COUNCIL OF ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETIES OF ONTARIO
SUSPECTED CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT PROGRAM, HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES
CONTENTS
Tuesday 29 September 1998
Protection of Children involved in Prostitution Act, Bill 18, Mr Bartolucci / Loi de 1998 sur la protection des enfants qui se livrent à la prostitution, projet de loi 18, M. Bartolucci
Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario
Ms Tamara Bodnaruk-Wide
Suspected child abuse and neglect program, Hospital for Sick Children
Dr Dirk Huyer
Street Outreach Services
Ms Susan Miner
London Family Court Clinic
Dr Louise Sas
Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies
Ms Diane Cresswell
Ms Marion Roberts
Covenant House Toronto
Ms Michele Anderson
Toronto Police Service
Mr Michel Beauparlant
STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Chair / Présidente
Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview L)
Vice-Chair / Vice-Président
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville L)
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre / -Centre ND)
Mr Jack Carroll (Chatham-Kent PC)
Ms Annamarie Castrilli (Downsview L)
Mr Dwight Duncan (Windsor-Walkerville L)
Mr Tim Hudak (Niagara South / -Sud PC)
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie PC)
Mrs Lyn McLeod (Fort William L)
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West / -Ouest PC)
Mr Bruce Smith (Middlesex PC)
Substitutions / Membres remplaçants
Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk PC)
Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury L)
Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West / -Ouest PC)
Mr John R. O'Toole (Durham East / -Est PC)
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand PC)
Clerk / Greffière
Ms Tonia Grannum
Staff / Personnel
Ms Elaine Campbell, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1538 in room 151.
PROTECTION OF CHILDREN INVOLVED IN PROSTITUTION ACT, 1998 / LOI DE 1998 SUR LA PROTECTION DES ENFANTS QUI SE LIVRENT À LA PROSTITUTION
Consideration of Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution / Projet de loi 18, Loi visant à protéger les enfants qui se livrent à la prostitution.
COUNCIL OF ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETIES OF ONTARIO
The Chair (Ms Annamarie Castrilli): Good afternoon and welcome to this session of the standing committee on social development. Today we're considering Bill 18. Our first presenter is the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario, Tamara Bodnaruk-Wide. Thank you very much for being with us. As you take your place, I'll tell you that you have 20 minutes for your presentation. If you don't use all of your time, the committee I'm sure will have some questions for you.
Ms Tamara Bodnaruk-Wide: Members of the standing committee on social development, good afternoon. My name is Tamara Bodnaruk-Wide. I am appearing as a representative of the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario. Elizabeth Fry societies across Canada work for and with women in conflict with the law. We strive to promote the rights of all women: children and adult, victim and offender.
I am here to relay the official resolution passed by the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario with regard to Bill 18 and to enumerate our additional areas of concern surrounding the bill as it is read. It should be noted that all the members of the council passed this resolution, with one abstention by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Sudbury.
The first part of the resolution passed is that the Elizabeth Fry societies of Ontario fully support the allocation of more social service resources to meet the needs of young women involved in prostitution or at risk of being involved in prostitution. In other words, we support the premise of this bill.
We commend the collaborators of Bill 18 for their foresight and initiative in attempting to address the plight of children involved in or at risk of being involved in prostitution. We believe the framers' intentions were good, that is, to do good things for our children in particular and our communities and society in general.
That being said, we move on to the second part of the resolution passed, which is that the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario is opposed to the provisions in Bill 18 that increase the power of police to arrest young women and keep them in custody at a safe house for up to three days without a bail hearing or right to counsel.
The bill uses the word "apprehend," which is the same thing as "arrest"; and "confine," which is the same thing as "custody." When terminology is interchangeable, there are predictable consequences.
If the point of this bill is to protect children involved in or at risk of being involved in prostitution because they are the victims, not the criminals, this bill should not have punitive wording. If this bill does pass as it is written, the terminology used will inevitably bring about a whole host of constitutional questions which need to be very closely scrutinized.
We would also like to point out that the term "safe house" needs to be addressed and clarified. Such a place cannot be endorsed without knowing anything about it. What are safe houses? Who will run them? Will those running them have special training? Will they be altogether different from any facility or place of refuge which is defined under the Child and Family Services Act, or will they be similar or even the same? If they are different, what are the differences? If they are the same, why not simply amend the Child and Family Services Act to include special provisions to aid children involved in, or at risk of being involved in, prostitution?
If they are run by another agency, will they be detention-oriented? If they are designed to confine, then surely they will be no different from open custody facilities or, in other words, jails. What will be done there? How are the three days to be used? Is there a clear mandate for what must take place there? Will assessment, at the very least, be mandated? Can these safe houses be used by other agencies? Will there be community collaboration? Will age appropriateness be taken into consideration?
Further questions we would like to pose are:
What will the outcome be when this law clashes with other laws? For example, if there is a prostitution sweep, will the young women be charged with communicating for the purposes of prostitution and then be apprehended? If there is a choice between the two, is it at the discretion of the police? Will police officers receive special training, especially those officers in vice units?
Is this bill even necessary? Why not just amend the Child and Family Services Act and the Criminal Code? Is this bill based on the old theories of patens patriae and doli incapix, where guilt by association is grounds for apprehension, as it was under the old Juvenile Delinquents Act?
What are the practical implications, considering the Feeney decision?
Have you considered the way child prostitution is dealt with in California, with their Children of the Night program? That program has a 24-bed shelter which provides refuge, food and skilled counsel for abused teenagers involved in or at risk of being involved in pornography and prostitution as they await placement in a suitable environment. Services include food, clothing, emergency medical care, crisis intervention, academic assessment of English, math and social studies, foster home placement and a 24-hour hotline to help get exploited young girls and boys off the streets. Children are referred to the centre by community agencies and police. It empowers children without criminalizing them.
In sum, we believe Bill 18 brings about more questions than it answers at this point. We are deeply concerned that the way it is worded and read criminalizes those who are victims. We fear that this perception is not ours alone and that it will become that of the police, community agencies and, most importantly, the children themselves.
We are sure that is not the intention of the bill. Yet if it becomes law as it is written, there are serious constitutional questions to be addressed. We fear that something so very positive at the outset may have a very negative outcome.
The Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario endorses proactive solutions rather than reactive ones and stresses that the passion, obviously present, to address the problem of children involved in prostitution needs to be tempered with reason and respect for the rights of children.
Therefore, we sincerely hope these concerns will be taken into consideration, that resources are allocated and the practical implementations are considered first and that more thought and planning are undertaken before this bill ever becomes a law. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your presentation. We have approximately three minutes per caucus. We begin with the Liberals.
Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): Thanks very much for your presentation. I respect your opinion, but I certainly have some questions about your presentation and some with regard to letters I've received from the Council of Elizabeth Fry Societies of Ontario supporting it initially: "We wish you success in your efforts towards protecting the children of our community with this much-needed and proactive bill," which was dated May 27th. Of course you've already said that the Sudbury chapter opted out of voting against it because we're dealing with a real dilemma up in Sudbury.
You bring lots of excellent questions, and I thank you for those questions. They are meaningful questions which at some point in time we'll have to address. You bring very few solutions. You say you would much rather have something proactive than reactive. I dare say the intent of the bill was to be very proactive with legislation that was meaningless at best and I would suggest not very fruitful in the Child and Family Services Act. I'm asking you at this point to give us some positive suggestions about how we can make this bill better, because certainly that is my intent as the author of the bill and I'm sure it's the intent of everyone who sits around this committee, that at the end of the day we want something that addresses the problem.
Could you give us some of the proactive solutions you would suggest with regard to some of the questions? You can pick them; there are lots of questions, so you can pick the questions you'd like.
Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: I suppose that when we refer to proactive rather than reactive, what I personally take that to mean is that rather than wait until these children are at the lowest point, it's providing services before they reach that point, before they need to be apprehended. I referred to the Children of the Night program in California. It's much more like a shelter. It is along the same lines as what we would provide for abused or battered women. We are not criminalizing them when we are giving them a place to come and to seek help if they require it, before somebody makes them go there.
My experience from working primarily with prostitutes, quite often very young prostitutes, is that the reasons for initially entering that particular trade are so preventable. They need a place to stay, so they will trade sex for shelter; they need food, so they trade sex for food; or they may have an addiction. All of these are things we can provide proactive counselling for at the outset, rather than wait until they are so addicted to some kind of drug or rather than wait until they are so emaciated that they can't even make it to a drop-in medical clinic. Give them a place to go beforehand. I guess that's what I was trying to refer to when I said proactive rather than reactive. Rather than wait to the very last possible minute to apprehend these children, give them a place or an option before that has to happen.
Mr Bartolucci: We do want to thank you for the presentation.
The Chair: Mrs Boyd for the NDP.
Mrs Marion Boyd (London Centre): Thank you very much. You certainly ask all the pertinent questions. I think we don't have any answers in the bill, and because it's a private member's bill there is no commitment on the part of the government or no necessity on the part of the government to answer these questions, and they alone can spend the money to do this. It's a bit of a conundrum. I think everybody in this room shares the concern about trying to deal with this problem more effectively than we have and offering services that are going to be appropriate and acceptable, but it's kind of a bind.
I gather from the repeated references you make to, "Why not amend the Child and Family Services Act?" that you think that's where this protection ought to lie.
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Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: I suppose the answer would be, why reinvent the wheel when we have existing legislation that we can certainly amend to reflect the times we live in and which it's my guess -- and it's only a personal guess -- might be more readily accepted than an entirely new act.
Mrs Boyd: I agree with you. Some of the amendments that may come forward to this act might deal with some of issues you raise, but without actually violating the integrity of the act -- there are some things that are integral to the act that an amendment wouldn't resolve, such as the apprehension issue and the confinement issue. That's fairly central to what is here in terms of the action.
Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: There is a section in the Child and Family Services Act that provides for, and I forget the exact terminology they use, special confinement and special situations. If the situation is so extreme that it's deemed that type of situation, that already exists. I just don't know that an extreme position needs to be taken in all cases.
Mrs Boyd: And the age problem is still there.
Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: Age appropriateness, all sorts of things like that.
Mrs Boyd: Thank you.
The Chair: Mr Preston for the Conservatives.
Mr Peter L. Preston (Brant-Haldimand): Thank you very much for your presentation. I fully support your feelings, but there are some things in here that I feel you are a little amiss on. One thing we have missed the point on completely here, or that your letter has, is the young male child who chooses to become a prostitute because he runs away from a facility that's trying to protect him from his whatever. I happen to run one of those and have for 20 years. When we say "protect children involved in prostitution," we immediately think of the young girl who has been abused by her siblings or her parents or somebody and turns to prostitution for protection, and we forget completely about the 14-year-old boy who chooses that route to finance his being on the lam. It happens considerably; it happens. They make copies of your truck keys and drive your truck to Toronto, and if you ever find them again -- you find your truck immediately because they don't know where to park it. They live off the avails of prostitution.
