SUDBURY REGIONAL POLICE SERVICE
SUDBURY ACTION CENTRE FOR YOUTH
REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY OF SUDBURY
JOHN HOWARD SOCIETY OF SUDBURY
SUDBURY AND DISTRICT HEALTH UNIT
ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY, SUDBURY BRANCH CHILD PROSTITUTION ADVISORY COMMITTEE
SUDBURY SEXUAL ASSAULT CRISIS CENTRE
ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY, SUDBURY BRANCH
SUDBURY-MANITOULIN CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY
CONTENTS
Monday 17 August 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
Sudbury Regional Police Service, S-34
Mr Alex McCauley
Sudbury Action Centre for Youth
Ms Laura Stewart
Sudbury Youth Services
Ms Beverley Crockford
Regional Municipality of Sudbury
Mr Doug Craig
Cecil Facer Youth Centre
Ms Patty Taylor
John Howard Society of Sudbury
Mr John Rimore
Ms Robin Doner
Mallory
Alan
Rose
Foyer Notre Dame
Mr Rodney Bazinet
Mr Gerry Courtemanche
Mr Mitchell Day
Sudbury and District Health Unit
Ms Jackie Moffatt
Elizabeth Fry Society, Sudbury branch; Child Prostitution Advisory Committee
Ms Marianne Zadra
Jean
Sudbury Sexual Assault Crisis Centre
Ms Alexandra Dean
Elizabeth Fry Society, Sudbury branch
Ms Heather Campbell
Sudbury-Manitoulin Children's Aid Society
Ms Marion Roberts
Mr Ron Ross
Mr Rick Sleaver
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 Ted Chudleigh (Halton North / -Nord PC)
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands / Kingston et Les Îles L)
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East / -Est ND)
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound PC)
Clerk / Greffière
Ms Tonia Grannum
Staff / Personnel
Mr Philip Kaye, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 0910 in the Four Points Sheraton Hotel, Sudbury.
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.
The Chair (Ms Annamarie Castrilli): Good morning. This is the first meeting of the standing committee on social development considering Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution, sponsored by Mr Bartolucci.
Mr Rick Bartolucci (Sudbury): Madam Chair, just before we deal with the report of the subcommittee, I'd like to welcome the committee to Sudbury. I know that during the day you will receive some excellent information and certainly much food for thought to ponder as you wrestle later on with the clause-by-clause of this bill. Welcome to my fine city and my fine area. We hope you enjoy your day.
I have a report of the subcommittee on committee business that I'd like to present to be adopted.
The Chair: You're moving its adoption?
Mr Bartolucci: Yes.
The Chair: Very well. Any discussion on the report from the subcommittee? All in favour? Opposed? The motion is carried and the subcommittee's report on committee business is adopted.
SUDBURY REGIONAL POLICE SERVICE
The Chair: Our first presenter this morning is Alex McCauley, chief of the Sudbury Regional Police Service. Welcome, Chief McCauley. We apologize for the delay. As I explained to you, there was a bit of a mix-up with respect to starting time, but we are very pleased you're here and we look forward to your presentation. You have 20 minutes, so you have until 9:30 to make your presentation. In the event there is any time left over, the committee will ask you some questions if that's all right with you.
Mr Alex McCauley: It is, thank you, Madam Chair, and I don't mind the delay. I'd just like to welcome everyone, to echo Mr Bartolucci's sentiments. It's always nice to have the government holding hearings in Sudbury.
It is indeed a pleasure for me to be here this morning to comment on Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution. First, I strongly support the passage of this bill and proudly commend our member, Mr Bartolucci, for his effort to develop Bill 18.
It is stated often that our most valuable resource is our children, yet all too often this resource is not protected nearly to the extent it should be. We have seen examples of children being victimized by our society in numerous ways or being drawn into a life of crime because at the time the glitter is there.
Child prostitution is one of the most heinous of these child exploitations. We have seen it grow over the years with the difficulty associated in prosecuting those who are involved with prostitution. Also, unfortunately, the Child Welfare Act does not contain the teeth necessary to deal directly with this problem. We have young children wandering the streets of this province, being preyed upon by those deviants among us who find some thrill in sexual acts with children. Then there are those who live off the avails, and I refer to them as the parasites of humanity.
This is not an unrealistic picture or one that is construed for shock factor. This is fact. In our city alone, child prostitution was becoming epidemic. We were finding children as young as 12 years of age actively engaged in prostitution.
There are a number of reasons why this is happening, the least of which is drug use and cocaine addiction. Also, many young girls are runaways who are introduced to this lifestyle by those who prey upon them. The result oftentimes is a life they cannot escape on the street.
In April of this year, about 30 prostitutes were working our downtown core of the city. At least 10 of them were teenagers and at least one, as I mentioned earlier, was 12 years of age.
Police, local businesses in our downtown area and other support agencies were recognizing the problem. Unfortunately, the general public is not as aware of the problem initially because the activity often takes place in alleys or in cars. We feel there is definitely a need for awareness by the whole of society and we feel that this bill and associated support such as this assists in that regard. Increases in prostitution at all levels bring a corresponding increase in drug activity and other criminal activity, as well as the spread of sexually transmitted communicable diseases, especially by young people.
Our police service has had success with a number of crackdowns on the local prostitution trade through a project we borrowed from the Vancouver police that was called DISC: deter, identify, sex-trade consumers. But even with this it doesn't take long for the girls to be back on the streets with new locations and new customers. This bill in our view will enhance police techniques and will also work to enhance programs such as DISC. It will give the power to get young girls off the streets and help them to help themselves by developing skills and deterring those individuals who exploit children over and over.
DISC has been successful because in part it encompasses community support at various levels. Mr Bartolucci as well was very supportive of this program.
Dealing with the bill directly, some of the clear advantages of Bill 18 over existing legislation are, first of all, it defines a child as a person under 18 years of age. The Child and Family Services Act defines a child as generally under 16. There may be specific sections or specific parts of the act that will allow for supervision to an older age. By allowing the police to deal with those under 18, we capture the very vulnerable 16- and 17-year-olds who are often left to fend for themselves without the skills and support they need. The spirit of this legislation is to protect children to see that they are not in a position to engage in prostitution and come to harm or further involvement with those criminals who would exploit them.
Further, the bill clearly defines a child in need of protection. To quote directly: "if the child is engaging in prostitution or attempting to engage in prostitution." This gives police specific power to apprehend with warrant or in situations without warrant.
In the past, the police could only disrupt the activities associated with child prostitution. Under this bill, the child will be taken to a safe house and we feel that this is a definite advantage.
The legislation also allows a child care worker to make arrangements for long-term care without the fear of interference from an abusive parent or a pimp. Also, the ability to apply for a restraining order against individuals such as pimps who would try to contact and terrorize the children who are apprehended under the bill, or who are voluntarily trying to end involvement in prostitution, is in our view invaluable. In the past, we were unable to do this unless the child complained or the person was charged. Rarely, for obvious reasons, did the child complain.
Another significant area of this bill gives the police the authority to apprehend and convey the child to a safe house without warrant on reasonable and probable grounds that the child's life or safety is severely or imminently endangered because of engaging or attempting to engage in prostitution. This again not only gives the police the power to merely disrupt a situation where the child may fall into harm, but gives the authority to ensure that the child is out of a dangerous situation.
In conclusion, this bill will give the police and the child protection workers the power to deal with this difficult and widespread problem by taking the first step and getting the child off the street and safe. Where that child ultimately ends up will be influenced by the support resources available. Every child apprehended will not break free of their previous life. There are many factors to be considered in that child becoming involved in prostitution and some of those will affect that child for a lifetime. Even for those children that don't break free the first time, it gives them and other children hope. These children don't want to have a life of prostitution but they can't get out. This bill has the means to get those children out and on to a better life.
0920
The Chair: Thank you very much, Chief McCauley. You've left plenty of time for questions. We have about four minutes and a bit per caucus. We'll start with Mr Bartolucci since he is sponsoring this bill.
Mr Bartolucci: Thank you very much, Chief, for your presentation. I won't have very many specific questions about your thoughts on the bill, but I think it's very important for the committee to hear some of the very proactive steps that your police force, in conjunction with a very concerned community, is taking.
Before I ask you to expand on those a little, I should say that if there is a model police force working with the public, I say in all honesty that it's the way the Sudbury Regional Police Service includes the public.
Do you want to maybe outline a little bit about the DISC program, outline a little bit about the Unhooked activities you have going with the Elizabeth Fry Society, just to give the community a sense of what and how we're trying to attack the problem, besides this legislation?
Mr McCauley: Yes, I will. I know that there are going to be presentations later on that will probably deal in more detail with the Unhooked, but we are very closely aligned with the community on all of the things we do, and this is no exception.
Especially on this, it's very important because with the DISC program a lot of people took a lot of chances. What we do is we work in high traffic areas where prostitutes and young people are hanging around, and although it may be difficult to actually lay a charge, what happens is that we are looking at people who are combing the area and looking for them.
What we do is we stop, identify, talk to these people about the problem, attempt to deter them from going back there and then we forward a letter to their home, outlining all the points we have alluded to and encouraging them not to go back into that area. Doing that, what we hope is that we are going to deter the people who are actually out to pick up the girls.
As well, we work very closely with the child care workers, E. Fry, areas such as that, to deal with the girls as they come into care. We go out and talk to them. We try to find out exactly what is happening. So there's a lot of work that is going on.
Our service is dedicated to working with the community on this. I think, for a large part, we have been successful. There's definitely a long way to go. What is happening unfortunately at this point is that we're pushing the trade out to different areas within our city, but we're following it along. I think the key is to get out to the johns, the people who are actually taking advantage of these girls, if that's possible.
We deal with the pimps. We also deal with some meaningful follow-up. That's where the safe houses are really of a lot of value to us, the ability to be able to take especially these young people to a safe house. At that time we may have them with us long enough that we're able to analyze some of the difficulties they may have, which could be anything from disease to drug addiction.
It's very much a community response. I'm the chief of police and I deal with programs. I'm really proud of the effort that the community has made to do this.
Ms Shelley Martel (Sudbury East): Thank you, Chief McCauley, for making the presentation today. Tell me, do you have police staff who area actually dedicated to dealing with prostitution, then indirectly child prostitution?
Mr McCauley: Yes, we do. To the ability we can, our morality division is dedicated to that, but we have four officers who are involved directly with this particular problem and with the program DISC. Corrine Fewster, one of our female officers, has been very much involved in it. So we dedicate resources to the extent that we can, ever mindful of the fact that human resources in policing today is always an issue.
Ms Martel: Is what's important about the bill the fact that those four officers who are on the street now will have the ability to apprehend and take a child to a safe house? Does that actually mean that you will need more resources or that it will just allow them to do their job in a more effective way?
Mr McCauley: Probably a combination of both, but definitely the most important part is that they will be allowed to do their job in a more effective way.
First of all, if you move the yardsticks on the age so that you're moving it up to 18, I think that's a very important step right there, without any conditions. It not only helps us, but it will help child care workers who will have the ability to enforce the act as well.
I think these are very important. It clearly identifies the situation. In other words, there's not a whole lot of underlying definitions, if you would, as to what constitutes a child in need of protection. Currently, that is in legislation, but if you apprehend somebody, unless you can show at the time that there is actually some pressing danger to the child, unfortunately oftentimes our hands are tied. This is especially with runaways who are going to Toronto or places like that. The police deal with them and they seem fine. They're well fed; they're looked after. Unfortunately, we can't take it any further.
If we know through our surveillance or whatever that these children are actively engaged in prostitution, bingo, the act comes into play and we're able to take the steps necessary to take this person out of circulation.
Mr Toby Barrett (Norfolk): Chief McCauley, you made reference to a program you run to alleviate some of the problems of people who are paying for these kinds of services. I wanted to ask, how successful are you with respect to -- you made reference to the parasites of humanity, those people who are making money off this business or are providing accommodation. You mentioned cocaine or other products. What are the police doing there? Part of my question is, does this legislation go far enough? Do we need to have more material in the area of people making money from this or paying for it?
