[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Wednesday, November 27, 1996
.1545 
[English]
The Chair: Order. We have on our agenda two items of business we need to clean up to begin with. The first is the report of the subcommittee on Bill C-25. Mr. MacLellan, who chaired that subcommittee, is present.
Do you have a few bons mots for us?
Mr. MacLellan (Cape Breton - The Sydneys): We had three witnesses. We did clause-by-clause. We passed the bill. It was very amicably done. I want to thank members of both opposition parties for their cooperation. Needless to say, there wasn't all-party agreement on the bill, but the Bloc decided that rather than present amendments they wanted to present their amendments at report stage, which is quite within their rights to do, so that was fine.
We presented seven amendments, I think, all of which were passed. The Department of Justice presented seven amendments.
The Chair: So are you moving that -
Mr. MacLellan: I'm moving the adoption of the report.
The Chair: Is there any further discussion on this?
Ms Torsney (Burlington): I'll second it.
Motion agreed to on division
The Chair: The second item of business is that we need a motion to allow me to report this subcommittee's report as the sixth report of this committee.
Ms Torsney: I so move.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: Next we have before us the eighth report of the subcommittee on agenda and procedure of the standing committee, a copy of which is in front of you. I'm just going to go down the highlights. I don't know that there's going to be much discussion.
We decided to deal with Bill C-25 today, and we have done so.
On Bill C-27, we will be proceeding to clause-by-clause consideration on Tuesday, December 3 at 9:30 a.m.
On Bill C-55, which is the high-risk offenders legislation, Minister Rock would like to appear before the committee on that bill on December 2 at 3:30 p.m. We have a list of individuals and officials we've decided to invite, but I want to point out that's not a closed list. If there are others, please bring them to our attention.
Fourth is phase II of the YOA: two meetings to give directions to the research staff before the Christmas recess. We think we can do it in one meeting, but out of an abundance of caution we've scheduled two. The researchers are preparing a draft outline for us to allow us to focus ourselves a bit.
Fifth is the subcommittee on draft regulations on firearms. I think the Liberals on the committee are determined about the make-up of the committee, but we haven't heard from the Bloc or the Reform from who they want on that subcommittee. We can still constitute it by naming the chair, so I'm going to ask for a motion that Mr. MacLellan be named the chair of the subcommittee on draft regulations on firearms.
Ms Torsney: I so move.
.1550
Motion agreed to
The Chair: Mr. MacLellan it is - and may the Lord have mercy on your soul, Mr. MacLellan. I wish I had a black scarf.
The subcommittee is going to require a budget in the maximum amount of $9,500 to hire one Patricia Tremblay in order that she can do collating of information and computer input and that sort of thing. I should say it may not get to $9,500. It may not get that high at all, but that's the maximum. Could I have a motion to that effect, please?
Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): I so move.
Motion agreed to
Mr. MacLellan: If any money is left over the subcommittee will have a party.
The Chair: You'll deserve it.
Sixth is a private member's bill on Bill C-217, from Madam Venne. We've agreed on a group of witnesses. Once again, there may be more witnesses people want to add. This list is not closed.
On Bill C-205, which is Mr. Wappel's bill, we also have a list of witnesses, and again that's not a closed list if people have any other suggestions.
Can I ask for a motion to adopt the eighth report?
Ms Torsney: I so move.
Motion agreed to
The Chair: Now we are on Bill C-27, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (child prostitution, child sex tourism, criminal harassment and female genital mutilation).
Mr. Telegdi (Waterloo): I have a question, Madam Chair. Is the Reform boycotting our meetings or something?
The Chair: Not that I'm aware of.
Ms Torsney: They would be here to tell you that.
The Chair: There is a ministerial statement in the House right now on the gun regulations and that may be a priority for them. In any event, it's not parliamentary to take notice of those things.
Mr. Telegdi: I just wanted to know if we had a problem.
The Chair: I'm just trying to say that in my finest non-partisan style.
Our witnesses today are basically on the issue of child prostitution and child sex tourism: from Street Kids International, Mr. Chris Lowry, and from the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes, Kara Gillies, who is the program coordinator.
Each of you has a presentation, I understand. Then we'll have lots of questions.
From Street Kids International, Chris Lowry. If you're prepared to start, we would love to hear from you.
Mr. Christopher Lowry (Director of Educational Media, Street Kids International): It's a pleasure to be able to speak to you today on this subject.
I thought I would start by giving a little insight into the conference in Stockholm, which took place at the end of September on commercial sexual exploitation of children. It was a very illuminating conference, and promising on many levels. It provided an international forum to open up discussion on a whole range of issues around sexual abuse and sexual activity of young people.
It was framed narrowly to focus on the so-called commercial sexual exploitation of children. This was good because it allowed governments and institutions to come to the table with a simple agenda against child prostitution. This appears to be a simple and easy thing to be against. There are clear victims and villains. So it was a good basic agenda for essentially an international mix, with all interest groups represented. Fortunately, the conference also offered many opportunities to go deeper into the issues and to recognize and acknowledge formally the many faces of sexual exploitation of children.
The conference was initially organized by an organization called ECPAT, which has a mandate to end child prostitution in Asian tourism, with an emphasis on prosecution of sex tourists and pedophiles. That set the tone for many of the speeches. Everyone could agree that sex tourists, the foreigners who travel to Bangkok or Santo Domingo to buy cheap sex, are doing something that's morally repellent, and if they are exploiting minors they should be punished and prevented from doing this. Likewise, everyone agrees pedophiles are dangerous.