To paint some of these kids as poor victims is to fall into the very trap that our federal government has done with the Young Offenders Act. They are victims at some times. Whether they're victims of poverty -- and the Child and Family Services Act has provisions to protect children of poverty, children of abuse. There is some reason these kids turn to whatever actions they take, whether it be prostitution or something else. There are already parts of the Child and Family Services Act that takes care of that.
Who will run these facilities? Well, I already do. You say they will be put away in open custody facilities, which are exactly the same as jails. My open custody facility is on 30 acres, with 28 very expensive horses for the kids to ride. If I was to charge for it, people would pay me $2,000 a week to send their kids there as a dude ranch. This open custody facility is so far from a jail that sometimes I feel guilty that I am providing it for -- I shouldn't say that, but sometimes I do feel guilty that I am providing it for some of the type of children who end up at my place. Luckily, we've had very good luck.
Will there be community collaboration? Absolutely. If anybody opens up a facility like this and doesn't collaborate with the community, they're absolutely insane.
Will assessment at the very least be mandated? Only if the kid decides he or she wants it. Under our present law you cannot do anything for or to --
The Chair: Mr Preston, could I ask you to sum up?
Mr Preston: I would like to know how you're going to get an assessment on a kid who doesn't want it and refuses to participate. You cannot mandate that in legislation and then give the kid the ability to say no. One of many questions, but I've got to finish up somehow.
Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: Could I ask a question in return? If you can't mandate an assessment, how can you mandate that they be kept there for three days? How could you keep them there for three days against their will, if that's not what their wishes are? Just a question with a question.
Mr Preston: They break the law. If they break the law and the law says they are to be apprehended, then they are apprehended. But after they break the law, you cannot force them to do anything for their own good. You cannot.
Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: Sir, the way I read this bill, they don't necessarily have to break any laws before they're apprehended.
Mr Preston: Under this act?
Mr Bartolucci: If they're not breaking any laws.
Ms Bodnaruk-Wide: Just to go back to your original question, my response to your scenario about a 14-year-old who chooses to be involved in prostitution is that I would ask, is that really a choice that a 14-year-old is making? If it is and if it can be demonstrated that that 14-year-old is so mature that they're making those decisions on their own, we have the Criminal Code as backup. In many of the diversion programs that are run we do give people first and second and third chances sometimes, and if they persist and if that's something they choose to do, they're going to get charged with communicating for the purposes of prostitution. They are going to be treated like a criminal, but not at the outset.
Mr Preston: As a young offender?
The Chair: Thank you. I think this is obviously a much longer debate which you and Mr Preston might want to continue. I do want to thank you for taking the time. Regrettably, we have no more time to allocate to your presentation, but thanks very much.
SUSPECTED CHILD ABUSE AND NEGLECT PROGRAM, HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN
The Chair: I call on the suspected child abuse and neglect program, Hospital for Sick Children, Dick Huyer. I believe that's SCAN, is it? Welcome, Mr Huyer. Sorry, it's Dirk Huyer. My apologies.
Dr Dirk Huyer: It's Dirk. I'm a doctor, but I'm also a mister.
The Chair: You're a doctor and a mister and a Dirk. In any event, we're delighted to have you here to present for us. You may have heard that you have 20 minutes for your presentation, which you can use as you wish. If there is any time, I'm sure the members will ask you some questions.
Dr Huyer: Thanks. For those of you who don't know about our program at the Hospital for Sick Children, we're a multidisciplinary hospital-based program that deals with issues of child maltreatment. Essentially, we provide comprehensive care to children where abuse may be suspected or in fact was confirmed. We're made up of social workers, physicians and other counselling personnel. We have links to all the different services within the hospital as well as across the community. I was flattered to be invited to come and I appreciate the opportunity.
I want to let you know that many of the comments that were just provided I have some significant agreement with. I want to applaud Mr Bartolucci for his idea, his thoughts, the intents and premise of this act. There are two very positive things in the act, the restraining order and the penalty. I strongly support those, because I think it's important that the person or persons responsible for the acts that may be occurring should take ownership for those. I strongly support those provisions within the act.
I'm not sure, not being knowledgeable on all the different legislation, so I turn to my colleagues, specifically one with whom I've had conversation in past years about other acts, to answer those particular questions.
I want to carry forward and talk about some of my concerns about the act and some of the concerns that we at the hospital have, and we had discussion among the team. It's important to remember, and this was alluded to in the previous conversation -- literature will vary, but there is certainly a substantial amount of information that says that up to 90% of the teenagers, both male and female, involved in prostitution have come from abusive environments where child maltreatment has certainly been significant, or there are some other problems at home that may or may not be defined as child maltreatment, but certainly there have been significant difficulties. As you've commented, people have run away from home or run away from facilities, and they've gotten to those facilities in some way.
I have some concern about the police department and police personnel being able to determine -- in very short periods of time, with maybe limited information, how can they judge whether it's safe to return that particular person they've apprehended, to use the terminology of the act, back to that setting? In other words, is there enough background information available to them to judge whether that home is a safe home for them to return to? Certainly many homes where child maltreatment and other difficulties have occurred are not easily recognizable as such.
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Here we can look at what is the proactive response. Being one of the members of the panel of experts looking at the Child and Family Services Act, I have some experience with legislation just recently as well. I think many of these features that are talked about in your act, Mr Bartolucci, are in fact addressed within the Child and Family Services Act; maybe not interpreted as such, but I think if interpretation were carefully utilized, apart from the 17- and 18-year-olds, many would be there.
This is sexual abuse. This is substantial risk of sexual abuse. I think those are there. They're not being responded to necessarily in my experience and my understanding. Police do have the option to apprehend children under that act, as do child protection workers, so it's not that the act isn't there, but it's not being interpreted and used, in my opinion.
In fact, as we recognized through the review in the panel, some of the legislation and the case law would not necessarily allow these children to be serviced under the Child and Family Services Act. So I hold optimism that the Progressive Conservative government will change some of the Child and Family Services Act. That may help to deal with this. I don't know the answer to that, but I hold optimism towards that.
I have significant concern about the three-day situation, a concern that this is a significant problem, and there is something underlying. Whether it be child maltreatment, whether they were victimized or not victimized -- we generally have a feeling that that's the case, but irrespective of that, this is a big-time problem once these kids are in this situation.
Three days -- and you've hit the point very solidly. If you can't give them an assessment, and you can't force them to do that, then what benefit will be there? Again, I'm not saying it's negative; I'm just saying, what benefit will we provide to these kids even if they're interested in receiving an assessment or receiving some help? It's a long-term problem. There are often complicating issues with substance abuse and there may or may not be some criminality apart from the child prostitution that's going on. While safety, security and counselling often go hand in hand, it's a very complex issue. We don't force treatment on anybody, even in criminality. Look at sex offenders. Where we think treatment is something that is going to be beneficial, we can't force that in our criminal justice system right now even after conviction. That's not a similarity but it's certainly a parallel situation.
I also have some concern about the acceptance of the guardians. In other words, when there have been so many past problems with these kids, children's aid have frequently been involved, and they're not welcomed with open arms by these people where the situation has occurred. I think that would already set you up for some degree of failure for them being the guardians.
How they're going to be able to develop the skills to assess when these kids are safe to return would be my other concern. We already know that children's aid societies and workers are overburdened and overwhelmed and underresourced, as many places are. It would be a concern of mine that they would be able to develop that. I think they could. I think they could gain the knowledge, I think that would be something they might be able to gain, but I don't know about three days, and that would be a worry of mine.
I've had some past involvement with an organization called Operation Go Home which does work on the streets, on Yonge Street. The significant personal observation of difficulty in trying to get the children to return off the street, whether it be to their home or to a safer environment, was very, very problematic because of the focus. It took a long time and a lot of work to do this. So again, it just supports what I was saying earlier.
From a proactive approach, where to funnel the resources is always a difficult issue. It's very problematic for everybody, and who am I to be able to answer that question? Looking at the source of the problem is what I always try to do. If the source of the problem is the childhood and the difficulty during childhood, should we be funnelling more resources towards dealing with that? Tightening up the resources that are available there and finding a better system to respond to the kids prior to the fact that they're ever considering child prostitution would certainly be my child-focused response. I've seen both the kids who are going to go into prostitution -- in fact, I know kids I've been involved with who went on to prostitution -- and I've seen the prostitutes who have come to me in sexual assault situations, so I've seen both sides.
Those are some of the thoughts I have. I hope that's helpful and I'd be happy to answer questions if I can.
The Chair: We again have about three minutes per caucus. We begin with Ms Boyd of the NDP.
Mrs Boyd: Thanks very much for coming. We really appreciate the expertise you bring. I share your belief that changes and strengthening in the Child and Family Services Act and appropriate funding to enable that to be enforced appropriately is probably the route to go.
We heard yesterday from Julian Fantino about the Project "Guardian" situation in London. One of the issues there for all of us, and it really struck our community very severely, was that most of these kids had in one way or another been involved with the system previously, and no one had picked up on the exploitation that had happened to them. That's something all of our agencies have to deal with.
By the time kids actually get to the point of being street prostitutes, is there usually such a lengthy history that they are identifying their whole self-esteem and their ego with the provision of sexual services? Is that part of the problem that happens? Certainly that was speculated in those cases, that that was the only kind of affection they ever got.
Dr Huyer: I don't have all of the answers, as I haven't studied child prostitution to any great extent. I have general knowledge in the area, and it certainly has been reported and discussed that that is a common occurrence where there has been system involvement before; not in all situations, but certainly a common occurrence. I have also interacted with Project "Guardian" through my role with the officers who are involved.
There are a number of issues, and I don't think it can be as simplistic as that. I certainly think there are many times that systems have been involved at some point, and whether it's a lack of recognition or a lack of ability to recognize -- in other words, the families don't have that window that allows that opportunity for observation, or we don't have the resources -- I think that's a complex issue and I hesitate to be definitive or peg it in a certain way.
The Chair: Mr Brown for the government.
Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West): Good afternoon. You're not -- are you a doctor?
Dr Huyer: If you have your health card, I can help you out later.
Mr Jim Brown: I'm curious when you said 90% of the kids come from abusive families. You're an important guy because you're on this task force for the Child and Family Services Act. You're a very important guy because you've got to make recommendations. But I have talked to parents who are very concerned about their kids. When they try to discipline their kids, the kids either report them and the parents get charged or the kids just take off and come to the big city. They get to the bus station and the bad guys are there. The bad guys are going to look after them and do everything.
Number one, I'm just wondering if in Operation Go Home you hit places like the bus station and try to get there before the pimps get there.
Number two, and I guess it's got to do with the CFSA and the relationship between parent and kid, sometimes when the kids take off, they come to Toronto and the parents go absolutely crazy trying to find out where they are and their health and so on. Parents I've talked to just feel totally powerless. They worry about their 14-year-old kid. Because of a federal government ruling, 14-year-olds can have sex with anybody they want. The parents know that and the parents get very upset.
What do we do about that relationship? Is that a causal thing? And when kids talk to you and say they've been abused, do you check with the parents? Do you go back to the family and see if that's true, or do you just tick off that box and say they've been abused? Because I think sometimes the kids are reacting to some sort of discipline. I would appreciate your comments.