Mr McCauley: Dealing with the first part of your question, as far as dealing with the pimps and the people who live off the avails is concerned, we're doing everything we can. Oftentimes we identify these people, but it's difficult to shut them down because of the way the laws dealing with prostitution in the Criminal Code are currently set up.
I think we would have an advantage in dealing with those people if we are able to get the children out of the loop and able to have them in a situation where they would not be subjected to any kind of threat or harassment from this particular individual, because if they did or if there was any approach by this person, especially after we have limited them, then I think we would be able to deal with it in a more forthright way than we are now.
Clearly, it gives us an opportunity to at least make their life very uncomfortable. If they take it that step further, it's like most criminals, it's an opportunity for them, and if we relieve that opportunity or make it so difficult, then they can't get there.
As far as expanding the bill is concerned, I don't know that we could expand the bill more. Perhaps we can. I haven't looked at it from that perspective, but I think we can definitely look into the Criminal Code at the federal level and say there that maybe we have to take a little bit of a stronger look at what's happening as far as prostitution, living off the avails and these types of things are concerned. Right now, it becomes very onerous. It's very complex to get out there on the streets. You have to actually have a deal being made to be able to complete the ingredients necessary for the charge.
The Chair: We have one minute left. Mr Brown is itching to get in here, but keep it short.
Mr Jim Brown (Scarborough West): Mr Bartolucci, I congratulate you on the bill. I looked at Bill 1 of the Alberta Legislature which basically is this and had considered introducing it myself as a private member's bill. I too have talked to Cherry Kingsley, and the crime commission has investigated this problem. I'm appalled at the Criminal Code, the fact that consensual sex is legal at 14 years and up for both sexes, and it's kind of unbelievable.
Before I waste all my time talking, what do you think about even more sanctions, such as the seizure of cars and assets of pimps and johns, to take it that one step further to cut down the supply of customers?
Mr McCauley: Absolutely, Mr Brown, that's an excellent idea. Anything we can do to disrupt their activities; I think that's an excellent one.
Mr Jim Brown: One further thing: Curfews under the Child and Family Services Act allow police to pick kids up after 12 o'clock, before 6 am in the morning, but a lot of forces don't do that. I don't know if you do it here, and if you don't, I'm wondering why not.
Mr McCauley: Because it's very weak in the act itself. It's almost to the point where it would be an administrative nightmare. Also, the key ingredient to the Child and Family Services Act is if we find a child in need of protection, so the situation involving curfews gets into a whole lot of areas such as identification, what you're going to do with them, what is actually happening, is the permission of the parent there? It's there but it's almost unenforceable.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Chief McCauley. Your on-the-ground experience is invaluable to the committee and you've given us a great deal to think about.
0930
SUDBURY ACTION CENTRE FOR YOUTH
The Chair: Might I ask the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth to come forward, Laura Stewart, youth project coordinator. Good morning. As you join us, I will remind you -- and if you weren't here, I'll tell you for the first time -- that you have 20 minutes to make your presentation. Any time that's left over can be devoted to questions by the members.
Ms Laura Stewart: My presentation won't take quite that long. First of all, I would like to start off by introducing myself. My name is Laura Stewart, and I work with the Sudbury Action Centre as the youth coordinator. Before I begin speaking to the intrinsic value of Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution, which was put forth by Mr Bartolucci, I would like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak before you today.
I would like to start out by providing you some background information about the Sudbury Action Centre for Youth, which is part of the distribution of handouts that I gave you. Then I will begin to discuss Bill 18 and present concluding remarks. Please feel free to ask any questions at the end of my presentation. I'll do my best to answer them.
The Sudbury Action Centre for Youth is a non-profit organization dedicated to offering assistance and support to hard-to-serve and vulnerable adults and youth who fall through the cracks within the human services systems. Our mandate is to assist young people in resolving problems with housing, their families, the law, the education system and with substance abuse issues. We also assist youth and adults, including ex-offenders, their families and people in conflict with the law. We help them to find employment, retraining opportunities and temporary job placements. We like to maintain regular contact with all community resources serving young people and we like to offer assistance and support to hard-to-serve and vulnerable adults who fall through the cracks in the human services systems.
The three main programs offered by the Sudbury Action Centre are the non-residential community youth support program, the employment program and the risk reduction program.
The non-residential community youth support program provides volunteer and staff support to assist youth, including special-needs and at-risk youth who require crisis intervention, with daily living and life skills training, advocacy and community case management services to access the needed services. We also provide a drop-in centre as an alternative to youth roaming the streets, with access to information about community resources. The youth program also includes job search assistance, including resumé preparation and referral to employment services and education and training opportunities.
The employment program is funded by Human Resources Development Canada and provides a casual labour referral service for hard-to-serve individuals seeking temporary work. We address basic barriers to employment and assist people to find unskilled jobs that help them to maintain their dignity and self-respect. Employers can find workers to fill temporary contract work such as snow shovelling, lawn mowing, janitorial work or any job that requires physical labour or is temporary in nature.
The other service offered by the Sudbury Action Centre is the risk reduction program. We offer a program that provides education and information to help prevent the spread of HIV and AIDS and hepatitis A, B and C. This program is funded by the Sudbury and District Health Unit, which also provides a public health nurse to visit the action centre once a week and provide education and testing in regard to AIDS/HIV, hepatitis and pregnancy.
Because the Sudbury Action Centre works directly with the hard-to-serve population at a grassroots level, we feel it is our responsibility to our clients and to the community to speak to the issue of child prostitution. The Sudbury Action Centre for Youth supports the intent of the legislation, which states that "the safety, security and wellbeing of children is...paramount," and also feels that the responsibility of protection rests with both the family and the community. With this being said, we would like to provide you with our recommendations in regard to Bill 18.
Prior to a child's return home or to an adult who has care of the child, we feel there needs to be a thorough assessment of the child, which should include the child's home life. After all, it is often a negative home life which causes the child to seek refuge on the streets. Also, families may not be equipped to cope with the lifestyles that are associated with the return of the child, such as STDs, substance abuse and the need to return to the streets. This assessment should also include other issues, like addictions and the child's length of involvement in prostitution, so that an action plan can be formulated with all parties involved in order to ensure that the child can return to a healthy lifestyle. Alternatives open to the child, families and community need to be clearly defined in the most effective and non-judgemental manner.
Legislators must also recognize that protective home situations also give way to outside influences in that the younger girls become more knowledgeable about the prostitution lifestyle from their peers and may become more attracted to the lure of money and access to illicit substances. Therefore, a clear process of assessment of homes and security issues needs to be mandated and evaluated on a regular basis. The young women must have the assurance that their well-being is secure.
A strong component of the legislation is the clause which states, "The minister may establish programs that in the opinion of the minister are necessary to assist children." The Sudbury Action Centre believes this is crucial. The children involved in prostitution need to know that there are alternatives which they can access. The Sudbury community has rallied together on the issue of child prostitution, and from that the Elizabeth Fry Society has spearheaded the development of the Unhooked program, which was developed to address this issue in our community. Because a member of the committee will be speaking about this program later today, I will not elaborate, but encourage you to support this venture.
Youth groups such as Together We Progress, which is the youth group that we offer at the action centre, also offer peer support and life skills training that is non-judgmental and environments that are youth-friendly. If we are saying no to the prostitution lifestyle, there has to be a healthy alternative.
My recommendations, from a youth perspective, are as follows: I feel that Bill 18 will help protect children involved in prostitution. I believe community awareness and social outreach are the avenues needed to help reduce the number of children involved in prostitution. Bill 18 will be more successful in this respect if all social agencies put their hands together and reach out to these youth. We all need to be informed about this growing problem and advised about ways that we can help. All social agencies should strive to make a group effort to help spread awareness.
We also need to work on improving the image of youth in our community. Many adults perceive youth as being troublemakers and fear them. We must ensure that we are also educating the public about the good that youth do within our community to ensure that we do not further damage the already fragile image youth have. This will help youth feel less alienated and more accepted in society, which will definitely have a positive impact on our community.
The legislation must ensure that there are adequate supports and programming in each community that these children can access to end their involvement in prostitution. The legislation should stipulate that these programs are essential services in each community and ensure that adequate funding is received by the government for these programs.
It is our belief that with these expansions to the legislation, our children's welfare in the community can become more positive. Thank you for your time. I hope that as you continue this process, our thoughts and the comments of other organizations are taken into consideration.
The Chair: We have about four minutes per caucus. We begin with Ms Martel for the NDP.
Ms Martel: Thank you for coming today. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said really the key here is to ensure that once the police have the opportunity to apprehend, the community has safe houses or enough safe houses, and also that the community has programming available to try to deter a child from returning to a life of prostitution. In that respect -- I'm not sure if you can answer this question or not -- do you know how many safe houses we have in this community?
Ms Stewart: No, I'm not aware.
Ms Martel: Would you know which programs are available to deal with child prostitution, or is the one we're looking at the one that the Elizabeth Fry Society has put forward for funding?
Ms Stewart: Yes.
Ms Martel: So that is what we're looking for at some point in the future, if funding can be guaranteed.
Ms Stewart: Yes.
0940
Ms Martel: You talked about the need to do an assessment of a child before the return to home, particularly because it may have been from that very home environment that the child has fled. As I look at what a police officer can request a judge to do, which is to issue a warrant to apprehend someone or issue a warrant to return a child to a parent or an adult who has some authority over that child, it seems to me, given what you've said, that in almost every circumstance we are going to have to ensure that a child goes to a safe place first in order to ensure that an assessment is done. So the option of actually getting a warrant to return someone to their parents immediately is just not on. There has got to be some time, as you have pointed out, to do a thorough analysis of whether that's a good place for that child to return to. The need for a safe house in this community, or a number of safe houses, becomes even more important if, as I follow your line of reasoning, most children should end up there first in order for an assessment to be done.
Ms Stewart: Yes.
Mr Jim Brown: Good morning. I enjoyed your presentation. I'm curious as to what your experience has been in trying to get the young prostitutes away from the pimps, get them into any sort of program. My own experience in Toronto has been, in talking to some of the kids, that it's very difficult, that they are very fearful of the pimps and that one may have to have them in custody or some sort of protection for 60 or 90 days. Then we get into problems with the charter and the Constitution -- the charter and the Constitution seem to be running our country more than elected politicians are -- and we get into hearings and everything, so that may be difficult.
I'm wondering what your experience has been. How do we break the child or the young prostitute away from the pimp? You probably heard my point earlier about seizing the assets of the pimp, making it an offence and realizing those assets and maybe plowing it back into child welfare, and in terms of the johns, taking their cars and impounding them and eventually selling them and plowing that money back in.
Two things: What has your success been in breaking the prostitute away from the pimp, and second, what do you think of seizing the assets to finally put a stop to it?
Ms Stewart: On your first question, our youth program is voluntary, so we don't have necessarily that break, because the youth we deal with come in on their own. More often than not they do return because there are not adequate incentives for them. Although getting healthy is a major incentive, again it's the money issue, the fear of the pimps, that leads them back. There have been some youth who have been successful in breaking away, but --
Mr Jim Brown: It's a rarity.
Ms Stewart: Yes.
Mr Jim Brown: What about seizing the assets and taking away the cars to discourage this business completely? If you take away the incentive to do the business from the adults, what do you think of that?
Ms Stewart: I think you would have to be very careful on that in that it could cause greater repercussions within the community towards the young girls, that they are feeling less able to break free because therefore there is more pressure on them. It will still be around and it will get further and further underground as opposed to being where we're at.
Mr Bartolucci: One quick question and then I'll turn it over to my colleague. First of all, Laura, thank you very much for what I consider to be an excellent presentation and for the good work that you do.
You cite a very, very important part of this legislation that, because it is not as dramatic, hasn't received the attention it deserves, and that's clearly the part that allows the minister to establish programs that in the opinion of the minister assist children. That's a pretty broad statement, but it was made broad for a specific reason. We want the minister to be able to attack the problem on a number of fronts.
You have issued a few suggestions, which are excellent. If you were the minister, what program would you implement today to ensure this legislation has some bite to it and some meaning to it?