Beyond that, things get much more complicated. Many people I work with and know, and people at the conference who have a long experience, as Kara does, of working with young people in the sex trade, know the men and women who buy and sell children. They know that even in places like Bangkok, which is famous for this, almost 10% of the clients for prostitutes in general are foreigners, and the vast majority are local Thai men and other Asians. The age for girls preferred by the average customer in a Thai brothel is now 14. The typical customer is a local man and he believes that the younger girls will be free of AIDS and HIV infection.
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So while sex tourism and pedophilia are serious problems, they account for only a small proportion of the epidemic of commercial sexual exploitation of children, an exploitation that is increasing in the red light districts around the world.
Most of the men who have commercial sex with minors are not pedophiles. They're prostitute users who want a cheap or an unusual sexual experience, or they may be ignorant of the age of the person they're having sex with. Once a young girl can no longer be sold as a virgin, she may become one of the lowest-priced prostitutes. Many of the men who abuse children in the brothels in Bombay, for example, are the poorest day labourers who have only a few rupees in their pocket for what they would say is the common man's idea of a good time.
With respect to sex tourism, we're not primarily talking about foreign monsters corrupting local cultures with dollars, even if it is easier for governments to condemn. We're talking about systemic problems in every country and in every society, and the same goes for Canada, for Toronto and Vancouver.... Again, the men who buy young people's services can't easily be defined as perverts or pedophiles. They're parents and uncles and teachers and politicians. They are like their counterparts in Rio and in Faulkland Road in Bombay. They're the common man.
Our strategies to combat commercial sexual exploitation of children have to be systemic. Legislation and enforcement, which we're addressing here today, are important aspects of the changes that are necessary, but we must recognize that men all over the world grow up tolerant and complicit and often with an appetite for sexual exploitation of others, not just of young people. Appetite and money drive the sex trade. Where there are weak social and cultural limits to prevent us from abusing children and women, people seek their own advantage. Weak law enforcement is a factor, but this is not simply an issue of crime control. The roots of the problem run very deep and we have to be honest about that.
Then, of course, we all know that most of the sexual exploitation of children in all societies is not paid for, and this cultural habit of using children is not primarily a matter of law enforcement but of social justice and social change.
It was good to see these issues get out on the table in Stockholm. We should all take heart. There's a new level of honesty in terms of the international discourse on children's rights.
I have some notes with respect to the legislation. Street Kids International feels competent to address it in terms of the sex tourism dimension. I recommended that Kara come to speak to the committee because she has a much stronger grounding in working with sex workers and adolescent sex workers in Canada and will be able to address that aspect of the legislation.
We say it's good for Canada to harmonize its laws on this issue with other countries such as Norway and Sweden. In that respect we really commend the government for taking this action. While it's very problematic to get evidence and enforce laws...this has been the issue that comes up in the talk shows or whatever. When everyone asks about it they say, ``Is it going to matter?'' I say yes, absolutely, it will. It's very important to get it onto the books to serve notice to Canadians that it's not acceptable to go off on a holiday and do something abroad that you wouldn't be able to get away with at home.
The case that is very famous is the Saturday Night article about the The Globe and Mail reporter Brian Johnson, who changed careers, bought himself a brothel in Manila, and runs it. He's happy there, and his girlfriends are all 15- and 16-year-old locals. But the point is that he wouldn't be able to come home and visit his parents in Niagara-on-the-Lake with impunity. If we changed this law it would be more difficult for him. He would not be able to feel that he can do this easily.
.1600
One of the difficulties with prosecutions of offenders is the issue of testimony from the plaintiff or from the child victim overseas. Overseas I expect this is used much more for enforcement against people who are exploiting young children. It's come up in Norway, Sweden and Germany with respect to men who are repeated offenders going off on holidays to look for children, not necessarily the older adolescents, the 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds, but younger kids.
In those cases one of the major issues is testimony and evidence. I think I'm right in saying that one of the things they're looking at in Europe - and perhaps they have already done it - is setting up satellite hook-ups so that they can have live video testimony from the kids and people who are involved in the arrest or who are gathering evidence overseas without having to make them travel to Europe.
I don't know whether this can be built into the wording and the language, but I think it's a very important issue. If it's not addressed, it will make it very difficult to bust these guys and get the evidence. It could be a real glitch in the legislation if it's not dealt with.
Age will be a point of contention in some countries. I think Kara will suggest that even in Canada it's a point of contention. For the universally accepted age of consent in Canada there's a grey area between the ages of 14 and 18, where it's legal to be sexually active, but not for money. Nevertheless, the age of 18 is consistent with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and it's the UNICEF definition of the universal age of adulthood. It makes sense to make this the international minimum age for sex workers for the purposes of this legislation, at least from the point of view of Street Kids International.
It begs the question of harmonizing the age of majority across the board on other issues, like military service and the voting age, with the minimum age for sex work. Again, you then run into completely different international value systems. In the last couple of years they have lowered the voting age in Brazil to 16, so you won't get very far trying to bust Canadians for sleeping with 17-year-olds in Brazil.
Nevertheless, I think the legislation is good.
That's my presentation. Thank you.
The Chair: Ms Gillies.
Ms Kara Gillies (Program Coordinator, Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes): I'll start by telling you a bit about myself. I am currently working as a prostitute in the city of Toronto, and I'm here today on behalf of the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes.
This organization was established in 1983 in recognition of the fact that criminal sanctions and regulatory schemes designed to control prostitution end up just promoting dangerous working conditions without alleviating the concerns that some communities express around issues of morality, exploitation and public nuisance.
For the past three years I have been working at Maggie's, the Toronto prostitutes' community service project. We are a peer-run agency devoted to sharing health and legal information with fellow sex workers.