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Dr Huyer: Discipline and abuse are not the same. They are totally different things. Discipline is something that's important in all families and all situations. Discipline doesn't equal corporal punishment. I don't want to get into that whole debate, but just simply say that discipline doesn't mean corporal punishment. In other words, you can discipline in many other ways besides corporal punishment. I'm also not saying that corporal punishment is abuse. I just want to draw those differentiations.
When I'm saying abuse, I'm not necessarily reporting physical abuse. I think there are concerns of maltreatment, whether it be neglect, physical abuse or sexual abuse, where the literature has reported up to 90%. When we evaluate children for sexual abuse or abuse, we don't just use a tick box. It's usually a multidisciplinary --
Mr Jim Brown: Do you talk to the parents, charge the parents?
Dr Huyer: That's not my role. I'm a physician and I provide medical expertise. But with the police and children's aid, as in any other criminal investigation or in a child protection investigation, it's a multidisciplinary response and parents are certainly involved.
Mr Jim Brown: So that in 90% of these abuses, you tell the police, and the police go and either verify that there's -- I find it hard to believe there's 90%.
Dr Huyer: In child prostitution?
Mr Jim Brown: No, that 90% of kids who leave home have left because of some sort of abuse. I find that hard to believe.
Dr Huyer: I don't think I said "left home"; I said child prostitutes that --
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Bartolucci for the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: Thank you very much. It was an excellent presentation. You raise some very legitimate points, first of all, with the bill. That's the purpose of public hearings, and we will glean information from you. There's absolutely no doubt about that.
I had a choice of making an amendment to the Child and Family Services Act or a stand-alone bill. I chose a stand-alone bill because no one has confidence in the Child and Family Services Act. You stated that indirectly. There was just no confidence that it had any teeth. There was no confidence with regard to the people who were trying to enforce the act. That's my history with the act, and so we have to decide whether to do stand-alone legislation or to make an amendment. If in fact the amendments that -- you are part of the group that has made amendments to the Child and Family Services Act. It's for the government to decide whether or not they include them.
I suggest that the intent of the bill is very straightforward and there's support with that. Returning a child home would never be done in isolation solely by a police officer, and maybe that needs some clarification. You would have to involve a number of people in that, and that may require some clarification.
If in fact we had a conscious choice to keep this as stand-alone legislation, what would be three suggestions you would make to make the stand-alone legislation meet the needs that I think we all have, in this room and everywhere, with regard to getting rid of sexual exploitation and abuse through prostitution?
Dr Huyer: I'm not convinced -- in fact, I don't believe -- that three suggestions alone would adequately answer the concerns I have.
Mr Bartolucci: But just give us three, and then you know what? Others may be able to add as well.
Dr Huyer: I think I've given them to you in my concerns.
The Chair: Thank you very much for being with us, Dr Huyer. I really do appreciate it. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for sharing your expertise with us.
STREET OUTREACH SERVICES
The Chair: Our next presenter is Street Outreach Services, Susan Miner. Welcome, Ms Miner. We're very pleased to have you here today.
Ms Susan Miner: Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I find it much easier working with kids on the street than talking to this panel, so if I'm a little nervous, excuse me.
I'm going to read some of the stuff that I have submitted to you, and then I would like to expand on it and actually give you an opportunity to ask questions, so I want to be brief in my presentation.
As indicated, Street Outreach Services is a program dedicated to working with young people aged 16 to 24 involved on the streets and in prostitution. It is one of four youth programs operated by Anglican Houses and offers voluntary alternatives and choices to youth through a number of different services.
In terms of street outreach, we have youth workers on the streets until midnight most nights in the major prostitution track areas, and I want to strongly underline the fact that we work with both young women and young men. We offer counselling, support and referrals. The goal is to reach out to where the youth are and not necessarily wait for them to come to our office, because part of it is sometimes inducing them to come in for assistance.
We have a drop-in centre which offers counselling, support, education on HIV/AIDS, the PREP program -- I would just comment that the PREP program was based on the fact that most of the youth we deal with have less than grade 10 education, which is another issue that has to be addressed when working with young people -- and the STEP program, which is a program dedicated to young people who are saying they really do want off the street. Through a number of partnerships we have a medical clinic on site once a week, we have a legal clinic, we have a literacy program that comes in, and substance abuse program workers as well. All those issues pertain to the youth we deal with.
We run a very small and, proudly, a very quietly run program, our co-op, that is run by the youth themselves. There's a senior resident model and, as indicated, that senior resident is someone who has been successful, gotten off the street, is involved in constructive activities and basically acts as a peer mentor to the other young people in the program. It is also a mixed house.
In concert with the children's aid societies, both CAS, CCAS, and Native Child and Family Services, as well as the Jewish child and family services, we presented a protocol called the Under 16 Street Youth Protocol. I am trusting that someone from CAS delivered that to you. We developed it with the assistance of CAS and various youth agencies that work with the young people on the street to work collaboratively with those who are on the street.
One of the facts that you'll note in another submission that I know you received yesterday from Connie Clement, which was the round table presented by DPH, is they talk about 48% of the youth who are runaways being previously involved in CAS or through the Young Offenders Act and having already maintained some sort of contact with social services. So I have great respect for a lot of work that the CAS does and I'm not dismissing the things they do well. The reality is, we need a number of choices. CAS doesn't work for all young people.
The facts about the youth we serve: Over 50% of the young people come to Toronto with the intent, I believe truly, having worked with them for many years, to find jobs, find apartments, find partners. They end up in prostitution because of a lack of choice. As is stated here, roughly 48% of our youth have had previous involvement with CAS.
On the issue of abuse, and I think it's a crucial one, we did a small survey. Some 50% of our youth, which is a low number, reported abuse. I want to stress here that we are not talking about young people who run away because they didn't want to take out the garbage or they didn't like the chores. We're talking about young people who were highly sexualized and abused before they reached the streets.
The average age for prostitution in our agency, the beginning contact, is under 15. We have dealt with young people who actually talk about being sexually abused from the time they were two and three years old, and they're highly sexualized long before they reach 16, so to come to the streets and work is not so unusual for them. It's not a black-and-white issue where they have come from a house where mom and dad are there and everything is going well and they're going to school. These youth are using the only thing that they own and control, which is their bodies, to try and help themselves.
Again, most of our youth report having less than grade 10. As I said, that's an issue around schooling. Not everyone is going to be a doctor. Some of the schooling programs have to be readjusted for people who are not particularly verbal or engaged in the idea of university. A vast majority of young people don't go to university, and it's not just a matter of brilliance or intellect; it can also be a financial matter.
I have attached an appendix. It was a snapshot survey of 40 of our youth answering the questions as honestly as they could. It's attached to this and substantiates some of the things I've already said.
We've been in operation since 1985. Over the years we have dealt with thousands of children and youth involved on the streets and in prostitution. Our basic philosophy is to tailor programs and services to their needs, so although we have static programming, we can also adjust radically for those who need different things. Our philosophy has focused on the choice and the voluntary involvement of the youth to get out of prostitution. We have worked with both the child welfare system and police to create a spirit of partnership in working with these youth.
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As you can see from our service statistics, upwards of 50% of youth on the street involved in prostitution have had CAS involvement. For this reason, we do not believe that the problem can be solved by simply referring it to the CAS or the justice system alone. These systems need to be part of the answer but not the sole approach. SOS believes that there needs to be every effort made to get buy-in from the youth who are being victimized in prostitution so that they do not see services meant to help them as oppressive and therefore something they should flee from. If youth try to escape from help, they are usually driven more underground and put at further risk.
The example I have of that is -- it's not the Westbury now, but not many years ago the Westbury Hotel had several very young women who were being held, and they were from Nova Scotia, I believe. My street workers would never see those young people. That's part of the difficulty, that we are focused specifically on street prostitution. I will get into some issues about other types of prostitution, or what I would prefer to call commercialized child sexual abuse.
You'll note that we talk about changes to the Child and Family Services Act to implement some of the programming recommended in the protocol for working with children under 16.
We are aware that the members of this committee have received the report from the Toronto Roundtable on Prostitution Involving Children and Youth and the recommendations for action to end commercialized child sexual abuse, dated this fall, 1998. Most of our concerns and recommendations about the current social/legal/moral context surrounding child and youth prostitution are outlined in this document.
We recognize the proposal to include 16- and 17-year-olds in the new act and concur with this recommendation, provided that the youth must have a choice in whether they participate in the services offered. Our position is that 16- and 17-year-olds have the autonomy to choose whether or not to be under the care of the children's aid. Furthermore, this choice should be available to all 16- and 17-year-olds regardless of the reason for coming to the attention of the authorities. To give you a very solid fact, you cannot get a youth who is 16 years old, who says they want help, into the care of the children's aid unless they were previously involved.
Another issue we wish to address with respect to the proposed bill relates to the discretion granted to the police under clause 2(2)(b) of the act. If youth are to be apprehended, we believe that the assessment as to the most appropriate place for a youth apprehended under this act is a delicate one best made by social service providers with the relevant experience and resources. I do not hold that just to the CAS; I'm also talking about collaboration with the existing agencies downtown that work with youth.
This is part of my conclusion; I have more. We wish to commend the committee for its concerns about this issue and note that to properly implement a response system to this problem, new funding is required. SOS is in operation because of the commitment of the board of Anglican Houses and the dedication to it of significant charitable funds. Our funds were cut dramatically. Because there's so little humour in this subject for me, I just want to note if you find grammatical errors it's because I don't have any administrative staff. If the government is serious about addressing this issue, there needs to be available funding for our work.
In terms of the question around abuse and why kids are on the street, I also want to comment that it took many years of physical and emotional abuse to drive most of the young people we work with to the streets. Yes, there are some people who run away because it's fun. They don't last very long on the streets and they usually return home. Conversely, it takes a very long time to reintegrate these young people back into healthy lifestyles and communities. It also takes a comprehensive and collaborative approach with others.
We have several programs I want to tell you very briefly about. These are real individuals and I know I'm talking about "they" and "them" and 16- and 14-year-olds. When I'm talking about these kids, I see faces and I know names and I know their histories. We have a peer program where we hire four young people for brief periods of time to work around the issues of AIDS and HIV.
Sally, one of the young people, was working at a very highly paid escort service two years ago. She was in at the office. She's very bright, articulate, focused, making good money and living very high. I said, "Have you ever thought of becoming a peer?" She laughed because my peers make $100 a week. She was making $1,000 a day and she is a rarity in this business. Most of the youth do not make that kind of money. Anyway, a year and a half later I got a phone call and she said, "Did you really mean what you said?" I said I certainly did. It took her another six months; she came in. She is now a peer in our program and is not involved in prostitution in any way and has totally reduced her drug consumption.
These are little vignettes from the kids I work with. I have right now five youths who are either in pre-university programs or in university part-time, which to me is incredible and exceptional. They're working as well as going to school. For them it's a startling change. Three of them had been involved in prostitution for five years and this is a dramatic change and they are terrified. They're not terrified to stand on the corner at 11 o'clock at night and seek money from people seeking their services, but school terrifies them, and we've done a lot of hand-holding. But they can succeed and they do.