Ms Stewart: I think the program here that the Elizabeth Fry Society will speak to later, Unhooked, is going to be an excellent venue. It will have several components that they will speak to later. I think that program and similar types across Ontario should be implemented.
Mr Bartolucci: Thank you. Before your presentation is over and after Mr Gerretsen's question, I know you are going to invite the government and the committee to tour the Sudbury Action Centre, which is an excellent one.
The Chair: Mr Gerretsen, you have just under two minutes.
Mr John Gerretsen (Kingston and The Islands): I would just like to follow up on something that Mr Brown said. That deals with the ability of the police to seize the assets of the pimps etc. Maybe I misunderstood you. I thought you said that if they did have that power, in effect it may make it worse on the young prostitute because there may be greater pressure on her. Did I hear that correctly?
Ms Stewart: Yes. What I meant by that is that if you are seizing the assets of the pimps and the johns, there may be more abuse that goes on, because with all those assets taken away, the pimps are perhaps left with nothing but the young women. Therefore, in order to secure any sort of money once they lose these assets, they will start again in their entrepreneurial --
Mr Gerretsen: Which gets me to my second question. That deals more with the issue --
The Chair: A short one.
Mr Gerretsen: What happens, though, after they are in the safe house for a period of time? What really has to happen is that there has to be sort of a lifestyle change. Obviously we need programs or we need stimuli to get them completely out of that mould. Is that what we'll be hearing about later on in Unhooked?
Ms Stewart: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Stewart. We appreciate the time you have taken this morning to inform us on the work of your group.
Our next presenter is Patty Taylor of the Cecil Facer Youth Centre. Is Ms Taylor here? No?
SUDBURY YOUTH SERVICES
The Chair: We'll move then to the Sudbury Youth Services, Beverley Crockford, executive director. Welcome, Ms Crockford. Thanks very much for being here. As you may have heard, you have 20 minutes to make your presentation. You can use it as you wish, but if there is any time, we'll ask you some questions.
Ms Beverley Crockford: Thank you. I would like to advise the committee that I am going to do two presentations, but well within 20 minutes. The first one I will do is on behalf of the young offender services manager, Kathryn Volf, from the Ministry of Community and Social Services, who can't be present today but certainly not only wanted to submit something in writing but wanted it read aloud to all of you.
Welcome to Sudbury and thank you for coming.
"The protection of children involved in prostitution legislation has the foresight to address the pervasiveness of this issue in our communities in this region and province.
"We at probation services have had an historical concern with the movement of these clients to the larger cities for a period of time and the longevity of their activities in prostitution.
"Prostitution at any age is not by choice. No prostitute is born. The feelings of 'safeness' and 'worth' are not attainable for these youths, and as a result they begin a life of terror, abuse and drugs.
"'Children' is the key word in this legislation, as is the 'safe house.' The conundrum for many of these girls is their families and the lack of care and supervision which in part sowed the seeds for a life on the streets. The constant running by the girls escalates their vulnerability and further abuse in a world of criminality and abuse. Movement from home to home and escapes from custody continue the cycle of prostitution while on the run.
"Despite the perceived 'fun' and 'excitement,' their childhood is soon lost.
"The complexity of the activities of the girls, along with the health issues, will affect them for the rest of their lives, eg, socially transmitted diseases and drug addiction.
"This legislation also addresses the need for 'timely' apprehension by police, safeguards the children's right to a show-cause hearing for further confinement and the support of restraining orders as required. Bill 18 also complements the present Child and Family Services Act regarding child protection and children's rights.
"Prostitution affects everyone, whether it is a neighbour's child, a niece, a walk downtown or a business owner's pride for his or her storefront area. We respond when issues affect our lives.
"Bill 18 is progressive due to the needs of children made paramount with the police, the judiciary and child welfare in dealing with the cycle of disease, abuse and criminality of child prostitution."
Those remarks are from Kathryn Volf, young offender services manager, Ministry of Community and Social Services, district of Sudbury-Manitoulin.
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Now I'll move on to the presentation on behalf of our own agency, Sudbury Youth Services.
Thank you for providing an opportunity for this community to respond to this important issue. When virtually the entire Legislature, regardless of political affiliation, comes together in their mutual concern for the well-being of the children of Ontario, I feel encouraged.
My job is to manage a young offender facility for 12- to 15-year-old boys and girls funded by the provincial Ministry of Community and Social Services. The service provides both open and secure detention and custody.
I can recite, chapter and verse, stories of children as young as 12 years old who are involved in the sex trade in this community. You would be reduced to tears to know of the poor physical condition they arrive in, most often needing immediate medical attention. They lack even the most basic awareness of the dangerous circumstances from which they have been removed. They think they are invincible and they do not fully comprehend the negative ramifications of the high-risk lifestyle they have been leading, even in the short term. Aside from the STDs they are being exposed to that are life-altering and the drugs they use to feel good about themselves, they have been somehow convinced that their pimps will protect them and keep them safe.
They also believe they are in control of their customers. Everyone here knows that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we all know that they are considered quite expendable. Their only value to their pimp is economic, and to their customers, sexual gratification. We genuinely fear for these kids upon their release from the detention facility.
Our community is concerned. The police have taken action, the MPP for Sudbury has brought this legislation forward, and a group of individuals and service agencies have come together to develop and deliver services specifically for these children and youth. In addition to critical issues of health and safety being addressed, ways and means to provide opportunities for the lives they were meant to be living and enjoying have received particular attention. I understand that a member of the advisory committee will be speaking today to you and will be providing greater detail about the plans that the community committee has developed under the auspices of the Elizabeth Fry Society.
To conclude, the fact that we are here today because of legislation that you have put forward and supported speaks volumes about the priority you place on the value of all children in this province, and it is appreciated.
Finally, I would like to suggest that as the legislation is reviewed this fall, close attention be paid to ensure that it is complementary to existing child protection legislation.
The Chair: Thank you. We have again about four minutes per caucus. Mr Brown for the Conservatives.
Mr Jim Brown: I agree with you that these lives are tragically lost, probably, once they get in the cycle. I can tell you that when the Legislature sits late at night and I walk back along Grosvenor Street to my offices at the Solicitor General, I walk through a male stroll, young male prostitutes along Grosvenor Street. It's pretty disheartening.
While I support Mr Bartolucci's efforts, I would like to know what you think about going after the pimps and the johns, being a little more aggressive with the pimps and the johns. I'm sure you heard my comments earlier about taking away the incentive to do the business. Taking away the johns' cars and freezing the pimps' assets, eventually seizing them and realizing upon them, what do you think about that? We can talk all we want but the pimps and the johns are going to keep going if there's an incentive. If we take away the incentive, we may take away the organizers of this business, because certainly they are the organizers.
Ms Crockford: As long as you're not asking me to go out and do it.
Mr Jim Brown: No, the police would do it. I think the police would love to do it.
Ms Crockford: In all seriousness, there are pros and cons to that. That's the ideal. The ideal is to make it not economically viable. If you have the manpower to do that, then that's probably the ideal.
Mr Jim Brown: One of the problems is that the police keep going back to the same problem. If you can solve the problem the first time they go there, they don't have to go back, so actually it's a better use of resources, a more efficient use of resources. You go there once and once you look after business.
Ms Crockford: I listened to the chief speak earlier and I think you put the same question to him.
Mr Jim Brown: Yes, I did.
Ms Crockford: He was in support of that. I would assume from that that his opinion would be that they are capable of carrying that out.
Mr Jim Brown: I think the chief would say, "Just give me that and I'll do it once and I won't have to keep going back to the same problem over and over and over again."
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks, Bev, for two excellent presentations. Just so the committee understands the importance of what you do, you said we could almost be reduced to tears. Now, I don't want you to be sensational, but give us an example. You've talked to me about these examples. They're real and they hurt. Maybe just outline one example very quickly.
Ms Crockford: A 12-year-old we may have known previously but was not prostituting comes to us in a condition that is requiring immediate medical attention, who is now involved in cocaine by needle and may have been exposed to a number of very serious STDs, some that ultimately can prove fatal. They certainly don't come with any revenue when they enter the detention facility. Very rarely has that ever happened. These little kids aren't getting the money, and if they are, it's passing through their hands very quickly and going back to buy the drugs they are now being hooked on.
Mr Gerretsen: I've been trying to get a handle on the extent of the problem here in the Sudbury area, knowing roughly the population base and that sort of thing. How many other organizations like yours are there in Sudbury and how many individuals, young prostitutes, would you run into in your agency's day-to-day work in a month or in a week? Are we talking about a dozen youngsters in the community, are we talking about 50, are we talking about 100? What are we talking about?
Ms Crockford: I can only speak to the 12- to 15-year-olds. That's the service we provide. Cecil Facer Youth Centre would be able to speak to 16- and 17-year-olds. I know I was alarmed enough when we had four or five girls at one time that I went to speak to the Elizabeth Fry Society about something needing to happen. We could keep them safe as long as they were with us, but all bets were off once they were released and went back to the community.
The other part of your question, the numbers, I'm not --
Mr Gerretsen: Is it a growing number, though, all the time? Do you see it more often now than, let's say, five years ago?
Ms Crockford: Absolutely. In the last 18 to 24 months, our exposure to it has increased. There's no doubt about that. Kids are impressionable and by association they learn more about it and tend to get involved.
Ms Martel: Thank you, Bev, for participating this morning. For the purposes of this legislation, would Sudbury Youth Services be considered a safe house?
Ms Crockford: We have a designation in our open detention program as a place of safety. Actually, that's where children are being brought in in need of protection, or on some occasions they have now been charged in a prostitution-related offence. So we are a place of safety. I don't know that we'd be considered a safe house.
Ms Martel: What kind of programming can you offer either with respect to drug addiction and counselling for that or any kind of counselling with respect to the prostitution end?
Ms Crockford: Our number one thing that we can do for these kids immediately is stabilize them. That means they get immediate medical attention, "immediate" meaning immediate. We broker for any services such as drug addiction counselling with existing core-funded services in the community, such as, through Network North, their Pinegate services. They are coming in on a regular basis and are quite well aware of these kids. Health and nutrition are taken care of.
While they're with us they're safe, but as you say, it is for a limited number of days. The real concern is when they're returning to the community, because often they are right back into it unless there is going to be something in place that can interfere with that, interrupt it.
Ms Martel: As I listened to you describe a profile of someone who would come into your custody in terms of being invincible, on drugs, who think they're going to be protected by pimps, I gather that the kinds of services a child like that is going to need are quite significant, but as I understand it, that's not readily available in our community at this point in time. Do you have a sense of what kind of core programming we are talking about?
Ms Crockford: Yes, I do very much. I know that Marianne Zadra is going to speak later on today and describe that in greater detail, what the community of social services and individuals have come together to develop to this point. I think that will be quite enlightening for this committee to hear.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Crockford, on behalf of the committee for sharing the experience of your organization with us.
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REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY OF SUDBURY
The Chair: I ask Doug Craig, the acting chair of the regional municipality of Sudbury, to come forward. Welcome. We're pleased to have you here with us today.
Mr Doug Craig: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the regional municipality of Sudbury, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to address this critical social issue today. I am here to speak to you not only in my capacity as acting regional chair but also as a concerned citizen, city councillor, teacher, secondary school vice-principal and father of three children.
All too often over the years in my role as a secondary school vice-principal, I've sat in my office with parents and shared their helplessness, shared their hopelessness and seen in real terms their pain as they watched the dreams, hopes and aspirations they had for their son or daughter, in most cases their daughter, literally vanish before their eyes. This frustration is compounded by the fact that they've run into one more authority figure who currently has no power to do anything productive to intervene and reverse the situation. I believe Bill 18 would go a long way towards providing the help these parents are so desperately, believe me, seeking.