During the course of my employment at Maggie's I've had the opportunity to meet and to talk with hundreds upon hundreds of prostitutes representing a diversity of backgrounds and a variety of ages, and it is mainly from their stories that we've formulated the positions I am here to present today.
This afternoon I would specifically like to address clause 2 of the current bill, focusing on those subclauses amending current Criminal Code provisions relating to procuring.
It's certainly apparent to us that these amendments were drafted in a genuine attempt to promote the welfare of youth who are currently working or have worked as prostitutes.
Unfortunately, we believe the proposed measures will fail to achieve this goal. In fact, we're convinced that such legislation will actually endanger the well-being of youth working in the sex trade.
The reality is that many young people have few avenues open to them, especially those youth who choose the street as an alternative to intolerable home conditions or horrible conditions within social services. For these people, exchanging sexual activity for consideration is one of the few options available.
Those of us here today might not like this option, but it's not fair to attempt to constrain it and further limit the choices that these young people have for supporting themselves. If young people are choosing prostitution over their families or social services, perhaps those latter institutions are the ones where the genuine problems lie.
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At first glance this bill can be interpreted as protecting already vulnerable youth from further exploitation by targeting clients and so-called pimps. However, as somebody who's worked for almost seven years now in the business, I can assure you that an attack on a client translates into an attack on the prostitute. Even if such sanctions were effective in reducing the client base, they do absolutely nothing to reduce the need of these youths to support themselves and possibly their partners or families. They are still going to be out there turning tricks.
When you're out working and facing stricter law enforcement, whether it's targeted against you or your clients, if the client base is reduced, you end up having to work longer hours to get by. You have to avoid the police, and consequently you end up moving away from the safety of familiar strolls to unknown and therefore dangerous locations - ironically enough, often locations in residential areas. Then we get back to residents' groups organizing and complaining about the nuisance factors associated with street prostitution, juvenile or otherwise.
Once again, the reality is that if you have to make $50 that night and it's 3 a.m. and you haven't made a penny, and a car pulls up with a driver who is obviously hostile and probably quite drunk, when nobody is targeting you or your clients you probably avoid that date. But when money is tight you have to get what you can, and a lot of people end up taking those risks.
This isn't pure speculation on our part. These are the results that were found after the communicating law came into being in 1985. There was a crackdown on prostitutes and so-called johns, and no significant reduction in the number of prostitutes or so-called johns on the street. It simply resulted in a displacement of the women, men and youth into more isolated areas and led to a greater incidence of violence.
As far as the parts of proposed section 212 are concerned, the ones related to so-called pimping, I suggest that as they stand, they are not just ineffective but perhaps even heavy-handed.
The reality is that although 80% of prostitutes, juvenile and adult, in Canada are working independently, many of us choose to engage in what are typical labour-management relations in which we pay a third party to look after aspects of our business. It might be writing down licence plate numbers when you're standing on the street corner. It might be providing you with condoms, with clothes, running an ad in the local newspaper. Yet those types of business associations are criminalized by the current legislation, which means that workers, particularly young workers, end up having to be completely on their own.
We have to be careful at an organization like Maggie's when somebody phones up and asks how they can work legally, how they can work safely, where they should go, because we could be facing a criminal charge.
Certainly it is true that instances of abuse do occur. I would suggest that unfortunately in this society, abuse of both women and children is common across the board. However, if an individual coerces a woman or a youth into unwanted activity, extorts money or forces unwanted sexual activity, there are existing Criminal Code provisions to deal with those issues head on. I think that's probably the most appropriate route to take.
Later on in the bill there are proposals around facilitating the testimony of young witnesses. One thing we've seen at Maggie's is that a lot of young prostitutes are unwilling to come forward about instances of abuse simply because they're worried that the abuser is going to be charged with procuring as opposed to something like common assault. You have to remember that prostitution is a business. It's a way of earning money. If there's somebody who helps you earn that money, you don't want that taken away from you. It might be hard to relate to that and to understand, but that's the way it is.
In fact, often when prostitutes, juvenile or otherwise, avoid the criminal justice system, it's not because of fear of reprisal from the assailant; it's because they have outstanding warrants, because they've had bad experiences with the police and with crown attorneys in the past.
.1610
There are conflicting stories about the situations, the numbers of juvenile prostitutes in Canada. One of the difficulties is simply that there's a discrepancy in what age is allowable for what sort of act. For a lot of the social agencies who present information to committees such as this one, their cut-off for a youth involved in prostitution is 25 years of age. Consequently, a lot of the statistics that are out there are skewed because of a very biased sample.
By and large, although I think the intent is admirable, to try to assist the young people who are working on the street, I'm not certain that further criminal sanctions are the best route. Even though they aren't aimed directly at the young workers per se, it is going to have a negative impact on their working conditions and living conditions, and they are going to continue to turn tricks. Thank you.
The Chair: Madame Gagnon.
[Translation]
Mrs. Gagnon (Quebec): I don't have any questions for the time being.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms Torsney, did you want to start?
Ms Torsney: Sure. That was fast. If the Reform Party were here -
The Chair: Which we're not talking about because it's not parliamentary.
Ms Torsney: - which we're not talking about - they would say to you, Mr. Lowry, that this legislation is.... They might not say it's not a good idea, but they would say, look, there's no enforcement mechanism, so what's the point? The fact is, they say, there haven't been very many people arrested in Vancouver, for instance, versus other cities in Canada for procuring teenage prostitutes, so who's going to go after these cases?
You're the first person who brought the Brian Johnson example to the committee, about the impact on him, and of course there are other examples of cases that are ready to go. I still believe the legislation would be a good idea.