To do justice to the lives of these young people, we do have to work in collaboration. It can't be a walking-up situation. We have to get them into our programs.
I notice that the one thing this bill did not refer to, because it doesn't technically fall under the meaning of prostitution but it does fall under commercialized child sexual abuse, is cybersex. No one sees them except the people on computers, and we have very young youth involved in cybersex.
I'm sorry the gentleman left because he was talking about institutions and 14-year-old boys who ran away. I have to tell him that many of our youth have been abused in those institutions.
I want to leave time so that you can ask me questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have about two minutes per caucus.
Mr Jim Brown: Good afternoon. You seem in the statistics to be a little critical of CAS when you say that 50% of your clientele have an involvement with CAS. Maybe you'd like to comment on that a bit.
On the needle exchange program, how many needles do you go through in a year? You don't know. Some people say this adds to the drug problem. In Sudbury, for example, the needle exchange program goes through 100,000 needles a year, which I'm amazed at.
Getting to the real thing, we're talking about the kids, and they are kids. There's nothing we can do about the Criminal Code that legalizes having sex with 14-year-old boys and girls. We can complain but people can do that.
Going after the bad guys, the johns and the pimps -- it's been discussed, I've heard it from several people -- in Manitoba they're seizing the cars of johns and in Florida and some other states they're attacking the assets of the pimps and freezing them and then realizing them, turning them into cash and applying the money to situations like what you have to help fund you. That attacks the adults who are making a lot of money in this business, taking away some of the incentive. Could you give me an opinion on what you think about going after the bad guys, the pimps and the johns?
Ms Miner: I'd like to respond to your comment about the needle exchange first with a statement. Toronto has probably one of the lowest rates of transmission for HIV and AIDS anywhere in Canada because, and I truly believe this, we have needle exchanges -- we're not going to stop some people from using drugs -- but I think to offer some safety around how they use them. Vancouver, Montreal and Ottawa have reported increases in HIV and AIDS. They do not do the same types of needle exchanges that we do.
Mr Jim Brown: But there are so many privacy things around finding out if somebody has HIV. But anyway, okay.
Ms Miner: This is proactive. I think there are always two sides to a point.
Mr Bartolucci: Ms Miner, thanks very much for an excellent presentation and for providing us with more information on SOS. Continue the excellent work that you're doing. It's much needed, as you know.
Section bill of the 10 -- section 10 of the bill, I should say. I just wanted to check if the Conservatives were listening and only two of them were.
Mr Frank Klees (York-Mackenzie): I'll get you a copy, Rick.
Mr Bartolucci: "The minister may establish programs." Listen, I'm going to be the first to put the amendment in: "The minister must establish programs." I think that was the intent and it should have been there in the first place.
Let me ask you, because it's your life: What are some of the programs that you consider to be essential for the minister to provide in order to minimize the problem we have here?
Ms Miner: I think there are two avenues. A gentleman earlier spoke about prevention and education in schools and programming younger. I think you can do that. You are still going to have young people of 13, 14 and 15, their problems, and resort to other avenues. I think you have to fund programs downtown.
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I would be inane not to say mine was one of the best. There are excellent programs downtown. I think part of the issue around collaboration and service is that we're also desperately seeking funding and that a lot of times we don't collaborate most effectively. I didn't list all our partners. We partner with Shout, Native Child and Family Services, Elizabeth Fry, Beat the Street. We partner with those agencies not only to reduce duplication but to increase the services offered to youth. So in funding, we need solid funding so we can also plan in advance, but I don't think putting all the money into zero to five is going to resolve this issue.
Mr Bartolucci: Terrific. Thanks very much.
Mrs Boyd: You obviously have the passion that comes from seeing those faces and hearing those voices and knowing that. In terms of this bill, the kinds of questions that were raised by Elizabeth Fry, for example, about this notion of apprehension and safe houses and the real constitutional issues around children's rights make it very difficult to support the bill as it stands even though the intent is very clear. Have you some suggestions about whether you think this bill is fixable in its current state or whether we really need to look at some other mechanism?
Ms Miner: That's a loaded question. I think it has to have ramifications in other spheres. You're talking law and justice as opposed to social action and response and care, and I think that's part of the issue we have to address. It's not as simple as someone took a chocolate bar and is to be incarcerated for three days. We're talking about extensive histories of abuse and work around how to minimize that damage and turn kids back into functioning healthy adults.
Mrs Boyd: Could this just become a permission to scoop kids?
Ms Miner: My fear would be that some young people might not get the best programming because they haven't agreed to take it. I think that as human beings if we're told we have to do something, we're a little bit resistive occasionally, whereas if we're asked to participate, the response I think is much more positive.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Miner. We appreciate your being here today and telling us about your organization and your experiences.
Ms Miner: I just have one sentence because I always have to have the last word.
The Chair: Go ahead.
Ms Miner: The first youth I worked with in Toronto 25 years ago was a 12-year-old young woman who was involved in prostitution. I was a CAS worker. I think people think this is more obvious now but the reality is that it's not more obvious; it's a long-standing issue. It's a problem and I really appreciate the fact that someone is trying to address it, so thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
LONDON FAMILY COURT CLINIC
The Chair: Next is the London Family Court Clinic, Dr Louise Sas. We thank you for coming such a long way to make a presentation to our committee. We're looking forward to it.
Dr Louise Sas: I'm very grateful to be here and I hope I have some information that will be of assistance to all of you. I've provided a copy of a study that was done in London called Project "Guardian" and some of the information that I'll be sharing with you today will actually highlight the findings from that study.
Just as a way of introduction, I'm a clinical psychologist and I'm director of the child witness project at the London Family Court Clinic. Our role there is to prepare young children to testify in court. Usually these are children who have made allegations of either sexual or physical abuse. It could be within the family, familially, or extrafamilially, and the program is set up to help and assist young children from the ages of two and a half or three till 18 to be able to tell their stories in court. As a result, over the last decade approximately 1,000 children have come through the child witness project for various services such as court preparation. Many of us at the clinic also provide expert testimony on behalf of these children with respect to issues related to sexual abuse as well as assessment.
The staff are also involved, myself in particular, in conducting research in the area of child sexual abuse and, more recently, issues related to child witnesses. In the last couple of years, we've had a major emphasis in the area of child sexual exploitation, which is basically what I'll be talking to you about today.
We were involved in a two-year study in conjunction with the local children's aid society and the London police department on male sexual exploitation, specifically Project "Guardian," which some of you may be familiar with. For those of you who have not been made familiar with that whole topic, what I'll share with you is that it involved over 80 adult males and over 60 young male youth in our community in what could loosely be determined as a sexual exploitation ring of sorts. We were in a position to be able to look at that whole investigation and to look at what exactly occurred within that network of sexual exploitation in order to come up with some recommendations for our own community and also to get a better understanding of juvenile prostitution as such.
But I must say that first of all, unlike many of the studies I think you've heard or many of the people you've heard from so far and will hear over the next little while, they tend to deal more with street prostitutes. This study was very, very different because of the age of the children involved at the onset: 50% of the children were 13 and under when they became involved in this sexual exploitation ring. They were also not on the street. Sixty per cent of the children were living at home with parents, often in intact, as such, families. The sexual exploitation in this case in the London area was very clandestine and as such would not be something the police would have been able to respond to and pick up children immediately because it wasn't directly observable.
Generally, I think in discussions with my colleagues we are in agreement that children under 18 who are involved in prostitution are being sexually abused. I have no doubt in my mind about that. I also feel strongly that many of them may well be in need of protection. I'll address some of the age issues in a moment.
Some of the findings we have from our research that have direct implications for the suggestions you've made for this bill are the following. First and foremost, the majority of male youth in Project "Guardian" who did engage in sex for consideration, and 95% of them did, were very emotionally vulnerable, they were financially disadvantaged and they were from multi-problem and highly dysfunctional homes. The neglect that we found when we went through files, the alcoholism in the homes, the chronic conflicts, familial violence in particular, were shocking, absolutely shocking.
We found also, and I think this was just mentioned in the last two presentations, that the involvement of children's aid in their lives was very much so on an intermittent basis. In two thirds of the cases these children had previous histories of children's aid involvement, where the children's aid would respond to issues related to neglect or children being out of control of their families or physical abuse or sexual abuse, only to have their mandate over in a short period of time when things settle down a little bit and they no longer have a mandate to provide either supervision or care.
Second, the peak age, as I mentioned was very, very young: 13. In fact, 70% of the kids were 14 and under at the time when they first became involved in Project "Guardian." Given the legislation, and the MPP Mr Brown mentioned before that with respect to the Criminal Code one is able to consent to sexual activity certainly at the age of 14, I have a lot of concerns about that as well. I'm not as concerned about peer-to-peer sexual activity; I'm concerned about a 14-year-old male or female being able to consent to sexual activity with someone 20, 30, 40, 50 years older than them and the imbalance that exists there.
Although these children were consenting to the sexual acts -- none of the children said that they did not consent; they did consent as such for a variety of enticements -- they were in our view still terrible victims of their life circumstances. It was our position, having done the study, that none of them were in an emotional position to be able to consent to anything like what they were involved in.
The next and third very shocking finding was that not one child disclosed in all the years that Project "Guardian" existed in the London area. That was between 15 and 18 years and there was never one disclosure. Nobody came forward -- not one. Clinically, we know that abuse discovered surreptitiously or accidentally is the most difficult to deal with and to treat. There are many criticisms of the investigation as such, but one of the comments that I would agree with is that the older street kids were not appreciative of the police involvement or any of our involvement in their lives. By the time they reach age 16 or 17, just approaching them and trying to assist them to get out of the street life is not accepted by them as very meaningful.
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The other thing I want to mention is that one of the findings was the issue of psychological entrapment, and I think we have to address that very strongly. The psychological entrapment that I'm talking about is not only the fear that many of the children had in relation to their abusers, but also the humiliation and the fear of stigmatization. This was particularly true for the males in Project "Guardian" because of the homophobic atmosphere in which they had to disclose, but I know that it's also true for many of the females who have become involved in prostitution.
The implications, of course, of this psychological dynamic between children who are prostituting or involved in sex for consideration and adults for any intervention strategy is that our community has to be very vigilant. We must be aware and we must be fairly aggressive in monitoring the welfare of our children. They're not going to come to us. In particular, the type of exploitation that I'm addressing, which is in very young children, no one knew about it. We were all seeing these kids in various capacities, myself included. Some of these children had actually come not to me personally but to the family court clinic for assessment during the time they were involved in Project "Guardian" and nobody knew. I think that shocked many professionals to their roots in the London community.
Certainly, this study suggested that, depending on the nature and duration of their involvement in that kind of activity, the impact on their physical and emotional well-being could be devastating. We had at least two children who, at the time the study was completed, were HIV-positive -- health concerns, sexually transmitted diseases, not to mention suicidal ideation and depression.