We are very pleased that Rick Bartolucci, MPP for Sudbury, has taken the initiative to bring Bill 18 to the forefront of the Legislature. We also appreciate the priority that this bill has received. This is a critical issue that demands an expedient solution. As you may be aware, a resolution supporting Bill 18 was unanimously passed at the May 27, 1998, meeting of regional council. The resolution, which has been forwarded to the Premier and cabinet ministers, reads as follows:
"Whereas Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations in the forward to the 1997 Progress of Nations, which charts the advances made since the 1990 World Summit for Children, at which governments, including Canada, pledged to take specific steps to improve the lives of their children, wrote in part:
"'The day will come when nations will be judged not by their military or economic strength, nor by the splendour of their capital cities and public buildings, but by the provision that is made for those who are vulnerable and disadvantaged, and by the protection that is afforded to the growing minds and bodies of their children'; and
"Whereas there are children as young as 13 prostituting themselves on downtown Sudbury streets; and
"Whereas the Criminal Code of Canada deals with those persons who use violence to force children into prostitution for profit and includes measures to make it easier for child victims to testify against their exploiters but does not allow police officers and other child protection workers the right to bring a child prostitute into protection; and
"Whereas Mr Richard Bartolucci, member of the Legislative Assembly for Sudbury on May 14, 1998, introduced for first reading private member's Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution; and
"Whereas Bill 18 proposed several measures that, if enacted, would give the police and other child protection workers the power to remove children involved in prostitution and to provide protection from further sexual exploitation;
"Therefore be it resolved that the council of the regional municipality of Sudbury supports the enactment of Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution, and urges all members of the Legislative Assembly to give third and final reading to Bill 18, as introduced; and further,
"That copies of this motion be forwarded to the Premier and all other ministers."
Ladies and gentlemen, this may sound like a very long-winded and official resolution. I make no apologies for that. That is exactly what it is intended to be. This resolution reflects the magnitude and significance of this critical social issue.
The Sudbury community would like you to know first-hand that child prostitution is prevalent on our streets. It has been estimated that there are currently 15 to 20 young children -- yes, children -- as young as 12 years of age prostituting themselves on the streets of our community. This figure is distressing, but even more alarming is the fact that there is currently nothing that can be done by police and other child protection workers to intervene. They do not have the power and authority to remove children involved in prostitution and to provide for their protection from further sexual exploitation.
Bill 18 I believe would give the police and other authority figures this power. As you have already heard and will hear from other presenters today, the Sudbury community has banded together to tackle this highly complex and sensitive issue. As Chief Alex McCauley has stated, he has implemented a special task force whose purpose it is to target the consumers and procurers of the services of these children.
In addition, numerous community agencies have joined forces to develop an education and treatment program to not only target the girls currently on our streets, but also to prevent others from being enticed into following a similar path. It is imperative that we deal with this situation from both a reactive and a proactive perspective.
Distinguished members of the committee, I strongly urge you to consider the serious nature of this debate. Although Mr Bartolucci introduced Bill 18 as a result of the child prostitution problem in Sudbury, make no mistake; this issue is not specific to our community. Child prostitution, I hate to report, is occurring on the streets of most small and large centres throughout Ontario and across this country. Our city is a mere reflection of a much larger societal concern. In order to illustrate this point, let me refer to another concern that has received its share of media attention locally and beyond.
Sudbury has been very proactive in addressing the homeless issue within this community through the efforts of the emergency housing advisory committee of the District of Sudbury Social Services Administration Board, of which I am chair. While it has not been entirely eliminated, we have succeeded in achieving a lower-than-average homeless rate when compared to other parts of the province. Homelessness is much more prevalent in other communities. By way of comparison, the child prostitution problem is also larger in scope in other communities.
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In closing, I would like to commend this government for taking quick action on this bill and for allowing public input into the process. I would also like to thank Rick Bartolucci for having taken the initiative to introduce Bill 18. I further want to thank local agencies and individuals who are working collaboratively to eradicate this problem because they care about the future of our community, our province and our country. I applaud their efforts on behalf of the region.
Finally, and most importantly, I would like to commend the children and the young men and women who have had the courage to come forward here today to speak on this issue and those who have had the strength to get off the streets and redirect their lives towards a more positive and healthy lifestyle. I am certain that these individuals will become role models for other children in our community in the months ahead.
All too often -- I go back to my profession -- as a vice-principal, I've watched that spark, that gleam that should be present in the eyes of a 13-, 14-, 15-year-old literally vanish when their lives get caught up in a situation and it begins to spin out of control. I can tell you my experience. Without a doubt, that spark, that gleam never returns to their eyes. These young people carry the physical and emotional scars with them forever.
I believe that Bill 18 will go a long way in ensuring a brighter future for many, many of our children. Thank you once again for your attention. I welcome any questions that you might have.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Craig. We have three minutes per caucus.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks very much, Doug, for a very moving presentation. I've waited to ask this question because I wanted to hear your presentation before I asked it. You know that one of the controversial aspects of this legislation is the inclusion of 16- and 17-year-olds. If we are going to have compatible legislation with the Child and Family Services Act, that's going to require a change either of the Child and Family Services Act or this piece of legislation. I hope it would be Child and Family Services Act over this legislation. However, that is for discussion at a later date.
It is important, though, that we receive your input into that. You were a vice-principal of not only 12-, 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds, but of 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-, 16- and 17-year-olds as well, and in some instances, but not too many, 18-year-olds. Do you support the inclusion of the 16- and 17-year-olds in this legislation?
Mr Craig: From the vantage point of my educational background, I certainly would support the inclusion of 15-, 16-year-olds, very definitely. It's the time in their lives when peer pressure is the strongest pressure they have. It's stronger than any parental bond; it's stronger than any institutional bond at that time. Those are critical years. I would support the inclusion of those individuals of that age.
Ms Martel: Thank you, Doug, for coming today. I want to return to the point you made in a couple of places in the brief about your experience as a vice-principal in a downtown high school that is quite large. Tell me if you have a sense of how schools may or may not be used at this point as a -- I don't want to say training ground, but as a place for either pimps or people already involved in the sex trade to then encourage other young women, essentially, into the trade as well.
Mr Craig: A good part of my time often in the spring and the fall would be making certain that unwanted individuals would not be entering right into our schools from other locales with their cell phones and their cars. We would call them recruiters. From the other view, the people who are in our schools who do get caught up in this situation, I don't know if we can include something in our curriculum that might get to them before this happens. I can assure you that when they get caught up and their lives start to spin, we rarely see them any more in our schools.
The meeting I referred to with the parents and the child, that's usually only one or two and then I lose sight of the parents, I lose sight of that individual child. I rarely see that individual again until I read about her in the paper perhaps.
Ms Martel: Actually, for the purposes of the committee it would be helpful, not at this time but at some other point, if as a former educator just recently retired you could give some thought to what kind of programming we could have at school at the preventive end. I think there will be much focus in the regulations about how you develop programming after someone is involved in the sex trade and after you're trying to get them out of that. But there hasn't been a focus, not for any single reason, on what we do at school. I would think that school is probably a breeding ground, at this point, for recruiters and for enormous peer pressure to drag other kids into this illicit activity.
Mr Craig: I would agree. I guess we'd have to start with our curriculum in some of the areas, whether it's in the social studies area or man and society. But we can't namby-pamby to the curriculum. We have to be very straightforward. We have to show what the life really is, where it leads to, perhaps not scare tactics but in a very realistic way. We have to impress upon those minds that this course of action, this direction they take can only lead to a life of -- lead to no life.
Mr Jim Brown: You're stealing some of my thunder. You used the word "namby-pamby." That conjures up the namby-pamby approach to some of these problems by the federal government. I found it quite unbelievable that consensual sex, even for consideration, for 14-year-olds and up is not a Criminal Code violation. Here we go again at the provincial level trying to patch up some of the problems created by the namby-pamby approach of the federal government. I'd like to know how you would make the bill even tougher. One of my ideas is to target the pimps and the johns. How can we make it even more effective?
Mr Craig: Having read it quickly a number of times, I thought the $25,000 fine and quite a lengthy incarceration -- those deterrents are quite applicable, unless they're the maximums, and of course they never occur.
Mr Jim Brown: What about the johns?
Mr Craig: I came here today thinking about children. I didn't come here today thinking about the procurers and the people on the streets who control these. But I would support the very strictest form of penalty that our society would tolerate and our courts would be willing to impose on people who destroy lives. That's what they do.
Mr Ted Chudleigh (Halton North): You mentioned that you lose sight of these children until you might read about them in the newspapers. Any idea of what their life expectancy might be in this lifestyle?
Mr Craig: I can only say that the quality of her life expectancy is very short. The road usually leads to leaving the security of the family home, getting into the streets, and only for that period of time that they are productive and that they are earning money for whoever is controlling them at the time; and probably after becoming pregnant, diseased, hospitalization of some kind; and then after 18 months, a sudden realization, hopefully, that where they are and what they're doing is not what their expectations were, and then they attempt sometimes to return to the family. That is not always successful either.
Certainly the quality of their life is a very short. I don't know exactly what you mean by their life expectancy, but I can only say that the quality of their life expectancy deteriorates from the minute they become hooked and get caught up in this situation.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Craig, for appearing before us today. I can assure you that your extraordinary range of expertise will be of great value in our deliberations.
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CECIL FACER YOUTH CENTRE
The Chair: I ask Patty Taylor, social worker with the Cecil Facer Youth Centre, to come forward. Ms Taylor is late because she's doing her job. She was very busy at the centre. We're very grateful to you for being able to make it.
Ms Patty Taylor:. Thank you very much. My apologies for being late. I'm a social worker and we all know that Murphy's Law happens Monday morning.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to speak to you in support of Bill 18. I am employed as a social worker at Cecil Facer Youth Centre. For those of you who don't know what Cecil Facer is, it's a secure custody detention facility for young offenders between the ages of primarily 16 and 18. These are youths who have come into conflict with the law and have been charged with offences under the Criminal Code.
Primarily we deal with male youth at Cecil Facer. We have approximately 80 male youths, but we also have a female unit and currently run to about 16, which is actually a little bit high, to get 16 girls in one unit. You can imagine.
With exception, we do service some youth classified under phase 1, the 12-to-15-year-olds who fall under community and social services, but they're not high in number and don't normally exceed 20% of our population.
When looking at Bill 18 -- and for a while now this has kind of been going around our facility. We've been doing some of the talk with teachers, with the clinical staff and correctional officers who work directly on the line with the youth in the cottages and supervise 24 hours a day, and there's been tremendous support. There's been tremendous support from the residents as well, both male and female.
We at Cecil Facer work with youth from myriad backgrounds, but there are some key characteristics that, when you're looking at characteristics of our population, lend themselves to the possibility of the kids falling into the sex trade.
Mr Dave Kechnie is a former teacher and researcher at Cecil Facer and over the years he compiled some stats. He was keeping track of where the kids were coming from, what the charges were, what kind of family lives and histories the youths had. It's not the total rule, there are always exceptions, but what he came up with was that a large part of the youth we deal with come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. They're mainly from single-parent homes. Over the last five years we've noticed that many come from a lot of reconstituted families, where the parents have split at a younger age and have remarried. Some have married several times or have been in several partnerships, partnerships that have been abusive from the youths' very young age. The custodial parent, whether it be mom or dad -- and it's primarily moms; most of the kids live with their moms -- primarily choose abusive relationships time and time again. So it's not like these kids are born into a dysfunctional relationship and it splits and then mom meets this new person and it's wonderful. Oftentimes it's repeated over and over so that the kids experience this abuse over and over again and learn very dysfunctional patterns themselves.
Most of our kids have poor achievement scholastically. They suffer from poor self-esteem. They have a very strong need to belong and to be accepted by peers. When we're looking at ages and stages of development, we all go through the age where we want to be accepted by our peers, but with our kids that need is very strong.
Most of the kids have a very poor cause-effect reality, a lot of rationalizations and denials, and don't really see what they're doing and taking into account that it's leading to current behaviours or consequences. They have strong needs for immediate gratification, are very impulsive, don't think through their decisions clearly. We have a number of youths now who are starting to be diagnosed ADD-ADHD. These are attention deficit disorders that have gone unnoticed from early childhood.
When we're looking at the correlation between choices, their behaviour, their offences, those involved in the prostitution, 99% of our population have addiction difficulties. That could be addiction to alcohol, drugs. Some of the very northern youth, if you're looking at some of the reserves, are into the solvents. That's very prevalent with the youth who come to Cecil Facer.