What more should we be doing on the enforcement issue? Is there anything further you wanted to say about why we need this legislation, given the fact that there might not be more opportunity for enforcement?
Mr. Lowry: I would say that there is a lot of activity internationally to trace the activities particularly of pedophiles, and it overlaps. The people who have been prosecuted in Europe under these laws tend to be what we would call pedophiles. They're the extreme end of this behaviour. There are a lot of entities in the world that make it their business to try to track these people. If Canadians turn up, we would have a law then to move forward with the evidence.
I think it's very cynical to suggest that it's not a good idea to have it in legislation even if enforcement is lousy in this generation. Maybe it will get better in the next generation.
We're talking about children's lives here, children who are being harmed by being forced through economic circumstances into a very unhealthy situation. When it's young children we're talking about, people who are not physically mature, for whom it is severely compromising their health, let alone their psychological health, there is no question that every country in the world should take this kind of action to put this in legislation. That's my own view.
Ms Torsney: On the issue of the 17-year-old, as you identified, the age issue, it has been asked here, or certainly some of us have wondered, why we would use 18 years of age when our own laws are...not grey, but there are certainly different classes of opportunities with 14- to 18-year-olds.
I don't know that we're really talking about the 17-year-old Brazilian, are we? We're really talking about children much younger in a lot of countries. A 17-year-old could have some choice in the matter, but we're talking about some really young kids in certain countries.
Mr. Lowry: Certainly, we are. As I said, the age of majority or the age of the end of childhood from UNICEF's perspective is 18 years of age. That's a useful age point for this legislation, recognizing that there isn't the political will or the law enforcement will really to track down internationally clients of sex workers who are sexually and physically mature and for all intents and purposes young adults.
.1615
So the 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds are in a grey area. I don't think you're going to see an epidemic of Canadian citizens being pursued because they discover that they slept with a prostitute in Colombia who is 17 years old; that's just not going to happen, and it's not a reason not to put it in the law.
Ms Torsney: Ms Gillies, you certainly presented another way of looking at the issue, and that's really quite important. No one has brought to us the worker-employer relationship. But there are cases - and this legislation is brought about with the best intentions, particularly after a lot of lobbying by one of our colleagues, Ron MacDonald from the Halifax area - where they're faced with a really serious problem. There are lots of kids disappearing from neighbourhoods and being procured by pimps and put into the market in Toronto and Montreal. It's a serious problem, and they're trying to address it.
In the course of developing the legislation, somebody actually suggested to him that we might not be able to do this on a first offence because there would be so many people who would be jailed. A lot of people retorted, well, my goodness, how many kids' lives are we going to sacrifice to these characters? We have to do something about it.
As it stands, we've heard representation from people saying, look, it doesn't matter if it's kids who are involved; there's always an element of violence. They want us to remove the element of violence in the legislation right now. They want all people who are pimping from children to be included. But to date we've left it as including the violence aspect.
There are lots of lawyers and other people who represent the legal community who are saying a five-year minimum isn't the way to go. But there's a desire to have an impact on this problem and to deal with those characters who really are stealing children from neighbourhoods and giving kids no choice. How else can we combat this? If it's applied for those few cases or maybe as examples or whatever, would you be supportive of it?
Ms Gillies: I think it's important that federal legislation not be developed based on maybe one or two cases in certain regions in the country. Certainly, yes, we know in Halifax and in Calgary there are quite a number of prostitutes between the ages of 14 and 18 working; in other urban centres - Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver - the number is not that substantial. The numbers that do come through are often exaggerated because social agencies or police count the number of contacts, not the number of individuals. So you might see one 16-year-old five nights a week, and that counts in your outreach sheets, quite literally, as five separate contacts.
I certainly think, once again, there are instances of abuse that occur, but I don't agree that simply being involved in a managerial level with somebody who's between the ages of, say, 14 and 18 or even 16 and 18 should constitute a criminal offence. We're not talking about situations that happen in other countries where we have 8-, 9- and 10-year-olds working. That's pretty much unheard of. Of course we hear of the occasional case, but the reason you hear about them is that they are the exception and therefore noteworthy.
The vast majority of people who qualify as juvenile prostitutes are 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds, and the vast majority are male. The average age of male prostitutes in Canada is younger than the female prostitutes.
If children are disappearing, and if even teenagers are disappearing, are there not laws around kidnapping, forcible confinement and so forth that should be used? Why aren't they being used? I think that's another concern we have.
Why is it that prostitutes, young and old, are subjected to violence and can't seek recourse through the police or the criminal justice system?
In terms of people not being concerned about 16-, 17- and 18-year-olds, it might be true that we're not going to go tracking down people out of the country, but ever since the changes to the obscenity legislation and so-called child pornography legislation came out, police forces, certainly in Ontario, have been vehemently chasing people down.
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With the majority of the people who have been charged, the charges around obscenity and producing obscene material have been dropped and they've been charged with procuring the services of a prostitute under 18, because the law says 16- to 18-year-old male prostitutes...if somebody wants to pay them extra to videotape the date, that's what they'll do.
So I'm not sure it's really appropriate to develop legislation for the few cases where there is genuine abuse when that abuse could be countered more directly through existing provisions. At the same time, these proposals could very well open it up to what comes close to a witch-hunt in many situations.
We don't seem to see, certainly in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver, a real desire, a real market, for young flesh, in the way you might see in countries where condoms are not as readily available and the fear of HIV and other STDs is a genuine one.
A lot of the clients of 17- and 18-year-olds, even 16-year-olds, don't know how young they are. When I'm out doing outreach, sometimes I'm surprised if I do encounter somebody who is 16. She has to tell me so, because she looks all made up and looks as if she's 20 or 21.