We concur with children's aid societies, however, that it's really early intervention that's going to make the difference in the long run. It'll be the key to preventing children from going out on the streets in the first place. Having a mandate to apprehend a young child who's in a highly dysfunctional and chronically neglectful, even at times dangerous, home has to be in place. It's much more proactive, of course, than the tertiary response that goes and tries to nab kids on the street when they're 16 or 17.
Having said that, however, I appreciate that there may be situations for children who are already on the street where the only way that one could prevent them from remaining in that street life and a life of prostitution is to actually go there, apprehend and try to make a difference. One of the concerns I have, however, is that Bill 18 appears to me to be very incident-focused, and that's one of the concerns I've had about the Child and Family Services Act. You probably have heard a lot so I'll just mention it briefly.
I still feel that it doesn't address the circumstances and the patterns that contribute to harmful conditions for children generally. The CFSA has not given children's aids a mandate to conduct even investigations of sexual exploitation that don't involve non-caregivers. That's been a problem locally in our children's aid society. The police are mandated to look at sexual assault of children by extrafamilial individuals; not the children's aid. The problem is, these kids come from homes where they can't be any longer, and I agree with previous presentations that they don't choose to be on the street. They're there not by choice.
Also, I've noticed that there are no descriptions in the CFSA about the circumstances in which a child may be found to be in need of protection. This is the first sort of example of actually naming a behaviour or a situation that would put a child at risk, and I'm pleased to see that in Bill 18. However, I want to say, and I feel this very strongly, are we going to protect 16- and 17-year-olds only from prostitution? Shouldn't we protect them from other things as well, and can't we somehow collaborate the two acts so that, with the Child and Family Services Act, children are protected all the way up to age 18, and offer its services? It's hard to get services for a child who's 15 1/2 because they're soon going to be 16 and why bother. With decreased funding, even children who are just turning 15 are often not placed in homes when they need to be and they're out on the street.
The other thing I want to mention is that I have some concerns that many of the children who are on the street already prostituting will see the apprehension as somewhat of a draconian move and as a punishing move. Being apprehended and placed in a safe house -- what is the safe house? Is it a detention centre? Many of these youths have experienced extreme sexual abuse and physical abuse at the hands of individuals who've never been taken to task for their behaviour. If we're going to be apprehending children and even placing them in safe houses, their perspectives of what a safe house is might well be that they are being detained. So at the very least we have to, I think, go after the bad guy at the same time, and in a much stronger way than we've done.
As director of the child witness project, I can't tell you the number of times I've seen children testify in court where the Criminal Code does not protect them, even with the present provisions for young witnesses, where they go through a very, very difficult and harassing time, where there's usually no conviction, and even if there is, the sentences are light.
The suggestion here is two years less a day or a $25,000 fine. In my view, two years less a day is nothing. It is absolutely nothing. They hardly serve any of that time. The kids know that, especially the older ones who testify, and that's not going to do anything. That's not a deterrent at all, particularly for a john who has done this before. We've had cases of young adolescents who've had to testify against adults in the community who've been involved in prostitution and they've got two years less a day, if they've got that, and they've been out shortly thereafter, whereas these kids' lives are totally destroyed by that involvement. I feel very strongly that we have to do more, that we have to really give a very strong message that our society is not at all going to put up with this kind of behaviour, because I certainly have seen the impact.
Lastly, and I recognize the time limitation here, if we're going to move in that direction, please ensure that there's some sort of evaluation that goes along with this, that someone takes the time if this is implemented in some variation, to look at the effectiveness. Look at the impact on the kids you're trying to help and look at, at the same time, the impact on the individuals who are brought to the court system and see if there is a deterrent there and if the system's working not only to protect the kids but also to offer them another venue.
I do a fair bit of child abuse training in the schools, and I've done some training in that regard for the Ministry of Education. We need to teach kids to be very fearful of sexual exploitation, to understand the dynamics, to know that they could be recruited by other peers. We need to also talk about same-sex abuse in our schools, in particular for young males. Nobody talks about it. It's a very uncomfortable thing to talk about for a lot of the teachers there, but we need to do that. We need to better protect them.
Really, what I'm suggesting, in summary, is a three-pronged approach. There's early intervention, giving the children's aids the mandate, the funds and sufficient strength to be able to go in and make a difference when it really counts -- that's when kids are little -- to provide the child abuse training and prevention programs, and then, very much so, to provide a much stronger deterrent to those in our community who continue to prey on young children.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr Sas. Your presentation I'm sure will invite a lot of questions, but we only have one minute per caucus.
Mr Bartolucci: I want to thank you for a tremendous presentation with lots of great ideas. I particularly like the idea of the evaluation component attached to the bill. That is something that I certainly didn't think of. No other presenter has presented that aspect of it and I'm very interested in it. Could you, very quickly, and I know it would be a quick answer, expand on how you believe that evaluation process should take place?
Dr Sas: I think it would have to be, certainly, a pilot evaluation likely involving a number of different communities of different sizes because, as you see, our problems differ somewhat. I know with Toronto the presence of young street prostitutes is much greater than, let's say, in the London area, where it's much more clandestine.
I would involve at least three communities in a pilot project where you'd have a number of things that you were evaluating. Certainly you would be evaluating the general effectiveness of apprehending kids and placing them in these safe houses, how they would function, the extent to which appropriate placements could be found for these children in treatment, and then looking at recidivism as one measure, just one, but also feedback from the children on the service provided to them. If they see it as punishing, then we're not doing our job. That could mean looking at the criminal justice system response in those cases where children are apprehended, then assisting them to attend court charges being laid by the police and looking at the response of the criminal justice system to that behaviour. That's just in a nutshell, but it involves many different areas and they all have to be done at the same time.
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Mrs Boyd: Thanks, Louise. I think the issue of evaluation is probably one of the more important new things that we've heard. I personally believe that if we had evaluated the Child and Family Services Act earlier and if we had evaluated the Young Offenders Act at, say, year five or year three and begun to see the problems, we could have acted more proactively to change those acts to work more closely together on behalf of these kids. I congratulate you on that, I know that you do it. The family court clinic has done a lot of research evaluating the effect of different policies or different actions.
Mr Klees: Thank you very much for your presentation. It was very informative. You make the point that you feel children should be protected and that the protection should be extended to the age of 18. Do you have any thought as to how we can achieve that, particularly given the fact that the current acts preclude proactive protection for children over the age of 16, and even 14 in some cases? Any advice you can leave with us on that?
Dr Sas: I agree with you that one of the major problems, depending on what legislation you're working under, is we just don't have a mandate to intervene in the lives of children between those ages. I think that's where we have to start. I agree that we have to look at all the legislation that pertains to our children.
It's interesting that in the Criminal Code they're children until they're 18, yet they can leave home when they're 16; the children's aid could be involved with them only up until they turn 16, not a day after; they can consent to treatment after they're 12, or not consent, if they so wish, even if they need it desperately; they can consent to sexual activity, but then we're concerned, if they consent to it, that someone who is 30 or 40 years older paid them to do that. I think one of the problems is we give different messages in all of our legislation, so we're not consistent.
If we can all agree that children are children until they're 18 and may not have the wherewithal, either emotional or cognitive, to make the kinds of decisions they are making in their lives, sometimes to their own detriment, we would be in a much better position. I don't know any 17-year-olds who have the wherewithal to consent to prostitution. I really believe strongly they may think they do, but I do not believe they do.
Mr Klees: If you have any --
The Chair: Dr Sas, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate --
Mr Klees: Just 30 seconds.
The Chair: You can continue the discussion afterwards, I'm sure.
I appreciate your coming such a long way to make your points, and you've made them very forcefully.
ONTARIO ASSOCIATION OF CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETIES
The Chair: Our next presenters are the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, Diane Cresswell, manager of communications, and Marion Roberts, director of services, Sudbury-Manitoulin Children's Aid Society. Thank you too for coming an even longer way than London to make your presentation. I believe, Ms Roberts, you appeared before our committee once before, on another matter, I should say.
Mr Bartolucci: No, it was the same matter.
The Chair: My apologies. I thank you very much for coming.
Ms Diane Cresswell: Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the standing committee. We are pleased to come here to present our response to this bill. My name is Diane Cresswell. I'm manager of communications with the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies. Marion Roberts is here with us from the children's aid society of Sudbury-Manitoulin, and Janet Ward, who is a program supervisor with Moberly House, a residential service to youth aged 12 to 15 who are chronic runaways involved in prostitution or at risk of becoming involved in prostitution here in Toronto.
We have provided you with a written submission, and I will just highlight some of the pieces in this written submission.
The OACAS is a membership organization representing 52 children's aid societies in the province of Ontario. Children's aid societies in Ontario provide service to 114,000 families and their children annually. Each year CASs provide substitute care to more than 21,000 children, and 45% of these children are over the age of 13.
All children have a fundamental entitlement to freedom from physical harm, sexual molestation and exploitation, neglect, emotional harm and abandonment. As a society, we have a collective responsibility to care for vulnerable children involved in prostitution. Child prostitution is a global phenomenon, and the United Nations Human Rights Commission has reported that there are close to 10 million children engaged in prostitution around the world.
A variety of rights of the child are violated by those indulging in child sexual exploitation. These rights were expressed in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, which has received almost universal ratification. Article 19 of the convention outlines that "State parties shall take...legislative measures to protect the child from...violence...maltreatment or exploitation." The convention calls for integrated, cross-sectoral strategies both to prevent and to remedy the situation of sexual exploitation of children.
The issue of children involved in prostitution is complex. These children have often experienced difficult situations and circumstances at home and at school. The trauma of such experiences severely affects the normal socialization process, isolates these children and results in loss of self-esteem. Many of the children involved in street activities lack education and conventional employment skills and experience a high incidence of transience and have physical and/or mental health problems.
Children involved in prostitution run away from homes for many reasons. Some seek independence and adventure, but many are running away from an intolerable home situation. Regardless of how children arrive on the street, it appears they distrust adults. With little self-esteem, few positive role models and dysfunctional ties to family, children involved in prostitution see very little hope of leaving the streets.
Action in the area of child prostitution needs to be coordinated on three fronts: prevention, early intervention and appropriate support and treatment programs.
The preamble of Bill 18 states that: "The people of Ontario believe that the safety, security and well-being of children and families is a paramount concern; that children engaged in prostitution are victims of sexual exploitation, sexual abuse and physical abuse and require protection and the legislation is required to ensure the safety of all children and to assist them in ending their involvement in prostitution."
We support the intent of the legislation, as the protection of children is one of the core values of the Child and Family Services Act. However, the Child and Family Services Act already exists to ensure the safety, well-being and protection of children in Ontario. A child is in need of protection where he or she has been sexually abused or there is substantial risk that the child will be sexually molested or sexually exploited. There is no need to have two distinct pieces of legislation, both aimed at the protection of children.
In 1985, the Child and Family Services Act was proclaimed and brought together 11 pieces of legislation affecting children. The intent was to streamline the provision of services to children and reduce duplication and confusion.