A large percentage of our youth are from abusive backgrounds -- physically, sexually, emotionally abused from very early ages.
Looking at the female youth where I'm working, very few of the females have not been sexually abused, and often multiply, from very young ages. Then they get into the cycles where they're into relationships that are also abusive, so the patterns are continuing. There's very strong victim awareness denial, rationalization, and our females are often self-mutilators. We often find that our male youth are very angry and explosive, but our females turn their anger and their self-disgust and repulsion inwards. You'll often talk with the girls and you'll notice slash marks from here to here. We still have occurrences in custody. When we're dealing with issues with the sex trade, when we're dealing with issues of abuse from the past, it triggers and you'll get another self-mutilation. That's an ongoing challenge with the youth we work with.
I work mainly with the female unit and run ongoing programs. There have been some really significant changes in the last 10 years in both the offences that the girls are committing and the lifestyles they are leading. Right now we have 16 girls. Currently, in talking with the girls, 12 out of the 16 have engaged in acts of prostitution. That's a really high percentage.
The males have also engaged in acts of prostitution, but we find that the males who are reporting that come from the south. Our northern males have not come forward and spoken a lot about that. It's mainly the males from the south.
Most of the girls I deal with, like I said before, are between the ages of 16 -- they find they no longer have the supportive services from, for example, the child welfare agencies. Some of these kids have been with children's aid societies from very young ages. They hit 16 and they're not abiding by the rules of the house or the group home or the foster home, because they're into the drugs and they're into the new peer groups. They want to belong so they'll do whatever it takes to be accepted. If they have been prostituting, a lot of times we'll get the call saying, "This youth is no longer abiding by the contracts and we're seeking termination of wardship." Then of course my hair stands on end. But oftentimes the girls don't put up a fuss either, because they see it as maybe one more control that they can get rid of, unfortunately. They just don't seem to look beyond the short years they have as a youth to where they're going to be when they're 18 or 19 and burnt out from the drugs, burnt out from prostituting, and then where are they going to be? We're encouraging them to look farther than that, to look three, four years down the road, when you do need the help, because these people can stand by you.
The girls speak regularly of the correlation between their low self-esteem and inappropriate relationships in their lives. Often, sexual alliances include those in the drug trade. The girls we get from the Sudbury area talk a lot about the bikers and how they seem to be roped in, as they say, when they're looking for acceptance, when they're on the streets. They're hungry, they have nowhere to go, and they have this wonderful person who comes into their lives and offers them shelter and food and really strokes the negative self-worth they feel and makes them feel they're good again, that they're worth something.
Then they go to a place where, "Gee, why don't you try something, you'll feel better." They say that's how they get hooked in, so to speak, no pun intended. They get on to some of the drugs, they get used to hearing the really nice things, they get new clothes, probably these things that they've never had. A lot of these kids have been on their own from a very early age. So they buy into it. When you look at the negative self-worth that has probably been festering in the youth for so many years, it doesn't take much for these kids just to kind of latch on and say, "Thank God, here's someone who truly, really cares about me."
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Unfortunately, once they're into the drugs, soon they realize: "Gee, I've got to pay for this stuff now. There are no more freebies. I'm expected to earn my keep, pay my rent, as they say, and if I don't, then there come the threats." Of course, the negative self-worth starts again because, just as they were growing up and they heard they weren't worth anything, they will start hearing this again: "You aren't worth anything. You're here to do a job. You're here to make me money. Pay for your drugs or else." So they have to put up with the drugs as well.
Very few females that I have worked with over the years have ever spoken about this lifestyle in a positive light. There have been a few who have been very beautiful youth, who of course are younger, 16 or 17, and they're the prime choices of these pimps, and don't mind using their bodies because they get a very huge payout, and the huge payout of course is the drugs of their choice. They get to sleep in really wonderful places. They get beautiful clothes, wonderful jewellery, and because youth thinks so immediate, they don't see a couple of years down the line when they're burnt out from the drugs. It's going to reflect in how they look and in the boredom of their pimps etc. For now, they're just kind of flying high on that. But it's very, very, very few I've come across in all the years I've worked that would ever say that, possibly two or three out of so, so many girls.
Some of the girls have talked about fear of returning to the community because they have huge drug debts. When we try to offer something better, oftentimes the girls will laugh and they will say: "Okay, Patty, what are you going to offer me, $522 a month? Where am I going to live on $522 a month? How am I going to feed myself on $522 a month? How am I going to clothe myself? How can I feel good about myself? Where am I going to stay, like Pearl Street? Whereas I can do a 48-hour binge and make $1,500 to $2,400." For them, money is a big thing. It's something they haven't had throughout their lives because of awfully impoverished conditions that they've had to grow up in.
Right now, what we're trying to do through programming is encouraging the youth about self-esteem. Self-respect is a big one. A lot of these girls feel they don't deserve self-respect because they've been told since they were two, three or four that women don't deserve self-respect. They've heard it enough that they honestly believe this. So it's one of the challenges in working with youth like this.
The other part is that, in settling the debts upon leaving, they stay so they have to continue to buy into this whole drug deal as a way of dissociating. How else can you do this without totally dissociating from the act itself? Oftentimes the girls in the sex trade are saying it reminds them so much of a power struggle as children, when they've been sexually abused, that they have to find a way to dissociate in order to get through it, get their money and then get the heck out. And that's how they keep this buying in, back to the drugs and having to pay for it and having to sell themselves to do that.
Most of our girls that I've worked with want a safe place, when you're looking at a place upon release. They want a safe place. They want a place where they're not constantly under the thumb of a male figure. They want a chance for education. Mr Craig said earlier he loses sight of a lot of these youth, and that's right, because they usually come to us. We have an in-house secondary school where they have access to education, and you can see the boost in their self-esteem. These kids all of a sudden are being able to take courses, they're getting credits. You can see that they're feeling a lot better about themselves while they're in. But when they go out they're saying, "Well, great, now I'm going back to where I came from," so the cycle will start again, because a lot hasn't changed on the outside. Our services have been slashed. Where is our safety net? There are only so many people out there to help and so many kids. They're saying: "I have to wait three months for something? Where am I supposed to go?"
They need someone who will listen, who will not judge. A lot of the girls are saying: "I don't need to sit there and listen to the lecture. I just need someone I can tell my story to, and if I have to tell it 20 times for the self-repulsion to lower a little bit on the scale, then that's what I need." They need medical care without constantly being in fear of being tracked. They want food. They want the freedom to make choices. All in all, they want to feel better about themselves.
The scary thing for some of the girls, when you're looking at a 16- or 17-year-old who has been working the streets since 11, 12 or 13, is that they talk with some of the women who are old, and these women who are old are like 19 and 20, and they see what they look like and the fear is, "My God, am I going to look like that in two years, in three years?" Then the denial will come and say, "No, not me," but the little voice in the subconscious will always say, "Yes, two or three years down the road, this could be you, if you're alive."
Cecil Facer is working with the community in different ways. We're part of the advisory committee, the Unhooked committee, here in Sudbury that's looking at setting up a program for the youth involved in prostitution, setting up day programs. Many of the community services are involved. Because there are such limited resources and limited manpower, we have to come together and look at this vision and make it happen.
Cecil Facer often does guest speaking. We go to area schools. Elementary schools aren't too keen to hear the message, especially the Catholic sector; they aren't keen to hear the realities of what's happening out there. But the high schools certainly have been open to guest speakers, looking at the realities of what's happening, the escort services that are happening right in the high schools, that many of the girls that I work with are saying may happen. Should we get a lot of programs off the ground looking at prostitution? They're saying that you're just going to get a lot more underground services and then you might not see the girls.
To me, the support for Bill 18 is really clear in this community, with the coming together of so many community services. The big vision is certainly a necessary vision if we're to protect the kids. These children are our community's future and these youths have stated that they want to be part of the future, they want to be free from the fear, free from further abuse, and to have the freedom to be able to feel good enough to make positive choices in their lives. They want to be free from the fear of being picked up by authority figures and brought to justice, when really what they're trying to do is feed themselves.
If there were no demand, they say there would be no supply. Some of the girls laugh at this and say: "The very people using the services are the ones that are arresting us. How do we cope with that? How do we answer to that? We don't have very much control." That's hopefully going to be the vision of this Unhooked committee, to look at that and to see what we can do as far as the public ed goes.
On behalf of Cecil Facer, the staff and the residents -- they know I'm here this morning -- they are very supportive of this bill and of Mr Bartolucci's vision to see this through to the third reading. Certainly the youth gives a thumbs-up to you and to your efforts and the efforts of your team and to the community services that have come together to see this happen.
I would like to thank you. I would like to thank you all for listening. If you have any questions, please feel free.
The Chair: We have one minute per caucus. Ms Martel for the NDP.
Ms Martel: Thank you for coming today. When the girls leave your custody, where do they go now in this community and what can they anticipate in terms of service?
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Ms Taylor: Sudbury is fortunate. We do have quite a few services, if you're looking at the women's centres and the shelters, Genevra House, the sexual assault crisis centres, E. Fry play a big part in servicing women in conflict with the law. We're very fortunate.
Our fear is when we have youth from outlying northern regions like Timmins etc. For example, Timmins has a Salvation Army and they don't have crisis housing for youth. When I call the Salvation Army and say, "Please help. I have a female going back to the community. She has worked the streets. She doesn't want to continue this," this poor man says the same thing: "Patty, keep her in Sudbury. Don't send her back." But even in Sudbury, if you're looking at affordable housing for the girls -- and often these girls are on their own. They don't have family any more, they don't have the support of the child welfare agencies because of the age. They're looking at living in some of the really poor housing.
Mr Jim Brown: Good morning. I just have clarification on one point you made. You said that the girls said that the people who are arresting them are using their services.
Ms Taylor: Yes, that's what they have said. They don't say those are the only people who are --
Mr Jim Brown: But the people who are arresting them would be the police.
Ms Taylor: That's what they're inferring.
Mr Jim Brown: They're saying that the police are using their services?
Ms Taylor: They have said that, yes. In all honesty, that the police are -- that's from the girls. I can't tell you that is an honest truth. That's what they have said, yes, along with a lot of other employees as well.
Mr Bartolucci: Patty, in the one minute that you have, tell the committee the emotional reaction when Sheldon Kennedy, who was emotionally and sexually abused by his coach, came to your centre. Very quickly, because you don't have the time. It was a beautiful moment in time. Tell them about it.
Ms Taylor: It was. Sheldon Kennedy is the NHL player who rollerblades across Canada to raise funds for Anaphe Ranch. He came to Cecil Facer, told his story to the youth. You could have heard a pin drop. There wasn't a dry eye in the place. Afterwards we had to do a lot of counselling because of the triggering effect. But it also left the youth with a very strong message that: "I don't have to put up with this situation forever. I can come forward, I can speak, but I need to know who to speak to. I need to know who to feel safe with."
Mr Bartolucci: And there is hope.
Ms Taylor: There is hope.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Taylor, for your graphic account. It was a presentation worth waiting for.
JOHN HOWARD SOCIETY OF SUDBURY
The Chair: May I call on the John Howard Society of Sudbury, John Rimore, executive director, and Robin Doner, program supervisor. Glad to have you here this morning.
Mr John Rimore: Members of the standing committee on social development, I am John Rimore, executive director of the John Howard Society of Sudbury, and with me is Robin Doner, supervisor of the young offender programs at our organization. I would like to begin by thanking you for allowing us to address you on this most important and pressing issue.
Over and over again, people in our province and community complain about the high prices for food, gasoline or entertainment. They complain about income taxes, PSTs and GSTs. When was the last time we heard people openly complain about the prices prostitutes charge? When was the last time you heard someone complain that the teenage prostitute they slept with the night before charged too much? Why do our governments make such big issues of high taxes, high bank charges and the like and only after the introduction of Bill 18 have they mentioned in any political setting the problem we have in our province with teenagers being exploited by adults who desire young prostitutes?