I'm sure there are people who have a proclivity towards younger people, or even children, but it certainly is not something we've witnessed as a pressing problem, whereas the enforcement of the laws, the way they stand, never mind if they were made stricter, has been a problem. The whole notion of being in the habitual company of a prostitute, that being evidence that somebody lives on the avails...the result is that girls, women, boys, and men, partners, roommates, lovers, spouses, end up being targeted under the existing legislation.
Ms Torsney: How many kids have you come in contact with from Toronto who are 13- and 14-year-olds? We heard yesterday from a couple of former prostitutes who started at 13 and 14. I have heard from people who work with kids in Toronto that it's becoming more of a problem.
Ms Gillies: Right now it's less of a problem. Ten or twenty years ago fewer social services were available, and when youngsters were on the street -
Ms Torsney: In Harris Ontario not very many will be left.
Ms Gillies: Yes, this might not last.
When young people were on the street, they were snapped up pretty quickly. That's what is happening now. If you're on the street and you're quite young, social services are out there, juvenile task forces are out there. People usually get picked up and put into a better location. We did run a peer-empowerment project that was directed at youth under 18, and we ended up having to shut the project down because there weren't enough people in that age group out there to warrant a whole separate project.
I'm very skeptical, frankly, about a lot of social service agencies, because this is how they get their funding. They get their funding based on how many young prostitutes they claim they see.
The Chair: Did you have any questions yet?
[Translation]
Mrs. Gagnon: You seem to have opposite positions. Mr. Lowry seems to be favourable to some legislation that would protect children against sexual abuse, whereas Ms Gillies says that we don't really need it. I have some trouble reconciling your positions. This does not mean that I find your statements uninteresting but rather that I am trying to see exactly... you, sir, seem to believe that children might be better protected by an improved piece of legislation.
What could we do to improve the bill? Ms Gillies, on the other hand, claims that this bill is not required, whereas you say that it is a step in the right direction but that it should be improved.
I would like to ask you a question, Mr. Lowry, on the bill as it is. It seems that this bill will allow us to prosecute people that would get sex from children for money. Do you find that this bill deals properly with the whole matter of sexual abuse against children or do you think we should extend it to any person that is abusing children sexually, even without money? Most of our witnesses have underlined this weakness of the bill.
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[English]
Mr. Lowry: Perhaps I'll answer in English.
[Translation]
All right? Thank you very much.
[English]
I think this law mixes up a bunch of things in one package. The larger issue of sexual abuse of children, whether it's paid for or not, is where I would like to see legislation squarely. The notion of whether or not it's paid for emphasizes the old 19th-century moral judgment of prostitution as an evil.
I can tell you that in eight years of working in AIDS education, which is where we come from in Street Kids International, if we didn't consider...if the WHO, the World Health Organization, which Canada contributes to, did not consider prostitutes to be safe sex educators and did not consider them to be legitimate professionals, we could not get anywhere in the global battle against AIDS.
We have to set our morality aside sometime. Hopefully in the dawn of the 21st century we will begin to understand this and accept what Kara is saying - that it is a profession, that they should be protected under the law, that adult prostitutes and adult sex workers should be.... But that's a whole different set of legislation.
I would certainly like to see this legislation be very much focused on the sexual abuse of children in unequal power relationships. I'm trying to address the language that I see in the legislation and to suggest that it's a step in the right direction. The perspective of the prostitutes' rights group is that it's not a step in the right direction as written, and I respect that.
From the point of view of the international mandate that I serve, it would be very useful to have that law in place to deal with Canadians who are abusing young people abroad and fuelling that industry. It has implications for the tourism industry internationally, the marketing of sex tourism. The marketing of sex with young kids would be less easy with laws like this in place.
So I think it's a step in the right direction. I think the draft needs work, and if it could have as much work as I would like, it would go in the direction that you've suggested.
[Translation]
Mrs. Gagnon: You stated, and I hope I did not misunderstand you, that those people are not paedophiles or sexual deviants but rather regular men who are guilty of sexual abuse against children.
I would rather have thought that people who abuse children are not regular people. They may belong to the upper echelons of society but their behaviour vis-à-vis children is far from being that of regular people.
[English]
Mr. Lowry: I am distinguishing between a pedophile who seeks sex with children and a client of prostitutes who seeks to pay for sex and who sleeps with a younger sex worker. That is to say, they don't perceive themselves as having a proclivity for sleeping with children. They don't, and from a psychological profile point of view, they're not pedophiles. They're heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual, as the case may be, but they're not particularly seeking sex with children.
Again, we're trying to come up with an age point at which it is pedophilia and an age point at which it's not. If the age of sexual consent in Canada is 14, then is having sex with a 14-year-old pedophilia? I don't think the Canadian law would suggest that it is unless you pay for it, and then you're busted as a pedophile. It's very grey.
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I think it's utterly inappropriate and psychologically damaging for an adult to have sex with a 14-year-old. For 14-year-olds to experiment together, perhaps without intercourse, who knows? That's a whole other discussion.
But I would stick by that, that generally they're not monsters who are sleeping with people under the age of 18. When you get under the age of 14, you're getting into what psychologists would call pedophilia. I look at guys in Manila or Santo Domingo seeking sex with a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old as pedophiles. But again, that's a grey area. I'm not a psychologist. I think that's abuse of a child and it's bad.
[Translation]
Mrs. Gagnon: I would like Ms Gillies to clarify some of her statements. She gave me the impression that, as far as she is concerned, people who practice prostitution have chosen to do that and have not necessarily been abused. I do not know if that is what you meant but this is what I understood from your statement. You seem to be saying that those people have chosen to practice prostitution. Personally, that is not the impression I had.