In November 1997, Janet Ecker, Minister of Community and Social Services, appointed an expert panel to review the Child and Family Services Act to determine whether it had achieved a suitable balance between the best interests of the child and the autonomy of the family. The resulting report, Protecting Vulnerable Children, makes a number of recommendations designed to ensure that the "safety, protection and well-being of each child" is paramount. The Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies supports this report wholeheartedly. The framework of Bill 18, however, does not achieve the intended proposals in this report.
Children involved in prostitution can be seen in a variety of ways: as victims of abuse, as offenders of a crime or as individuals making a lifestyle choice. Children involved in prostitution should only be seen as victims of abuse. These children, if not abused while at home, are certainly victims of sexual exploitation and sexual and physical abuse when they are used by either a pimp or a john.
I would like to refer you to the chart on pages 7 and 8 of our written submission, in which we compare Bill 18 with the CFSA and the expert panel's recommendations.
Both Bill 18 and the CFSA have similar provisions to apprehend a child with or without a warrant. The expert panel recommends elimination of this.
Both Bill 18 and the CFSA provide an ability to seek restraining orders prohibiting access to a child or contact with a child. Bill 18, however, creates a new ground for finding a child in need of protection. Bill 18 also outlines that a child can be found in need of protection on simply being engaged in prostitution.
Bill 18 defines a child as any person under age 18 engaged in prostitution. There is no mention of prostitution in section 37 of the CFSA. There must be a condition of harm or risk for a child to be in need of protection under the CFSA. A child under the CFSA is defined as under 16 years of age. The expert panel recommends an extension to age 18.
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Bill 18 requires that a child protection worker show cause within three days that a child is in need of protection. The CFSA provides a five-day limit to show cause and the expert panel suggests that this be extended.
While some of the proposals set forward in Bill 18 might strengthen the capacity of the system to protect children, the conflicts with the CFSA will result in confusion, a split in the enforcement of the legislation and would likely invite charter challenges based on discrimination against some children who have suffered abuse and neglect.
Bill 18 proposes to provide protection to youth 16 to 18 years of age involved in child prostitution. Why is this protection limited to children involved in prostitution and not to all children under the age of 18 who are victims of child abuse? This is unfair to abused children who are not involved in prostitution. Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that "every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination...." The difference in age jurisdiction in the CFSA and Bill 18 could give rise to a section 15 charter challenge.
There is need to amend the legislation to include children 18 years of age and under. However, a definition of "child" which includes the ages of 16 to 18 years may be problematic since in the Family Law Act and the Criminal Code of Canada the definition sections vary with respect to age definition. Some refer to offences with children under the age of 14 and some to youth under the age of 18. The law should be consistent in its application of the definition of a child as it relates to prostitution-related offences. Any distinction in age should only relate to the penalty imposed and not to the offence.
The Child and Family Services Act presently allows for children's aid societies, under certain circumstances, to provide a voluntary service to 16- to 18-year-olds. However, there is no funding assured for this service.
It is unclear in Bill 18 if a "protective safe house" is meant to mean a place of safety or open temporary detention, as defined by the CFSA. While not clearly defined, it appears that a protective safe house would have the capacity to detain a child against his or her own will.
The concept of a safe house is a good one, if it is designed to meet the needs of the children. A safe house needs to be designed in a way that allows for children to come to the house on their own, for children who are out of control to be detained, as well as children believed to be involved in prostitution. While Bill 18 prescribes that an application must be made within three days if the child is not returned to the parent, there is no clear limit to the time a child can be detained in a protective safe house.
Bill 18 also proposes that a police officer apprehend a child and a child protection worker is then delegated full responsibility to justify the reason for apprehension and show cause. This may be difficult in terms of obtaining a protection order.
Under the proposed legislation, there may be confinement without a warrant of persons who may or may not have been involved in a criminal offence. This is an infringement of section 9 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which indicates, "Everyone has the right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned."
Child and youth prostitution is a complex social ill with a myriad of ignored underlying causes. Legislation against child prostitution exists in almost every country, yet actual enforcement of this legislation is poor.
I'd like to refer you to the recommendations that we make in our written submission and suggest to you the following:
Although Bill 18 attempts to provide a protective approach to children involved in prostitution, it cannot stand on its own. The Child and Family Services Act already exists to ensure the safety, well-being and protection of children in Ontario.
Outreach services to connect with street youth, to help them form relationships and to facilitate and support their readiness to leave the street are essential. Additional services aimed at youth wishing to leave prostitution must be flexible.
The government should not pass Bill 18 but rather amend existing legislation and develop strategies and services to respond to children involved in prostitution. This involves amending the Child and Family Services Act and the Criminal Code and then developing strategies that can intervene with young people at an early stage and assist them to get off the street.
Madam Chairman and committee, these are our recommendations. We would be pleased to answer any questions you have.
The Chair: Thank you. We have just about two and a half minutes per caucus.
Mrs Boyd: There's a lot to digest in here and I know you skipped through as well as you could to leave us a little bit of time for questions. I think appreciating the difficulty of trying to come to grips with this issue is one of the most important outcomes of the discussion we've had of Bill 18 because there are no simplistic solutions that we come up to. They are all integrated in a way.
I'm fascinated by your sense that we really need to be looking at this on a cross-jurisdictional basis between provinces and the federal government and focusing our attention on the issue from both aspects, and we've got to an opportunity to do that right now. In Ontario we're looking at child protection through the expert panel and the action, and of course the federal government is looking at the Young Offenders Act and has already made some changes and indicated it will make others to the Criminal Code. It seems like a particularly opportune moment to try and come up with the way to integrate our approach to this. Would you say so?
Ms Cresswell: Yes.
Mrs Boyd: On the age 18, as you know, there already is a discriminatory aspect to the law in that some sexual acts are criminalized if they are performed only under age 14 and others under age 18. You're saying you believe it should be criminalized throughout or only prostitution? I need some clarification on that.
Ms Cresswell: The involvement in prostitution.
Mrs Boyd: So you're not suggesting that any sexual act be criminalized up to age 18. You would want the age differential left in, but recognizing that 14 may be appropriate. We have had that recommendation from some other presenters.
Ms Cresswell: I would suggest that.
Mr John O'Toole (Durham East): I'd like to thank you very much, Ms Cresswell, for your presentation. I tried to follow along. It's a very comprehensive response and I will keep this as a reference document.
I'm aware, from reading the preparation for the bill, of the conflict under the Child and Family Services Act and this particular bill, and will probably support that. I like the preamble part of the bill where it says there's got to be some recognition of family responsibilities, knowing full well that that's really fundamentally partially what's wrong today.
As a member, I see at a community level significant issues, loitering, boredom, whatever. I'm involved with a youth group in my community, trying to get a youth drop-in centre and that kind of thing. Underlying all of that, I have five children in our family and I know just how difficult it is. Do you have any advice? I know you've talked about the courts, the process and the streets, and I see you have someone from Toronto. Perhaps some of the residents from my riding are here in Toronto as street kids, as we might refer to them. You work with this with the children's aid, I gather.
Do you have any that we can reach out to the family, the unit of society that's somewhat neglected in all of this. This is the year of the family, coming into the year of the older person. I'm not trying to be overarching here, but how can we reach the families, to first get that functioning? I throw that open very broadly in the context of this discussion. How can we reach out to the family?
It seems almost like an anachronism. I'm very worried that by the year 2020 the family will be so marginalized and trivialized that we're at risk of society being fragmented to the point where it's totally disconnected as a community. The basic unit of the community is the family, and that sounds so old fashioned and corny that I'm almost dismissed.
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Ms Marion Roberts: I'll take a stab at that. I think you're raising a really valid point. In thinking about all of this, we always talk about early intervention, prevention, treatment etc, but one of the issues that we often don't address is the whole concept of family and parenting and how difficult it is to parent children. If a parent is having any kind of difficulty, they keep it to themselves. It's not open in the community that there are supports there and that communities can raise children. If there's any kind of problem or difficulty, they tend to stay within themselves because there's a stigma attached to seeking help at an early stage. So if communities were more open and accepting.
Mr Bartolucci: Thank you for your presentation. Certainly you have put a lot of paper together and I realize that a lot of thought has gone into your presentation and your brief. If you worked in Alberta, would you be against Bill 1 in Alberta?
Ms Cresswell: I don't think so. I think I would be supporting Bill 1 in that it provides support to youth who are involved in prostitution.
Mr Bartolucci: If you were in Saskatchewan, would you be against Bill 742?
Ms Cresswell: No.
Mr Bartolucci: Yet you're suggesting here today that we don't adopt Bill 18. Aren't there some conflicting messages here?
Ms Cresswell: No. We are suggesting that the intent of the bill is very appropriate, but that the amendments to the other acts that are in place today will be able to deal with this. We are concerned about the confusion of having X number of bills that would be dealing with a different population.
Mr Bartolucci: I appreciate that, but both Alberta's bill and Saskatchewan's bill are issue specific. Bill 18 is issue specific.
Ms Roberts: My understanding of Bill 1, and I could be corrected on this, is that it was incorporated into the existing child protection legislation, that it did not stand as two separate bills, and that in both provinces that you've just mentioned children are defined for purposes of protection to the age of 18, which is different from Ontario.
Mr Bartolucci: I'll check it out, but I would suggested that presenters yesterday indicated that it was very much a stand-alone bill.
Ms Roberts: It's one piece of legislation.
Mr Bartolucci: We'll check that out. There's a conscious effort here on my part -- I have to be honest, I had the option of doing an amendment to the Child and Family Services Act or a stand-alone bill. I chose a stand-alone bill because of the perception out there -- and I say "perception" because in 30 years in teaching I spent a lot of time talking to children's aid society workers, so I appreciate the dilemma and the role you have and you fulfil for society and for children. But the perception out there is that the act is ineffective, that the people who are charged with fulfilling the perception don't do the job we want. As I say, I colour that because I had 30 years where I dealt with children's aid society workers.
The Chair: Mr Bartolucci, could you sum up, please?
Mr Bartolucci: Yes, very quickly. I would suggest to you, if in fact all the changes were to take place that you recommend within the bill, would it then be a good piece of stand-alone legislation?
Ms Cresswell: I think it would be very difficult. You can't change this bill without changing the Child and Family Services Act to conform with that, so it's not just changing the bill, it's changing the existing legislation that is available for children's aid societies to operate under at this point.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Cresswell, Ms Roberts and Ms Ward, for being here this afternoon and sharing your views and those of your association with us. We appreciate it.
COVENANT HOUSE TORONTO
The Chair: May I ask Covenant House of Toronto, Michele Anderson, to come forward.
Mr Klees: On a point of order, Madam Chair, while the next presenters are coming forward: I think it's important for Mr Bartolucci to note that he shouldn't be taking this personally at all. I think everyone is agreeing in principle with what he --
The Chair: I don't believe that's a point of order.
Mr Bartolucci: Mr Klees, I don't believe I'm taking this personally, but thank you for being concerned.
Interjections.
The Chair: Gentlemen, please. Ms Anderson, thank you very much for being here and for your patience. We look forward to your views.
