the sex industry, fewer women accused in sex trade-related incidents and more men accused of obtaining sexual services from a minor.

LAWC and other agencies like ours across Canada see women every single day who have been exploited and lured with the promise of, or hope for, a better life. The truth is that the sex industry is putting women and girls at risk every single day. Normalizing the sex industry by decriminalizing the purchasers and traffickers would set women's rights back decades.

The government has a responsibility to make decisions based on the best interests of all. This is not an individual issue.

Thank you.

[Cathy Peters, Educator, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm a former inner-city high school teacher raising awareness about human sex trafficking and sexual exploitation for the purpose of prostitution, which is modern-day slavery.

Here are some stats. Thirteen years is the average age of recruitment and it's much younger for indigenous girls. In the Vancouver area, the target age has now dropped to 10 to 12 years old. COVID has made this worse. Traffickers are organized and sophisticated. Ninety per cent of the luring, grooming, buying and selling is online on social media platforms.

Fifty-four per cent of the sex trade is indigenous, and it's 70% to 90% in urban centres. They are severely overrepresented in the sex industry. I told the B.C. indigenous chiefs in front of Minister of Justice David Lametti that this is the most egregious form of systemic racism in Canada. Eighty-two per cent who are involved in prostitution have experienced childhood sexual abuse or incest. Seventy-two per cent live with complex PTSD. Ninety-five per cent of those involved in prostitution want to leave: It is not a choice or a job. The vast majority of prostituted persons are pimped or trafficked, and organized crime and international crime syndicates are typically involved. Crime follows the money, and traffickers make hundreds of thousands of dollars per victim per year.

My goal is to traffick-proof every community in British Columbia and to stop the full decriminalization of prostitution in Canada by supporting the federal law, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. I've been involved with sexual exploitation prevention for over 40 years and began raising awareness full time for the last eight years since PCEPA became federal law. In 2014, I began presenting to politicians at all three levels of government, the police and the public. I explained PCEPA so that the police would enforce it and the public would understand it and be able to report it

The law has four parts. Number one, it targets the demand by targeting the buyer of sex. The trafficker, facilitator or buyer of sex is criminalized. Number two, it recognizes that the seller of sex is a victim, usually female, and is immune from prosecution. Number three, exit strategies are in place to assist the victim out of the sex trade. Number four, there is robust prevention education so youth, children and the vulnerable are not pulled into the sex industry.

This law focuses on the source of the harm: the buyers of sex and the profiteers. The clear statement from Parliament was that girls and women in Canada are not for sale: They are full human beings with dignity and human rights.

In eight years, I have made over 500 presentations to over 20,000 people, not including the presentations that can be viewed online, but the turning point was last March when the Kamloops mass grave was reported. Since then, I have made over 200 presentations to city councils, regional districts, school boards, police forces, schools, frontline service providers and indigenous groups, including the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls gatherings in British Columbia.

I have three points.

Number one, PCEPA is not known or enforced in B.C. Therefore, B.C. is the best province in Canada to buy sex. Organized crime and international crime syndicates are typically involved.

Number two, PCEPA has never had a national rollout campaign. Some Canadians have not heard of the law, and the police are not getting the funding or training to enforce the law.

Number three, the sex industry wants to repeal PCEPA to normalize, commercialize and institutionalize the sex industry in Canada. If this happens, Canada will become a global sex tourism destination and America's brothel. Indigenous women and girls will be the first casualties. No Canadian would ever support this.

Consistent enforcement and the strengthening of PCEPA, combined with a robust educational campaign, are needed. Without the enforcement of the law, the sex industry will continue to grow rapidly. The review of PCEPA puts Canada at a tipping point. Repealing or weakening the law will have a catastrophic impact on this beautiful country of Canada.

In conclusion, I do not want anyone on this committee to be under any illusion that the sex industry is safe. It can never be made safe. It is a deadly industry. I have presented with the forensics RCMP officer who picked up and identified the body pieces on the Robert Pickton farm.

Trisha Baptie is presenting in the next hour. She is a survivor and was a journalist for two years at the Pickton trial.

Please read and understand the Robert Pickton case thoroughly. That describes the reality of the sex industry and how it works.

Thank you.