Yesterday, a woman came to talk to us about prostitution. She stated that 99% of prostitutes were victims of violence and that we have to take the whole behaviour into account. I don't know if I understood clearly what you meant, and this is why I did not want to question you right from the start. I'm trying to understand your message. As far as I'm concerned, it's not clear.
[English]
Ms Gillies: Prostitutes come from a variety of backgrounds and have a variety of options open to them. For many people it is an informed choice. They have a huge range of other options, and exchanging sex for money is something with which they're comfortable. Even if it is something that perhaps some of them don't like, it's not written anywhere that you have to like your job, to which many people can attest.
Then there are other people, often young people, who don't have very many options and probably would rather be doing something else. However, that doesn't make that one option any less valid or any less important to their well-being. Often young people will engage in prostitution for a short time as a means to getting on to something else. Adult prostitutes often do this as well. For many people it can be a transient business. You turn a date once in a while to make your rent or to pay your bills and then you go back to something else.
I often feel that when people talk about youth having no choices and being forced into prostitution, it's somewhat inaccurate. Everybody has to make decisions, and some decisions are difficult to make. I think young people have to be supported in the choices they do pursue, because to do otherwise is extremely disempowering. When a 16-year-old decides that she would rather turn a date for money and get a room for the night as opposed to sleeping on a park bench and perhaps being sexually assaulted, instead of being labelled as a victim she needs to be labelled as somebody who has done the best she can under the current situation.
If that involves having a 22-year-old boyfriend who buys her clothes and to whom she gives half her money, is that inherently exploitive? If a 16-year-old does babysitting and gives half the money to her live-in boyfriend, do we label him a pimp? Do we treat their relationship differently than we treat any other relationship? That's what tends to happen with prostitution.
I think we agree that exploitation and violence, particularly against youth and children, needs to be addressed, but should it be done through prostitution-related provisions? When there is something exploitive or violent about the so-called procuring, should we not be addressing that head on? People can be charged with forceful confinement, assault and sexual assault as opposed to a procuring charge.
I haven't witnessed this with young adults in prostitution because I really have not seen all that many of them. But a lot of adult prostitutes I know, like other women, often experience domestic violence. Many times it's actually the procuring and bawdy house laws that prevent them from coming forward because they're afraid their partner will get charged with an offence other than the assault charge and they don't want that to happen. So oftentimes the procuring and bawdy house laws actually deter victims of abuse from coming forward.
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I don't know if I answered your question.
[Translation]
Mrs. Gagnon: Thank you for this clarification. The bill wants to criminalize Canadians who go abroad, in those countries where there is prostitution and sexual abuse of very young children, as young as five, six or ten.
But we should also fight all those networks and agencies which operate very often hand in hand with sex tourists abroad. This is a global issue that has been very well exposed by the media. A French reporter published a whole report on a prostitution network in Asia. I understand what you are saying but one should not forget that there are still children who have no choice and whose life is hell.
We have seen on TV some reports of children who stated that they felt very humiliated by what they had to do and that they had the feeling that they were not respected as people.
It is difficult to judge. There may be some for whom it is a choice, but one cannot shut our eyes when it involves children as young as four, five, six, seven or eight. One cannot say that the legislation would be useless for them. Ten years ago, nobody heard about this issue. Passing the legislation would also have an educational effect.
[English]
Ms Gillies: I agree. I think there is a distinction to be drawn between what's happening internationally with sex tourism, where the people involved really are children - we are often talking about people under the age of 12 - versus legislation addressing the actions of people within Canada, where the so-called child prostitutes are often teenagers. I think that does impact upon their ability to make a choice, the options they have, and how healthy it is to pursue them.
[Translation]
Mrs. Gagnon: Thank you.
[English]
The Chair: Mr. Telegdi.
Mr. Telegdi: Thank you, Madam Chair.
Is Mr. Lowry leaving?
Mr. Lowry: Yes. I'm afraid I'm speaking to the child labour discussion downstairs.
Mr. Telegdi: Actually, I was going to ask you a question on that because I was sitting on that committee last week.
Mr. Lowry: Well, I can stay for another few minutes.
The Chair: Be late for them. We're nicer!
Mr. Telegdi: I guess in some cases we like to look upon the world and see it the way we would like it to be versus the way it is. I sat on that committee at some point...actually, it was two weeks ago. The big evil is seen to be child labour, in the third world in particular. Of course, when we're dealing with this issue, if some of those jobs didn't exist the kids would end up being prostitutes or working for bare survival. I'm just horrified when I see what happens to street kids in Brazil. You have death squads that actually hunt them down.
Reading your part on the common man, I was struck that really what we're talking about is the need for social development in those countries. You can't just take one problem and try to solve it by creating laws that might be applicable, say, in North America. I think your paper identifies that. I daren't guess what it would cost to prosecute one person under this legislation. How could those resources be better spent to give people choices?
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I could see a prosecution going on where we spend half a million dollars or a million dollars to prosecute one individual. I guess we'll feel better because we got somebody; we hung them out to dry and used them as an example. Why not take the same amount of money and try to do something with that in terms of development, so the kids have choices, which they don't have there?
Mr. Lowry: If I could just address that very briefly, I think it's important that we do both. They're not mutually exclusive, by any means. It's very important to have the legislation in place that gradually has a ripple effect internationally. That's the United Nations process, that we begin to develop international standards and country by country we put them in place. Someday they will be universally adopted, as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is adopted pretty much universally, even though it's not enforced. It's adopted by countries that are egregiously violating it every day in terms of the acts of their governments and their police and so on. Countries like Sudan have signed the convention. They have slavery of children in Sudan, lots of it.