Ms Michele Anderson: Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Michele Anderson. I am the outreach supervisor at Covenant House. On behalf of Covenant House, I'm pleased to have this opportunity to address the committee.
Most of you are probably familiar with Covenant House. It is Canada's largest shelter and support service for homeless youth, 80% privately funded. Covenant House has more than 16 years of experience in dealing with the many tragic consequences of street life. Among the worst is the sexual exploitation of children for profit. These young people are literally reduced to being human commodities in a vicious, dangerous market. For those who find the resilience, the way back is painfully difficult.
As youth advocates, we support the effort to extend greater protection to young victims who are forced and manipulated into prostitution, often as a means of survival. Initiatives such as Bill 18 to deal with the serious and growing problem are long overdue. We believe this type of action is needed, along with stiffer penalties for both the pimps and johns who use children.
Through our outreach program, working closely with the police services juvenile task force, we are on the streets nightly to reach and rescue those who are most at risk. We are seeing significantly more and younger children falling prey to increasingly organized and predatory pimps. The majority of the young girls and boys we see are between 15 and 18, but we encounter children as young as 13 involved in the sex trade. They come from everywhere across the province and the country. Unfortunately, this is not just a Toronto problem. It reaches far into most urban centres across the province.
Because child prostitution is lucrative, drugs and violence are often used to keep kids working. Caught in a vicious cycle of victimization, these kids, who are often the victims of sexual abuse in their own homes, are constantly exposed to physical and psychological abuse which renders them helpless to escape. They live constantly at risk for sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. Too often, they are at risk for the lives.
We are also seeing several disturbing new trends on the street in the past four years. There has been a shift from street-level prostitution to escort services and the production of child pornography. While this may put the problem out of sight, it also makes efforts to help these young people more difficult. We believe there is a need for greater regulations of escort services, massage parlours and strip clubs to ensure the protection of underage children.
Increasingly we are seeing evidence of the operation of international prostitution rings, including recent examples of young girls sold into Canada from Thailand and eastern European countries. We are also now seeing evidence of greater organization on the street among young male prostitutes, with pimps beginning to exert control in this traditionally open field.
While we are not legal experts, we recognize that there are contentious legal issues raised by Bill 18 around the apprehension and confinement of young people. We would hope that the precedent that has been set in Nevada, and which has not been challenged in Nevada, would serve as a model for Ontario.
Finally, the effectiveness of the program envisioned in Bill 18 depends on the commitment of adequate resources. As a society, we have a choice to either pay in the short term or pay higher, long-term costs if we continue to neglect and ignore this serious and growing problem.
What is also required is a concerted and coordinated effort among provincial government ministries, particularly the Ministry of the Attorney General, the Ministry of the Solicitor General, the Ministry of Community and Social Services and the federal government.
As I mentioned earlier, at Covenant House we believe there is a need for far tougher deterrents for both pimps and johns who use children. We would also appeal to the Ontario government to support tougher Criminal Code penalties in this area, such as treating child prostitution as commercialized child sexual abuse punishable by significant jail terms.
We urge this committee and the Ontario Legislature to adopt Bill 18 to provide greater protection to these vulnerable children and to commit the necessary resources to make this plan work.
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The Chair: Thank you very much. We have approximately four and a half minutes per caucus.
Mr Jim Brown: Your testimony is pretty important. You're right in downtown Toronto and you see a lot. The federal government allows 14-year-olds to have sex with 40-year-olds or whatever. They dropped the age of that fast and they dropped the age of the Young Offenders Act. I think that's a major problem. You mentioned something near my heart, which is punishment of the bad guys, the pimps and the johns. Certainly with some of the jail sentences that come down, if it's two years less a day, it's a third off just because and it's another third off if they behave themselves, although we've managed to cut down on some of that. So you're basically looking at pretty wimpy sentences.
What about taking johns' cars and what about taking the assets of pimps, who usually are drug dealers as well, and hitting them in the pocketbook and trying to eliminate some of the incentive for taking advantage of the kids?
Ms Anderson: I guess I would still like to focus on the youth and what we can do in terms of protecting the youth. I know these are different models that are used in different jurisdictions. I'm not well versed in those kinds of areas. In terms of seizing cars and seizing assets, I don't know, I'd say have a significant jail term. Yes, seize the assets from the --
Mr Jim Brown: You see, the federal government is wimpy on that too. They changed the Criminal Code and they don't even want jails, I think, so it's tough with them. We're trying to do what we can do. So you think that's a good idea?
Ms Anderson: I think tougher incarceration, bigger sentences and maybe seizing the assets of profit.
Mr Preston: On that line, the sentencing is so out of line and unfair. If I catch an 18-inch trout out of season, I can lose my car, my boat, my fishing rod, everything. But I can take a 14-year-old kid out and probably because I'm a good citizen I'll have to clean the park once a week for the next six months.
Interjection: John school.
Mr Preston: Or john school, whatever it is. There are a couple of things I'd like to touch on. Number one, I believe everybody is in favour of Mr Bartolucci's bill. I think what Rick wants to do is toughen laws against prostitution. I happen to be chairman of the youth committee and I urge everybody who's had anything to say here today to write to me with ideas that can change the Child and Family Services Act so it has some teeth. I think if we do that, it will satisfy your desires, although it won't get your bill in with your name on it, but I don't think that's your prime concern. I think your prime concern is for the kids, like we all are concerned. I ask that everybody who has concerns with the fact that the family services act doesn't have the teeth it should have -- because this is all covered there in one way or another.
Ms Anderson: Our age of protection is far too low. In other jurisdictions it's not 16 --
Mr Preston: No question.
Ms Anderson: -- it's 18. If you go to British Columbia, if you go to Quebec, the age of protection is not 16. That's why we get so many of them coming here because they can live literally on the streets at 16 and 17 and not have any intervention whatsoever. If they stay in their home communities, there will be intervention. That's why we have such a huge problem here in Toronto.
Mr Preston: That is the crime.
Ms Anderson: We need to increase the age of protection. How that gets done --
Mr Preston: And decrease the age of penalty. Let's do both together. If a kid needs protection, let's give him or her protection, regardless of their age, but if they need a penalty, let's put it down to where it's realistic too.
Mr Bartolucci: I didn't think I'd have to clarify my motives to the committee, but of prime concern to me always has been, always will be, the protection of children. That's what this act is all about. To be quite frank, I don't care where it ends up as long as we're protecting kids. The prime motivator of the bill is not to punish pimps or johns. That's a part of the bill. The prime motivation for the bill, as I think with every presentation that has been made so far, is the protection of children. If some of the committee members are having trouble at this point in time, I suggest we all take reading comprehension lessons.
However, having said that, Ms Anderson, I appreciate your presentation. Section 10, to me, is very critical because it's all about education and it's all about programs. Could you offer some suggestions as to what type of program you think should form part of this bill?
Ms Anderson: We have at Covenant House a runaway prevention program which goes all throughout southern Ontario and makes presentations in schools to middle schools -- grades 5 and 6 up into high school -- in terms of letting the young people know the dangers of the streets, what they need to be careful of, what they need to think about before they run, and where they can go before they feel compelled to run from a home situation. I think that is absolutely critical in terms of reaching the younger population so that they're armed with that information when they're 12, 13 and 14. If they get that when they're nine, 10 and 11, I think that can go a long way to educating our young people in terms of the dangers on the street.
Mr Bartolucci: So preventive programming and financial resources --
Ms Anderson: Absolutely.
Mr Bartolucci: Thank you for the great work you do. I really appreciate your presentation today.
Mrs Boyd: I'm really encouraged. I assume that Mr Preston's comment should be an indicator to us all that the government is going to move the protection age up to 18. That would go a long way to meeting some of your concerns.
You made a comment about the precedent in Nevada. Are you talking about the decriminalization of prostitution?
Ms Anderson: No.
Mrs Boyd: Could you explain to us what you are talking about?
Ms Anderson: I'm talking about the apprehension of young people involved in prostitution. They've been picked up for, let's say, communicating and they are held for 30 days. There was --
Mrs Boyd: They're charged, though?
Ms Anderson: Actually they're held -- the term that is used and I don't know all the legalities in this -- as material witnesses.
Mrs Boyd: Good.
Ms Anderson: They are under lock and key, but they have access to lots of assistance. They can go to school, get counselling, get detoxified, get the street out of them. That is a model that has been in existence for about three years now. I was speaking to an officer from Nevada just about a week ago on it and when it was first presented the social service agencies there were all up in arms against this because it impinged on their rights as children, to be apprehended and put under lock and key. Now they are very much in favour of this. They've had a great success rate with this model and the kids do get the protection they need.
Mrs Boyd: The kids then testify against the johns --
Ms Anderson: It has not been challenged constitutionally, which is surprising considering where that whole model comes from. They get the support for going to court. They get all of that. It's something that we are aware of and that we know works.
The only other point I would like to make in terms of increasing the age of protection is that our biggest challenge is finding safe houses for these kids, a shelter. We're filled to the rafters every single night, with 85, 95 kids in-house and there's just not enough space available for many of these, especially in an urban centre like Toronto.
Mrs Boyd: Are you funded for your prevention program?
Ms Anderson: Eighty per cent of it is private funding. That's our funding base.
The Chair: Ms Anderson, we want to thank you very much for being here today and making the presentation to our committee
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TORONTO POLICE SERVICE
The Chair: Our final presentation of the day, but by no means the least important, is the Toronto Police Service, 52 division, juvenile task force, Michel Beauparlant. Bienvenue, welcome. We're very happy to have you here. Detective Beauparlant, you have 20 minutes for your presentation and at the conclusion of this I need time as I am sure we will want to ask you some questions.
Mr Michel Beauparlant: What I'd like to do first hand is just give a brief background of the juvenile task force and then jump in with what Mr Bartolucci and Mr Brown and a few others know very well is our mandate.
The juvenile task force on prostitution was formed in 1981 as a result of public and police concern at the procuring and manipulation of young persons into prostitution. The juvenile task force on prostitution is responsible for identifying, apprehending and investigating juvenile prostitutes. The unit is further responsible for arresting and assisting in the prosecution of their adult organizers. Once identifying these young persons, removing them from their street environment and arresting their pimps is of paramount importance. Statistics indicate that the prostitution trade, and in particular juvenile prostitution in Toronto and in fact across Canada, is on the rise. In the Toronto area, it can be stated with certainty that 52 division remains a centre of activity in terms of visible and concealed prostitution.
Michele Anderson touched on we now have the Internet and other areas that are somewhat going underground with the escort services.
The vast majority of runaway girls, whether they come from the GTA or across Canada, tend to gravitate to Toronto's centre core, and in particular to the Toronto Eaton Centre and the Yonge Street strip. Unfortunately, pimps are also aware of this. This results in the young runaways ending up as prime targets to be preyed upon.
Getting to Mr Bartolucci's Bill 18, members of the juvenile task force have closely reviewed this private member's bill on protection of children involved in prostitution. We strongly offer our support for this bill for a number of reasons.