Some people will readily complain about the cost of taxes but will hide the fact that they buy the services of teenage prostitutes. They keep it in the dark, hoping no one will find out, exploiting young women and men. It has been kept in the dark in our communities because it is an issue that most of us don't know how to handle.
Bill 18, which was introduced by our local representative to the provincial Legislature, Mr Rick Bartolucci, is a good start at removing this veil of darkness that now covers teenage prostitution. It is the first ray of light from our elected officials that we have seen in a long time that is truly meant to assist children who find themselves involved in prostitution. We would like to highlight three aspects of Bill 18 in our address.
First, our work as a John Howard Society includes working with teenage offenders, some of whom openly admit to supporting themselves through the avails of prostitution. The money, independence, glamour and freedom seduce the young women who come through our doors. It becomes difficult at the best of times to deal with their offence when the real problem is the seduction of prostitution that they are trapped in. And what do we do when that seduction is so great? Frankly, very little. The children are not listening. The best and most tried and true action is to remove them completely from the situation. This is why Bill 18 will make a difference. It gives the police and other authorities the wherewithal to take that action. Sections 2 through 9, which speak of warrants to apprehend, responsibilities of the child protection worker and introduction of protective safe houses, address this seduction. It gives the right people the jurisdiction to protect children from prostitution.
Second, our work also shows us that you cannot simply remove a person from a bad situation without doing something to change the situation.
Section 10 of the Act states: "The minister may establish programs that in the opinion of the minister are necessary to assist children in ending their involvement in prostitution."
We believe that section 10 of the act is the most important and demands immediate action by our government as soon as the bill is enacted. We would like to see the word "may" changed to "must" in section 10, as we know there can be no choice in this area. Without programs that are available or funded, no warrant, removal or protective house will reach the potential for which it is intended.
Let us set the record straight on this point. The children are victims, not criminals. All too often they can be charged and go to court. Once they are in court, all of the problems associated with the dispensation of true justice come into play. There are problems such as overcrowding of the court dockets, duty counsels not having the time needed to investigate the real problems the teenager has, ongoing remands. Then the young woman, who is really a victim, ends up being criminalized. We cannot allow this to occur.
The provincial crime commission in effect introduced a private member's bill, Bill 52, that will exacerbate the above situation. It would see these young women charged and in court instead of in necessary programs that will address self-esteem, confidence and life skills. Because of such pejorative and retributive attitudes, section 10 of Mr Bartolucci's bill cannot be an option for the government; it must be a prime mandate.
Ms Robin Doner: Third, we have heard, mentioned, read etc the reasons why crime occurs. We know that poverty, unemployment, substance abuse are high indicators but recently new research, findings and practical work have given us three main reasons why youth become in conflict with the law. These are, interestingly enough, lack of supervision of the youth, lack of affection for the youth through families or caring communities, and no support system such as family, school or the like.
The very things that are common to youth in conflict with the law are the very things youth need to have to positively grow and mature. And what do the pimps give and promise to these teenagers? The very things they need: supervision, affection and a support network. We all know that it is not a positive supervision, affection or support network, but it is still those three main and dominant factors that are so important to youth.
What Bill 18 essentially does is offer supervision, caring communities and a support system to teenage prostitutes in a positive manner. Bill 18 offers supervision through the involvement of protection workers and safe houses. It offers caring through the responsibilities of the child protection worker outlined in section 7. It offers a support system through section 10.
Bill 18 can and will work because it is addressing the main factors which are the highest indicators of what youth need most in their lives to be positive and productive members of our communities.
In conclusion, contrary to public opinion, an ostrich does not bury its head in the sand when confronted with a problem. An ostrich actually uses its speed and agility to run away. Bill 18 stops the running and we can stop behaving like ostriches. It is time we faced this problem head on and adopted a goal of total eradication of child prostitution. Bill 18 may not eradicate all child prostitution but its passage will ensure that we deal with the problem. Then at least we can start reaching the goal of eliminating child prostitution.
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Mr Jim Brown: On a point of order, Madam Chair: In the presentation, I'm speaking on behalf of the Ontario Crime Control Commission and the provincial crime commission has not introduced any bills, let alone Bill 52, whatever that bill is.
Mr Rimore: I apologize for that, Mr Brown.
The Chair: We have approximately three minutes per caucus. We begin with the Conservatives.
Mr Chudleigh: Thank you very much for your presentation. I was wondering, in your experience, is there any commonality in the pimping business. We heard earlier that it involved some biker gangs. Is that a dominant area of it? Is there any commonality in that area? It doesn't matter who answers the question.
Mr Rimore: There is a commonality in the problem. The commonality is that the pimps offer something to the young teenagers, the young women, that no one else is offering to them. It's not just the money or the fame or the glory. What they're offering to them is something they don't have in their lives that they need.
Mr Chudleigh: I understand that. Are they biker gangs that dominate this business?
Mr Rimore: In our experience, no, it's not any one group that dominates the youth we deal with, the young offenders we dealt with.
Mrs Lillian Ross (Hamilton West): Thank you for your presentation. Most of what we hear is about children being involved in prostitution on the streets. I'm wondering if you have any awareness of whether that includes other sexual trades such as massage parlours, strip clubs and escort services.
Ms Doner: The youths we work with at the John Howard Society in the young offender program are 12 to 15. We would say that mostly they are street workers as opposed to going into -- we won't call them businesses -- other avenues.
Mrs Ross: One of the comments we heard from the previous presenter was that the elementary schools were not really as agreeable or as acceptable to having speakers come in to speak about this issue as were the secondary schools. My perception of what I'm hearing is that in fact it would be better to have it at the elementary level. I understand the concern of parents not wanting to talk about this issue with their children, but there are some children -- if they're getting involved at the ages of 11 and 12, wouldn't you feel that you need to get in there early to prevent this from happening?
Ms Doner: For the youth we're looking at who enter into this area, I don't know if you'd necessarily want to go into -- if you're looking at 11, of course, you'd be looking at youths who are in grade 6 and grade 5. I don't know if going in and speaking with them would be all that beneficial because I think you'd be dealing with a very small number of youths who would be in that age category.
Rather, the same youths who are going on to prostitution are already being seen in other services, because there is a need, whether it's the children's aid society or whatnot. I think we could probably target these youths in other areas, as opposed to grade school -- grade 6 and under. Obviously, grade 7 and grade 8 are a different story. But for grade 6, those same youths we're looking at could probably be targeted through the guidance office within the school or through other agencies that the family or that youth may be dealing with.
Mr Gerretsen: I'm very much interested in the programs you talked about, the necessity for programs. If this is going to work at all, then obviously the government has to put some resources into it. It's one thing to put a child who has been involved in this kind of lifestyle in a safe house and provide the basic necessities and medical necessities for a short period of time, or even a longer period of time, but what happens then? What kind of programs do you have in mind? Can you give us any idea what these programs would entail?
Mr Rimore: At first, in a lot of the programs we've dealt with that have had success through our work at the John Howard Society, and it's been mentioned before by all the other speakers, programs that will work with these young people, essentially many of them are not going to return to what we would call a normal family structure. They're not necessarily going to return to live with mom and dad with the picket fence. They need programs that are going to give them the wherewithal, the support within themselves to teach them about self-esteem, to teach them about confidence, to give them the ability to choose the people they want to teach them.
All too often, we as adults come into a program and say, "This is what you're going to learn and this is who's doing it." Our success has been in working with young folk, young teenagers, older adolescents, and saying: "These are the kinds of programs that everybody says are important. What do you need in your life right now?" Give them the ability to gather in a place on a regular basis, to choose the people they respect and trust in the community to teach, and then the youth will start learning. Then the most important programs of all, which I think have also been alluded to earlier, are that people who have been in those situations, who have succeeded, teach the others. It can't necessarily be pedagogical adults teaching the youth but people who have been there. The peer group kind of programming is most important.
Mr Bartolucci: A very quick question, John and Robin: It is imperative then that not only is there education attached to the component, but there must be education within the school system, at the elementary and secondary school levels as well. Are you in agreement with that?
Mr Rimore: Yes, I am, very much, but it's a kind of education that unfortunately we tend to do once and then we think it's over. We see that in our drug and alcohol education programs in the schools over and over again. We do it in grade 7 or 8 or 9, and then we think we've done it. Then we wonder why the youths in grade 10 or 11 are using drugs and alcohol abusively. It is something that has to be an ongoing, repetitive education program, not just education about prostitutes and saying no to pimps, but an education program in our schools that starts targeting the very things that cause prostitution, giving our school teachers the ability to be supportive, caring people in the community.
Ms Martel: Thank you, John and Robin, for coming today. Tell me about the programming that you try and direct kids into when they come to work with you. How much in-house counselling do you provide, and does it go beyond drugs and alcohol, or are you brokering those services in the community?
Ms Doner: We don't provide any real long-term counselling with the youths. The programs we offer are mostly short-term; they're mandated programs. The counselling that is required -- and we have seen an increase in the number of youths who require some long-term counselling -- is sent out to other agencies in the community that offer that service.
Ms Martel: Do you know if there's a waiting list for those services?
Ms Doner: Yes, there is. There's a tremendous waiting list that we have seen grow considerably in the last year. They are now taking only those very severe youths who are the youths we're talking about right now. The youths who haven't reached that plateau yet have to wait, so actually instead of preventing the problem we're just kind of -- and then when it does become that big problem they're able to get that service, but in many cases a lot has happened in that time and the child may not wish to go back to where they were.
Ms Martel: I'll bet that in terms of looking at northeastern Ontario, Sudbury's probably doing relatively well in comparison to those other communities where you wouldn't even have the service, never mind a waiting list.
Ms Doner: I would imagine that in the smaller communities that would be exactly the problem.
Ms Martel: In terms of getting at child prostitution, not only do we need really serious programming around that issue, but until we deal very seriously as a community with funding for drug and alcohol, we're not ever going to get at the root of some of this problem.
Mr Rimore: Briefly, it's even deeper than that. I have worked in small communities throughout northern Ontario as far as Moosonee and Moose Factory, and the bottom line for us, over and over again, is that it's not just a program but it's the fact of trained workers. We hear workers over and over again, even in our community, saying: "We're not trained. We don't know how to deal with those problems." In small communities, you have hardly any workers to deal with and you can't train them for everything under the sun.
In addition to your point, Ms Martel, the whole problem with that issue is that the programs have to be something the youth can relate to. The 12-year-old who may be not quite addicted to drugs, who's just starting, doesn't think they have a problem, but they can at least understand that they may have a problem or an understanding that no one thinks about them, no one supports them, there's no one there to supervise. Those are the things they're looking at and that's where I think a lot of our funding has to be at.
The Chair: Mr Rimore, Ms Doner, thanks very much for being here and giving us the perspective of the John Howard Society. It's greatly appreciated.
Before I call the next presenters to the table, I want to address the audience and in particular members of the media. Please understand that some of the people who will come before us show tremendous courage to be able to give their evidence, their first-hand experience of what child prostitution means. For that reason, it's extremely important to protect their privacy. I would ask you not to take any pictures or to film any shots on occasions when I may ask you to do that.
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MALLORY
The Chair: With that in mind, I'd like to call Mallory to the front. Mallory, thank you very much. We're very grateful to have you here. You have 20 minutes to speak to us in your own words about your experience. If there is any time remaining, the committee may ask you some questions.
Mallory: I didn't prepare a speech. I don't have a lot of education, but I came here for those kids. There were 12-year-olds, when I used to work that corner, standing on that corner. It's sad, it really is. It's really sad having to be a cocaine addict. I've got tracks, man. I was nuts. Those girls have nothing. They don't have dads; they don't have moms. They don't care any more. They feel probably much like I did, like I'm a loser, I'm a bottom-feeder. I'm not good in school. I'm good at making money and I'm good at doing drugs. That's what I'm good at.
Cocaine is killing the children. That's what it is. There are little 15-year-olds who are cocaine addicts downtown, sticking needles in their arms, selling their bodies for cocaine. I've seen it. I was there. I'm telling you. I was there one night when there was a 14-year-old girl getting killed in front of me. I was paid off not to say anything, you know? It's sad when you will take cocaine over somebody else's life. It's sad when you have to stand on a corner, sometimes at 7 in the morning, because you're jonesing, nobody loves you -- at least you think that -- and that's really what your life's about. Your life's about fighting, men and money. Oh, and don't forget the drugs, because that all goes hand in hand.