Nevertheless, Canada can have this kind of law in place to deal with the actions of its own citizens abroad.
Again, to admit that 5% to 10% of the clients who are abusing children in brothels in Thailand are foreigners and the rest are Asian means fundamentally that it has to change there. We can do our little bit, which is to make it more difficult for Canadians to participate in that. I don't think they're mutually exclusive, and of course the social development angle is what I work in.
I hope that's helpful.
Mr. Telegdi: When you're saying to do both - let's say we're dealing with resource allocation - how would you allocate the resources? Would you say 10% or 20%?
Mr. Lowry: You might find there isn't the political will to spend the money on enforcement of the law at this time, but that's not a reason not to put it in law.
Mr. Telegdi: No, I'm not saying there's not the will. How would you see the allocation? If you were to allocate resources, where would you see the resource allocation?
Mr. Lowry: I do think it's useful to put it in law, test it, see how much it costs and see where it takes us. There are some examples in Europe of prosecuting these sorts of offenders that are interesting to look at. I think those are valid processes, even if they are expensive. I don't think it precludes the social development money going out through CIDA and External Affairs, etc. I'm not managing the budget.
I'm sorry, I really do have to go downstairs.
Mr. Telegdi: Actually, you might raise the point about what happens in terms of the sex trade in those countries, to offset the other one.
Mr. Lowry: Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Telegdi: Ms Gillies, I guess you're an expert witness in front of this committee. Ms Torsney was wondering how long you have been involved in prostitution.
Ms Gillies: I've been working for seven years now.
Mr. Telegdi: One thing I'm wondering about when I read the legislation, having worked with street kids in the Waterloo region in an organization called Youth in Conflict with the Law.... Again, we have cases where kids go to welfare and can't get any welfare; they go to a hostel and get booted out of the hostel. There are kids with substance abuse problems, and in many cases it doesn't seem there's a hell of a lot of choice for them. Then they can get involved in prostitution - not truly so much a choice as the fact that they have no choice.
What I'm wondering about when I read the legislation and see how the police want to use decoys.... You could have a policewoman out there who might be 25 years old, but as long as she sets herself up as being under 18, the john would be guilty under the act, because the person is led to believe she's under 18, or she leads him to believe that.
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I was concerned when you were talking about how you are worried about the victimization of the prostitutes because of this legislation. I have great concerns about that, because not everything in the world of the police and the people they deal with is necessarily the way we would like it to be. I could see abuse on the part of the police with this kind of legislation. Could you elaborate more on the victimization thing I think I picked up from you when you were making your presentation on this?
Ms Gillies: I'll link it to your earlier point about limited choices. Let's say you do have a 16-year-old girl on the street, addicted to crack, and she has been kicked out of the women's shelters in the area. If magically we were to eliminate all the potential clients she could have as a prostitute, where would she be? What would she be doing?
Although prostitution for many young people might be one of their last options, and for many of them it might be the least favourable, often it serves as a form of harm reduction. It's something that gets them through at the time. If like that, we could get rid of all the clients of prostitutes under the age of 18, where would these young people be? Would they be committing other crimes such as break-and-entering, muggings? Would they be on the street, trying to panhandle? What would happen?
Although I certainly don't think legislation of this nature will eliminate the client base - that's just not going to happen - if it were successful in reducing it, I think we would see many of those same results. This is what we saw with both juvenile and adult prostitutes after the communicating law came into effect. Certainly the police were able to step up their enforcement. The rates of arrest, as you're probably aware, skyrocketed. Yet the majority of people in the business still had to work. They just had to find a way to try to escape detection.
If the target is the clients and clients are made aware that police decoys are out there and they might get caught, if they start staying away from juvenile prostitutes, from all prostitutes.... Once again, it is a business. How are people going to get by?
People do take greater risks. Even with the failing economy we've seen in the last couple of years, a lot of prostitutes have told us they take risks they wouldn't normally take because they needed to earn some money and ended up in a risky situation as a result - either risky in terms of subjecting themselves to physical violence, in situations where they felt it could have been avoided, or even risky because they were taking health risks. One thing we don't hear a lot about with adult prostitutes but hear occasionally from juvenile prostitutes, particularly those with substance abuse problems, is if there's an opportunity to make extra money for engaging in sex without a condom, some of them are going to go ahead and do so.
We have a lot of problems at hand here. I think often what happens is it's easiest to pinpoint prostitution, to reduce everything to prostitution and try to deal with it in the Criminal Code accordingly, whereas often with young people we are talking about abusive backgrounds, substance abuse problems, lack of other services. Often these young people find the services that are out there disagreeable and they would rather be out on the street.
So it is difficult, but I'm not certain the amendments as they currently stand are going to have much of an effect. If they do, I suspect it's going to have a greater negative effect on a large number of young prostitutes and a small effect on the people it's attempting to target, the clients and the so-called pimps.
The Chair: Mr. DeVillers.
Mr. DeVillers (Simcoe North): Thank you, Madam Chair.
What would your organization's position be on more regulation to try to deal with younger people and with the customers and the pimps, etc.?
Ms Gillies: Non-criminal regulation?
Mr. DeVillers: Yes. Does your organization have a position on that?
Ms Gillies: Yes, our position is that prostitution is a business and should be treated as such. Consequently it should be subjected to regulatory schemes similar to those other businesses and individuals are subjected to.
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We do oppose a formal licensing regime as exists in some other countries or states, simply because the very severe restrictions that come into play make the working conditions undesirable. Consequently, the vast majority of prostitutes continue to work illegally. According to the World Health Organization, only 2% of prostitutes working in regulated systems actually come forward to be licensed. There are a number of reasons for that, but the reality is that you have a two-tiered system and most people are not covered by the licensing scheme.