First, raising the age of apprehension to under the age of 18 would assist all police officers in Ontario when dealing with young females working as prostitutes. Just to touch on that, the earliest possible intervention provides the best hope for breaking the cycle with these young people. A frustration that I have experienced over the last 10 to 12 years I have been involved in prostitution as a police officer is that it's very frustrating when I sit out on the street doing surveillance and I see a young person who I knew a week before was 15 years old and I could pick her up and take her to a safe place, and then a week later, when she is 16 years old, I sit there and I cringe at the thought that she is getting into a car. I could intervene there, but I can't do it 50 times. Because she or he is 16 years old, I cannot take this person to a safe place and attempt through all the social agencies that we have -- how can I put it? We've made fabulous progress with building bridges between social agencies such as Covenant House and SOS.
I can't tell you -- I'm sure all of your constituents have spoken to you, and I know that you know. Parents phone me daily from Vancouver, from Halifax, and I tell them that I just can't take their child back off the street, because they are 16 or 17 years old. All I can really do is approach that child and say to them: "Please call your mom or your dad. They're concerned." It's very frustrating.
This bill would be a unique tool. I understand some people are afraid that it would affect their Charter of Rights. I tell you, since 1994, my unit alone has apprehended an average of 65 to 70 girls under the age of 16. I can't imagine what the numbers are and how many individuals we could get to a safe place and break this cycle.
I'm sure everybody sitting in this room never thought that, at whatever age you are now, you would be an MPP, and I'm sure these young people don't sit at 16 years old and say, "Jeez, I'm going to be a prostitute for the rest of my life."
I'll get to my second point now. We feel that with the present legislation a lot of these 16- and 17-year-old victims, I would call them, are left in a state of limbo. They find themselves with no money or guidance. When officers, and I'm speaking not only of plainclothes officers but uniformed officers, approach these young people, they're brainwashed by the pimps to avoid the police, lie to the police.
We all have children. We understand our children. They're going through a difficult period of time in those years, 14, 15, 16, 17 and so on. These officers will check them out. The officers have no authority to take these young people into a safe place, so it leaves you in a very frustrating position. I don't know how many nights I've gone home thinking, "Are any of these young people going to be killed?" They're so vulnerable out there and it is a jungle.
The proposal to detain a youth for three days in a designated safe house is an excellent recommendation. I would even strongly recommend that this period of time be extended to 30 days. This would enable the social agencies to have some clout in attempting to break the cycle.
Michele Anderson mentioned Las Vegas. They have a unique program that is on right now and I think it would be very beneficial here in Toronto. It would have to be studied and there would be variations because of our Canadian laws, but it doesn't make it a revolving door.
A lot of times when my officers bring a young person to a safe place like Moberly, Covenant House or SOS, whatever it may be, first of all, the young girls have been directed into drugs and drinking, and a lot of times their faculties are disoriented. They've been taken from their home in Halifax or Vancouver and then all of a sudden they're out all night long. They're sleeping all day long. There's nothing normal to their lives. It takes time to break this cycle. Sometimes they sleep overnight in Moberly and, "I'm gone," the next day. It's a frustrating cycle.
I know a lot of the problems lie with budgeting resources, but as a police officer, I salute this bill and strongly endorse it as a tool. If we even saved one child between the ages of 16 and 17, I would trade all the accolades of 20-something years.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks very much for your presentation, Detective Beauparlant. I appreciate the insight, certainly, and the support.
We in Sudbury, as you know, have implemented the DISC program with our very proactive police services under the capable guidance of Chief McCauley. The DISC program is "deter, identify sex-trade consumers." We publish their names in the paper. Are there any other types of programs like that available to any jurisdiction?
Mr Beauparlant: I know within the Toronto Police there is nothing in place as of this moment. However, I think that's a good idea. I think any deterrent that we can use -- Mr Brown spoke about seizing assets. Anything that will deter individuals from picking up these young people. You'll never totally eliminate it, but if it just stops them from taking that one particular child, whether it's a child of 14 -- we're finding them 11, 12, 13 years old now. It's frightening. As a police officer and a father, anything that would assist in helping the children I would be totally for.
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Mr Bartolucci: There is some integration with the modern world we have with telecommunications with regard to how we process, in this bill, found in section 3. Do you see a problem with a legal challenge to that?
Mr Beauparlant: Yes, I'm sure there will be a challenge, but I am a police officer and that would have to be directed by lawyers and legislators. I'm sure there's always a challenge to everything when it deals with people's rights, and children have rights. Yes, I would say there would be, but that would have to be argued within that area.
Mr Bartolucci: That's a very important point to make, though.
The last question is, we'll never get rid of the problem, but should we ever be afraid to take opportunities to explore positive solutions?
Mr Beauparlant: As I said earlier, I think it would assist in saving so many young souls. These young girls have been abused. I've seen them. They've been branded. They're sold like meat. If this bill goes through, or anything -- you were speaking earlier about the Child and Family Services Act -- that would assist us, as police officers and social agencies, to assist these children, I'm wholeheartedly for it.
Mrs Boyd: I'm curious as to whether you have some suggestion around, under Canadian law, how we could do this detention for 30 days. Do you think the same issue around material witness might be possible?
Mr Beauparlant: There would have to be some research done into that. I would like to go and see what their program is, and is there a success rate to it. I think that's something that should be looked into. However, what we have presently is ineffective and it's not working. The children, after one night's sleep, are out the door and we're right back to square one. So I'm sure that somewhere in between there is a solution.
Mrs Boyd: Because, you know, we used to incarcerate people without a warrant and without any court hearing and with no determination. Generally speaking, we can't do that now with the Charter of Rights. It seems to me quite a serious challenge to go as far as the 30 days unless we have the mechanism available to do it. I think most of the people who have spoken have said that the three days is too short a period of time, and certainly not having any time, which is basically where you are now, doesn't help. But it's not a small problem.
As you know, as a police officer you can't -- I can't even imagine how we could do this if there wasn't an element of consent or at least an element of coming before a court to have that determination.
Mr Beauparlant: I agree with you there. You will probably not get the consent from the child. However, the system is not working right now, and it has not for the 12 years I've been involved. I'm sure some research would have to be done on it and some balance of maybe 15 days. I don't know. I haven't done a lot of research on that, but I'm sure there could be some compromise.
Mrs Boyd: I think Toronto is very fortunate to have the juvenile task force. It's something that I would hope other cities would be looking at seriously, because that kind of community policing that you were talking about, the kinds of partnerships that you've formed and the kind of really clear vision of the continuity of the problem, not just the law enforcement part of the problem, is a pretty important thing that all communities could benefit from.
Mr Beauparlant: I totally agree with that.
Mr Jim Brown: Welcome. Mr Bartolucci's bill has been passed in Alberta, and I think he's added something too which I like, the telewarranting. So we did read your bill. If Rick hadn't introduced it, I think I was going to introduce it, so I really think it's a very positive step.
I've been on ride-alongs downtown and I've talked to Cherry Kingsley, who was a former victim and childhood prostitute. She has told me about the strolls, and of course right in front of the Solicitor General's building on Grosvenor there is a young males' stroll. So if you go there at 10 o'clock at night, you walk right through it. It seems that it's proliferating; it's really become a big problem.
Mr Beauparlant: Well, not only there. They'll transport young females from Halifax to Montreal to Ottawa to Toronto. Then, if the heat is on there, they'll move to Vancouver, Calgary. They're like nomads; they're all over the place. Here, we can only deal with what the laws are in the province and with what we have in the Criminal Code.
Mr Jim Brown: But you know this government means business in terms of safety for everybody. As for the young prostitutes, we'd like to not have that at all. You know that because we have talked at length about what we can do.
I get kind of perplexed. I try to get innovative solutions. Rick certainly has made a good foray into it. But what else can we do? I mentioned seizing the cars of johns and the assets of pimps and drug dealers. Any other innovative ideas, perhaps even creating provincial offences for some of this activity?
Mr Beauparlant: Personally, I think a provincial task force on juvenile prostitution should be looked at. There is one in place now in British Columbia that we have dealt with. I think it would enable us to follow the patterns, and there are patterns.
As I elaborated on earlier, these young people are being transported from across the country. If you took a 13-year-old from Halifax to Montreal and kept her up all night for a week -- as an example of what Michele said earlier, there was a Taiwanese girl who was apprehended in a bawdy house and she asked where she was. She didn't even know what country she was in. That is sad. So these individuals are organized; they are getting smart. They'll have family members in one area, family members in another area. They're organized.
We're not organized here. We're trying, we try to communicate, but I have six officers working for me and they're constantly on the go. Just getting to a conference is sometimes -- we are constantly talking to other units, but if a provincial task force was formed, I think it would have a lot of impact on prostitution in this province.
Mr O'Toole: I appreciate your presentation. You bring a fair amount of feeling and emotion to it. I can see the frustration.
The frustration, as Jim Brown has mentioned, with the federal Young Offenders Act and the FIPPA stuff is sort of tokenistic with respect to getting to where you want to go.
I like the idea that you're supportive and I was pleased that Covenant House supported the Nevada experiment or pilot. I hadn't really heard of it until then. I think it's great. But it's almost in contradiction to this issue, we find, this unlawful kind of detainment in a safe house, and questioning that, of three days -- like you say, they would hardly be awake by that time -- to 30 days. Just a quick response to that.
How much of this 16-to-18 politics really gets into the way of doing your job? That seemed to me the most critical point, that if they are over 16, you really can't do anything technically. Is that the fact?
Mr Beauparlant: That is the fact, sir.
Mr O'Toole: Gee, that's tragic.
Mr Beauparlant: No grey area whatsoever. A 16-year-old can stand on the corner of Jarvis and Isabella and wave at me, but a week earlier I could take that young person to a safe place. You can't imagine the frustrations. These young people are out there at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, and there are more wierdos floating around picking these young people up. I'm surprised and I can't believe there are not more serious things that happen. I can't begin to tell you the degradation that they're subjected to, not only from the pimps but from the johns alone.
Statistically, between 16 and 18 I know we would have about 200 to 300 more young females that we would deal with.
Mrs Boyd: In a day?
Mr Beauparlant: No, I'm talking in a year. Our unit alone would apprehend maybe 65 to 70 girls a year under the age of 16, but from 16 to 18 they run away a lot more frequently -- you know, summertime. I could give you actual statistics, but it really doesn't matter. Getting to your point, it's terrible frustrating.
Mr O'Toole: But we're so politically correct now, even the family has no power left.
Mr Beauparlant: The parents phone me daily. They say: "You're a police officer. Please go get my daughter."
Interjection: They're done too, though.
Mr Beauparlant: Yes. They can't do anything.
The Chair: Detective Beauparlant, I do want to thank you on behalf of the committee for being here and for sharing so candidly your views and those of your task force. Thanks very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our witnesses for the day. I would remind you of just a couple of items of business.
First, as agreed in the report of the subcommittee, amendments are to be filed with the clerk of the committee on Monday, October 5, 1998, by 1 pm, if possible. I know you will do your best.
The other issue is that we will reconvene on Monday, October 5, at 3:30 following routine proceedings. If there is no other business, we will adjourn until then.
The committee adjourned at 1751.