But who cares, right? They're just kids. No, they've got to be taken care of. This is sad. These are little girls who are having grown men who have money and cocaine take over their lives, making them feel wanted. Those are idiots. Those aren't nice people, man. I've seen what those guys do to those young girls. They have sex with them. They do some pretty disgusting things. They make them feel dirty. They make them grow up before their time. It's an arrested development for those girls. I am arrested in a lot of ways. I never grew up the way a normal kid should, having little boyfriends. I had a 27-year-old boyfriend when I was 16. I was bad. I've been a cocaine addict since I was basically 15 years old, prostituting since I was 15. I'm going to be 19. I've seen a lot.
Those girls are good people. Those young girls, some of them are the nicest girls, beautiful. They could do so much. But some of them haven't had silver spoons put in their mouths. Some of them don't have a good family. I'm not saying that everybody who has come from a home that's bad should grow up and turn out like that, because not all of us here grew up with spoons that were silver in our mouths. We grew up in the family we got. But some people just can't deal with that so they turn to drugs and prostitution and big daddies that'll take care of them. But you know what? They don't. Because when you don't make that money any more, you're no good. You're spit on. Those little girls are used and then they're spit on.
Your kids walk the same streets that I've probably walked, and I used to sell my butt on that corner. Your kids walk those streets. It doesn't matter if they're doing it; they're seeing it. It's sick to drive by and see a junkie, a beautiful girl who's just got a cocaine or heroin problem standing on the corner, having no choice because she really feels she's got nothing left, you know? Get your hit and leave. Do you think those girls feel good about themselves, what they're doing? They've got to be high to do it. They don't feel good. I didn't feel good.
I look at my arms and I wish these weren't there. I've got the most messed-up relationship with a man that I love, because I'm messed. I've got a sexual problem of some nature. I don't know what it is. I don't mean to tell you all my personal diarrhea, but it's the truth. I'm messed in the head.
All these girls are going to be messed in the head. They're being raped by pedophiles. That's what those men are: They are pedophiles. They are sick people who need expensive, extensive mental help, because they're taking young girls and they're doing what they want with them. When you get in that car, you don't know if you're getting back out. Us older girls -- man, I knew what I was doing. Those younger girls are naive, they're stupid, they're not using condoms and I'm going like this. I'm getting freaked out. I can't go downtown for the simple reason that my sobriety depends on it that I don't step downtown. Maybe I have to leave town. Maybe I've got to get away. But you know what? I will not sell myself short any more. I will not become a junkie for anybody. I will not sell my body for anybody.
Those girls, they're selling their bodies and it isn't fair. You've got to help them out. That's all I'm saying. They really need to be helped. They're asking you. They're never going to be cool; they're never going to be able to go to school. These kids aren't going to ever develop. They're never going to be like you guys -- citizens. They're never going to be that. They'll always be like that.
That's really all I have to say.
The Chair: It seems a little anticlimactic to go back to the prosaic business of asking questions. Yours was very moving testimony. We have about three minutes per caucus. We begin with Mr Bartolucci of the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks, Mallory, for a very compelling discussion, a very good presentation and, probably most important, a very real presentation. Mallory, you met with your dad, Pat and myself in my office. You might want to tell the committee what you told me you told a young child.
Mallory: Oh, yeah. I was on the street and it was, like, 4 in the morning and this little girl comes up to me. She was saying something like, "You don't mind me standing here," and I told her: "I've got to make money. Go." It's 4 in the morning. I'm not going to get picked up. They want the young girl. I'm pretty; I know I am. I look bad today -- sorry -- but I'm pretty, and they'd rather take the 12-year-old over me. That's sad. They go up to my friends, they'll drive up to me, "You got anybody younger?" That's crazy. It's not right, man.
Mr Bartolucci: So what you did was shoo her away from your corner.
Mallory: I got rid of her, yeah.
Mr Bartolucci: Just a second short question: Not all of us are born with silver spoons in our mouth. You made that point very clearly. You come from a very loving family. Is that a safe assumption?
Mallory: Oh, yeah.
Mr Bartolucci: You have very supportive and caring parents.
Mallory: I don't know what went wrong, you know?
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Ms Martel: I think, Mallory, one of the most amazing things to me that you said, which probably says the kind of individual you are, was that you came here in defence of what you called younger kids. You're only 19.
Mallory: I never grew up like a normal kid so I just consider myself an adult.
Ms Martel: You took the time and you had the courage to come and defend some others. I would say in terms of where we fit you're right in that category of someone who needs to be protected and defended too. So I'm quite astounded by your courage to do that. Tell me, you're looking at a group of folks who have some ability to do something. Given what you know and where you've come from, what would be one or two of the single most important things that we could do to ensure that we can get some of those girls off the street for good?
Mallory: What you need is a nice house. You need a nice, safe place for those kids to go. They need to go there and you need to pat them on the back, give them a hug and tell them: "You're loved, man. God loves you and you're loved." Those girls, man, they've got nothing. It's really sad.
Ms Martel: So a safe place where they're secure, where they can be fed, where they can be looked after.
We appreciate very much you coming today. I can't imagine the courage that it took for you to do that. I for one am quite overwhelmed.
The Chair: Mallory, are you up to another question, or would you like to recess?
Mallory: I'm okay.
Mr Jim Brown: Mallory, you're one courageous person; you really are. We appreciate you coming here. Lots of kids appreciate you coming here as well.
I talked, as Mr Bartolucci did, to Cherry Kingsley, who went through much the same as you did -- another courageous person. Words can't describe how I feel about what you just said. Far be it to ask a question, but what would you do with some of these people who are involved in the business -- not the kids, the adults?
Mallory: I'd smack them. You get hard. It was like: "Let's fight. You're on my corner. It's mine. Go." If they don't leave, you make them leave. It's not fair.
Mr Jim Brown: But the adults are the ones who get you into this mess.
Mallory: Yes. You've got AIDS. I sit there and say, "I'd love to get married and have kids," and then I think, I might have AIDS, man. I might be dead. I'm either going to die of AIDS or somebody's going to kill me. It's not right. I've got hepatitis. I freaked when I found that out, man. These girls are in danger. What those men are doing are crimes. They're hurting little girls. How would you feel if that was your daughter? It would kill you. Something's got to stop.
Mr Jim Brown: I have a 17-year-old daughter and I'm thankful that -- I think what some of the adults do is just awful. I thank you for showing courage and bravery today.
The Chair: Mallory, I think everybody here believes you're one of the bravest people we know. Your testimony today was not only compelling but inspirational. We all feel that we owe a great debt to you for coming forward. Thank you very much.
Mallory: You're welcome. I can leave?
The Chair: You may indeed. By the way, you look terrific today.
ALAN
The Chair: Again, a caution to the media and the public not to take pictures during the next testimony. I'd like to call Alan to the front. Thank you too for coming forward. I know how difficult this is for you, and we truly appreciate your presence here today. As you know, you've heard, you have 20 minutes to make your presentation.
Alan: I won't take quite that long, but I have this written out. I didn't commit it to memory, so I'd like to read it to you.
I'd like to thank Rick Bartolucci for his sensitivity and foresight in recognizing a growing and insidious problem in probably all North American cities of any size. I'm grateful to the members of our provincial Parliament for passing Bill 18 on second reading and sending it before the standing committee on social development for further study and distillation. I thank the committee members who have travelled to Sudbury to hear the presentations of my fellow citizens regarding the protection of the most vulnerable members of our society, our children.
My purpose in coming before you today is to share with you my family's struggle to deal with a bright, spirited, much-loved daughter who fell through the growing cracks in her social fabric into a shadowy world we scarcely knew existed within a few blocks of our home.
First I'd like to sketch out for you the background, the canvas on which subsequently has been painted the dark and troubling picture of a young life descending into chaos and self-destruction.
Four years ago, my daughter graduated from grade 8 as a thoughtful, precocious child. The surprise and joy on her face as she accepted her award for achievement in history is still etched in my memory. She was an avid reader who would devour a book in a few short days. She hoped to become a parole officer. During her weekly equestrian lessons at a local riding academy, the concentration, strength and determination I could see in her clear eyes filled me with pride and there was a sense that all was right with the world, and her future stretched out before her, wide open and full of promise.
That all seems so long ago, and those visions are now only seen as if through a glass, darkly. In the fall of 1994, near the end of my daughter's first term in high school, it was suggested to me by her vice-principal that she wasn't settling in or adjusting well to high school. Otherwise, there was no hint as to what lay in store for us. Early in the following school year, that being in October or November of 1995, school officials called on several occasions to voice concern over her somewhat erratic behaviour. She was just about to turn 16 years of age. Her guidance counsellor suggested that a psychological assessment be conducted as soon as possible. A local pediatrician was recommended. The doctor who administered the tests determined that, among other things, he found that she was a very eccentric thinker who was exhibiting the classic signs of a florid bipolar mood disorder.
In the spring of 1996 she was sent to the Sudbury Algoma psychiatric hospital for more in-depth testing and assessment over a period of about two and a half weeks. She was prescribed medication for what was deemed a complex psychological disorder and would be followed up accordingly.
Near the end of her grade 10 year, in May 1996, she developed a friendship with another student at her school, a girl who, for psychological reasons of her own, was not living at home. During this time she was becoming more difficult at home and frequently acted out in such a manner as to require a disciplinary response. When her challenging behaviour escalated as spring turned to summer, in anger, I told her that if she couldn't respect the rules of our home, she could leave. At times a parent may speak harshly to their child to shock them into realizing the consequences of their actions. But what I didn't understand at the time was that a manic-depressive is generally unconcerned with the consequences of their actions.
She did leave that evening, and when she didn't return by her 12:30 curfew I went to her friend's place and forced her to come home, hoping that in the light of the following morning she would come to her senses and become the radiant and compliant child she had once been. Needless to say, I wouldn't be here today if that was the case.
The next day she informed me that she knew her rights, that she was 16 years old and didn't have to obey our rules any more, that she didn't have to do anything she didn't want to and that we had no right to impose any control on her. She was leaving home and could collect social assistance when she turned 17.
That summer of 1996 was just the beginning of our nightmare. By August her behaviour had deteriorated to the point where I felt that for her own protection she should be kept in a secure environment until, with medication and counselling, her condition could be stabilized. Together with her girlfriend, she had gotten heavily into street drugs and alcohol, neglected to use her prescribed medication and began hanging out with a much older group of friends.
Of course, during that time my wife and I sought out the wisdom and guidance of every available source known to us: the child and family centre, the children's aid society, her care team at the Sudbury Algoma Hospital, the police, the Pinegate Addiction Centre, Foyer Notre Dame, family and friends etc. But without her compliance, because she was 16, there was nothing to be done, short of obtaining an order with a justice of the peace through the Canada mental health act, to hold her for observation if she was deemed to be a danger to herself or others. It seemed like the only avenue left to us. But when I approached the acting justice, and after fully describing the situation to him, he told me to go home, prepare a written deposition describing the problem and return before 9 am the next day.
It was obvious he was in a hurry. After having found the resolve to even contemplate what seemed to me to be a drastic step, he chose to discourage this action, saying that under the law her behaviour would seem to be a lifestyle choice and that even if the warrant were granted, they could only hold her for 72 hours. I did not return the next day.
At 3 o'clock in the morning of the following day, I received a phone call from one of her friends stating that she didn't know what to do -- she wasn't my daughter's parent -- and that I should call a certain number because my daughter was in some kind of difficulty. I made the call, and the person who answered was obviously in distress and begged me to come and rescue him from my daughter, who was out of control, raving and crying in the background. It seems that the alcohol which this adult male university student had been plying my daughter with had blown up in his face. As she was uncontrollable when we arrived, the police were called and she was taken into custody under the aforementioned powers of the Canada mental health act. She was taken to a hospital emergency department where she was treated for alcohol poisoning, and transferred to the children's ward at the Sudbury Algoma Hospital the next day, where she stayed for approximately three weeks.