Certainly, though, if prostitution were treated as a business we could then deal with issues of exploitation, abuse and child labour with existing legislation, without having to get sidetracked into issues around morality and this and that.
The bawdy house laws are mentioned and addressed somewhat in this bill, really just in terms of changing the language. But a lot of sex workers' organizations throughout Canada and a lot of researchers have suggested that if the bawdy house law were at least amended to allow up to two prostitutes to work out of their own location, it would increase independence. With only two people working out of one place, there is less likelihood that there is going to be third-party involvement, exploitive or otherwise.
It would do something to reduce street prostitution as well. We're always going to get people who are down and out, who are living on the street, who turn to what we call survival sex. But a lot of the people out there have chosen to pull dates off the street because the criminal sanctions for communicating are less than for keeping a common bawdy house, which is the charge to which one would be subjected for working out of one's own home.
Mr. DeVillers: So a more regulated scheme would alleviate some of your concerns over this legislation.
Ms Gillies: Yes, and something using existing legislation like occupational health and safety, zoning by-laws and so forth at the municipal level, but not going so far as to set up straight-run brothels. That has happened in other countries, in some states in Australia, Nevada in the U.S., cities in Germany, and the vast majority of people continue to work illegally anyway.
The Chair: Mr. Maloney.
Mr. Maloney (Erie): In the profession of prostitution, is it a phase? Do prostitutes perhaps go in at a young age, late teens or early twenties, and come to a point where they wish to get out of the system? Does your organization offer assistance or counselling in this respect?
Ms Gillies: It varies. There are some women - I'll say women because 80% of prostitutes are female - for whom it really is a career. There are women I know across Canada, but particularly in Toronto, who have been working 30 or 40 years. There was recently a death in Toronto of a woman who had just turned 80 and only about 10 years earlier had stopped working but had opened up her own little brothel.
However, for a lot of prostitutes, and I would suspect for the majority, it is very transient. It could be that they spend a few months working while they're in the middle of a custody battle and have to spend time with their children and can't afford to go into work every day. There are women who work sporadically to pay off debts or loans. There are women who work while they're struggling with a substance abuse problem and need the money to support the addiction. There are women who decide they want to buy their fourth house. It really does run the gamut.
Yet for the majority of prostitutes, even those who don't really like what they do - it's like any business in that some people like the work and some don't. For those who would rather be doing something else, I think the majority recognize that this is what they're doing at the present time. It's getting them somewhere, whether that somewhere is buying their fourth house or giving them a roof over their head for that one night.
Yes, at Maggie's we do a lot of referrals. In the past we have contemplated setting up actual programs to assist people to leave prostitution, yet leaving prostitution in and of itself isn't an issue. I've worked with lots of young women who thought they'd try it and decided it wasn't for them, so they moved on to something else.
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When people can't leave, it's because of some external factor. Once again, it's because they have a substance abuse problem. It's because they have only grade 9 education. It's because they have an abusive partner or parent who won't allow them to do anything else.
At Maggie's we discovered it was really a multifaceted issue when people can't leave prostitution. It's not one area. So we refer people to other agencies.
Mr. Maloney: How is Maggie's funded?
Ms Gillies: We're funded mostly through health money, from the public health department in Toronto, from the AIDS bureau at the provincial health ministry level in Ontario, and from Health and Welfare Canada. Then we get private funding from corporations and so forth. Most of our money is towards safe sex education and legal advocacy.
Actually, today I'm here on behalf of the Canadian Organization for the Rights of Prostitutes. I brought Maggie's in just because a lot of my experience comes from the work I do there.
The Chairman: Ms Torsney.
Ms Torsney: They say you're never supposed to ask a woman how old she is, but I'll tell you how old I am if you tell me how old you are.
In trying to develop some understanding of your perspective, and knowing what we heard yesterday and how they're somewhat similar and somewhat in conflict, how old are you now?
Ms Gillies: I just turned 27. I started working very formally, full-time, about the time I was 20, although before that I worked occasionally. I don't count it in my résumé. It was the occasional date here and there.
Ms Torsney: Who are your clients; not specifically, of course, but what kind of profile do they have, and has that been changing or static over the seven years?
Ms Gillies: It's pretty static. The differences I've noticed really have been where I've worked. I've worked on my own. I've worked through escort agencies and in call services. I've worked in massage parlours. I've worked on the street. Even on a place like the street the clientele varies according to the track, what we call ``low track'' and ``high track''. So it's hard for me to know whether the type of clients I've seen...whether any change I've noticed is related to my age or related to the economy.
Right now most clients are really cheap. Lots of the girls are complaining about that. It's really a reflection of the economy at present.
Ms Torsney: But who are they, by and large? Was Chris Lowry's profile...?
Ms Gillies: Oh, definitely. Most of them are middle class, ranging.... I would say the average is probably around 35 to 50, but you get people as young as 18, people as old as 80. Sometimes they're single men. Sometimes they're married.
They don't all talk about why they're there, but when they do, once again there may be a myriad of reasons. Some people feel trapped in monogamous relationships. The expectation of their primary relationship was one of monogamy and it's not working for them, so seeing a prostitute is a way they can get additional sexual experiences without necessarily violating the emotional bond they have with their spouse or other partner.
For some men it's simply variety. Others might have a particular fetish, a particular interest their other partners are uncomfortable with.
It varies. It's basically your average person, just as I would have to say the average prostitute is an average person.
The Chair: Thank you very much for attending. Your perspective was unique for us, so we appreciate hearing from you.
We're adjourned.