In September 1996 she tried to return to high school, but it quickly became apparent to all concerned that it wouldn't work, and she was withdrawn before her fall term was complete.
Up to this point she had never even had a steady boyfriend. But by November 1996 she had met a 25-year-old, well known to local law enforcement, who had recently been released from custody. Her growing attraction to the seamier side of our city was leading her further and further from her family and the dreams she once held. Then, within a few weeks, her new boyfriend had been arrested again for assault and we all let out a sigh of relief. But it was to be a short-lived reprieve. In early 1997 she was placed in the Ruth MacMillan Centre, a special-needs school on the grounds of the Sudbury Algoma Hospital. She carried on a correspondence with her boyfriend in jail during those months, and we were left to anticipate what might be in store for us and her on his release in August.
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In the meantime, through the spring of 1997, her condition seemed to stabilize somewhat, but in hindsight it's apparent that she was becoming more immersed in the dark side of our city. In late spring of last year we received a phone call from an acquaintance telling us that he had seen her outside a sleazy local downtown bar. She was 17 at that time.
My wife and I quickly drove over to see what he meant. Although her behaviour had presented us with many challenges up to that point, nothing could prepare us for what was to come. When she saw us coming, she bolted down a back laneway. We followed and convinced her to get into the vehicle. We asked her what she was doing there, and to come home with us. She jumped out of the van and we lost her again. I drove back to the bar, where I was told by the bartender there that he was sure she was turning tricks. I was stunned. I told him she was only 17, with a mental health problem, and he assured me that she would not be served alcohol again if she returned.
I then surreptitiously watched the area, and when she returned about 15 minutes later and began to seemingly solicit cars as they stopped beside the hotel, I drove to the police station about three blocks away and explained the situation to the desk sergeant. He told me there was very little, if anything, they could do and that in any event they were short-staffed.
Since that time, the summer of 1997, my daughter has become a chronic intravenous drug user. Though cocaine is her drug of preference, she'll ingest or inject any drug that is available, with the notable exception being her prescribed medication. To support her habit she engages in prostitution. It's just too easy for her to do that.
Although there has been a recent effort by local officials to control the sex trade and drug traffic in our city, there are still young girls of an indeterminate age openly plying their trade so they can purchase drugs -- all happening less than one block from Mr Bartolucci's constituency office.
I know that there are many other issues involved in our particular problem that may not seem to fit nicely into the parameters of the bill proposed by Mr Bartolucci. The mental health aspect and the civil rights of our citizens must be protected. But it seems to me that the Young Offenders Act, for example, does not deem a person to be completely responsible for their actions until the age of 18. I assume that is because in the wisdom of the legislators who drafted that law, it was judged that at 17 years of age or younger, a person had not matured sufficiently to appreciate the consequences of their actions.
About two months ago I read with interest an article in the Toronto Star which shed light on the sexual exploitation of children in Third World countries by tourists from North America and Europe. The international community has passed legislation designed to prohibit and punish strongly those who engage in this practice. I think it's about time the police and citizens of our own country were given the tools they need to help protect our children from those predators who would exploit their vulnerability and innocence for their own selfish ends. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, sir. We have a limited time for questions if you're up to some.
Alan: It's all right.
The Chair: We have two minutes per caucus. Ms Martel for the NDP.
Ms Martel: Thank you, Alan, for making this presentation to us today. Obviously, you're here in support of Mr Bartolucci's bill. Tell me, as you look at your own experience, the provisions in the bill that would have helped your daughter or will help others of the young women she talked to. I'm looking specifically at (a) the apprehension, but (b) in terms of programming that obviously we need in this community. How might that have helped her if all those things had been available, and what is the extent of the support that we're going to need to help her and others like her?
Alan: First of all, there seems to be no tool which would immediately come to the rescue of a person in this kind of situation or to help a parent who is looking in all directions for some sort of help to do something. I just found myself in dead ends everywhere I turned. There were all the platitudes and saying the right things, but it just came down to that what I had to finally resort to was attempting to obtain a warrant under the Canada mental health act. It was awkward and there seemed to be some confusion on the part of the officials and the police, and I have heard many different ways that act is implemented. It just didn't seem to go anywhere.
My reaction when I went to speak to him was that it was just another runaround. As I said in my presentation, things took care of themselves within 72 hours anyway, and she was put into custody by an understanding officer who seemed to have more of an understanding of the situation than the justice of the peace who had attended to me at that time.
As far as programs go, I really don't have an awful lot of insight into what needs to be done in that way. What Mallory was saying previously makes an awful lot of sense. We didn't arrive early enough to hear what transpired before we came. What she said is that they need a place to go. They need to see that there is some alternative. They all come from different situations, I'm sure, and they need something concrete that they can hold on to. I don't think it works immediately, but at least they know there is something there for them to go back to as they grow and have bad experiences on the street. If it's not too late for them, at least there's somewhere they know they can turn.
Mr Jim Brown: Sir, good morning. You are also a very brave and courageous man. The crime commission has been around Ontario, probably done 35 or 40 forums, and one of the recurring themes is the great deal of frustration that parents have with some of the laws of the land that don't allow them to really look after their own kids. I hear it over and over again. Parents are saying, "Look, let's go back to the way it was when I had some control over my kids, when I had some power, when I could look after my kids the way a family can." I sensed in your presentation a certain amount of frustration in your lack of ability to deal with your own family, and maybe you could elaborate on that.
Alan: We saw her spiralling out of control. I had just assumed that there must be some avenue that we could explore or some resource we could access that would give us the power to step in. I just found that -- you know, she said, "I'm 16, and you can't control me anymore."
Mr Jim Brown: That's right, and some of the 14-year-olds and 12-year-olds are saying that. They go out and get their own medical treatment, their own drugs, whatever. I've found that the kids will go out and they'll get Ritalin and they'll get hyped up on Ritalin, or they'll sell Ritalin. Anything goes, and the parents are sitting there saying, "I know what's good for the kid, but I just don't have the power any more to do anything about it." The police know that too. I sense a great deal of that, that you would have liked to have taken charge of the situation but couldn't.
Alan: It was a learning experience, that's for sure, as we went along, and there was just no avenue for us. If a child is 16 and under, there are avenues that can be taken, they can be apprehended or whatever, but --
Mr Jim Brown: Well, even then it's limited.
Alan: I'm not familiar with that, because she had passed that age by the time she got there, and she said she knew her rights, and we didn't know where to turn.
Mr Jim Brown: What would you do with the adults --
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Bartolucci for the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: I'll follow up on what would probably have been Mr Brown's next question, because I think it's an important one. It's interesting that in your presentation, Alan, you say she was taken into custody under the adult and child mental health act, yet placed in a children's ward at the hospital. If that isn't telling us -- this is a child. At 16 years of age, did you consider your daughter to be an adult?
Alan: It seemed and still seems like only yesterday -- that was part of the purpose of how I wrote my presentation. It seems like only yesterday that she was a child in grade 8, innocent and bright-eyed and with the whole world before her.
Mr Bartolucci: Alan, some of the members of the social development committee have asked me, is this the Alan who approached me at Christmastime? Yes, this is the Alan, the father of Mallory, both very, very courageous.
You know we've discussed this before. A bone of contention with this legislation is the increase in age from 16 to 18. Your presentation certainly speaks volumes for what you believe, but maybe you can let the committee know. Do you believe that 16- and 17-year-olds should be included in Bill 18 legislation?
Alan: Up to 18 definitely should be included in the legislation. In the complex world we live in today, there's so much more for them to learn that they are not truly formed even much older than that. Up to 18, if you had to pick an age, I guess, as a break-off point.
Mr Bartolucci: To leave the committee on a bright note, because our time is almost up, you might want to bring the committee up to date on how everything is going now.
Alan: It's always a struggle. It's up and down all the time. What I didn't put in my brief, because it seemed to be carrying on too long, was that finally my wife charged her with assault. It wasn't a serious assault. Basically, it appeared to be an attempt at an assault, but it was my wife's attempt to be able to get some sort of control over the situation, get her into the justice system, more than anything else, and maybe exert some control over her that way, because she was exhibiting no control.
Then, as a result of those charges, she was ordered in her probation to attend drug rehabilitation, which she did. It was only a very short program, not nearly long enough, a 26-day program at St Thomas psychiatric facility. When my wife went down and picked her up after her graduation on that Friday in May, on the way back they stopped to sleep over at the grandmother's house in Kitchener. It was a long drive to come all the way back from St Thomas to Sudbury. While they were out talking on the patio, Mallory had been inside and found a couple of bottles of liquor under the counter, drank them both, was taken to the Kitchener-Waterloo hospital, went into a coma, was in intensive care for two weeks, and we almost lost her.
At that point, all of the tough love rhetoric that we had been floating around for quite some time just went completely out the window. We just wanted her to stay alive.
Mr Bartolucci: To end off, because Mallory is shaking her head, you have other children?
Alan: I have three other children who have also been horrifically affected by the whole situation and will be scarred for it, with the confrontations and the tone of -- you know, the rending of the social fabric of our family. But we still love her. They have high spirits still, but there are a lot of changes that have gone on.
The Chair: We want to thank you for being here today. I know it was not an easy thing for you to do. You can take consolation from the fact that your action and the experience of your family have resulted in legislation before this committee, and you are to be commended for that. We thank you for coming.
We're going to take a few minutes' recess. We have some teleconferencing to do. The next participant will be by telephone, and it will take us a few minutes, so we'll be back in approximately five minutes.
The committee recessed from 1134 to 1152.
ROSE
The Chair: I understand that we have our next presenter.
Clerk of the Committee (Ms Tonia Grannum): Rose, are you there?
Rose: Yes.
The Chair: Rose, I am Annamarie Castrilli. I'm the Chair of the social development committee. As you know, we're here to study Bill 18 in Sudbury. You have 20 minutes to make your presentation. If there is any time left over at the end of your presentation, the members of the committee will ask you some questions. I will identify each member so that you know who they are. I want to thank you in advance for being here to tell us your story.
Rose: I think that in principle the main idea of Bill 18 is excellent, it's a great idea, but there are a lot of potholes, I guess you could call them.
I guess just basically it's the young girls when a lot of the emphasis should be on the pimps and on the men actually picking up the girls. If the bill was more directed at getting the pimps off the street first, because if you had the pimps off the street, then the girls would have nothing to be afraid of -- that's the main point there. They are afraid of the men that are controlling them. And it is men; there's no women really involved in the pimping process.
If you had the men gone, then the girls would be easier to obtain. You wouldn't have to go into unsafe buildings to find the girls. The girls would come to you because they'll need somewhere to go. That's a bill we'd like. The main idea is great, but there's more emphasis on the girls when the girls should be left alone, basically, right now. To get rid of the men would be the greatest idea.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Rose. We have about eight minutes for each of the caucuses to ask questions. We'll start with Jim Brown, who is a member of the Conservatives.
Mr Jim Brown: Good morning, Rose. With some of the presenters today, I've asked them the question of going after the pimps and the johns, much like what you have been saying, because they're the adults, and if you can take away the money incentive to do the business, you might dramatically reduce the activity. We have, on behalf of the crime commission, gone around Ontario and heard situations of child prostitution and have asked what people thought about our seizing the cars of johns and freezing and seizing the assets of the pimps, to take away the financial incentive of being involved in this kind of business and taking advantage of kids. What do you think of that, Rose?
Rose: That would be a very helpful idea. If you got rid of the money, then the girls would really have no attraction to it. That is the main attraction, because you have the ability to make a lot of money. If you took away the money, then the girls would -- to handle, I guess.
Mr Jim Brown: One of the other things was the relationship between drug dealers and pimps. We wanted to apply the same rules of taking assets away from the drug dealers, taking the proceeds and taking them into drug rehab programs and things like that. Do you think that the drug dealers are related to the pimping and that this is a good idea also?
Rose: Yes, I do, because most of the drug dealers are the pimps. It's more or less a combined business effort I guess you could call it.
Mr Jim Brown: It's sort of integration, right?
Rose: Very much so.
Mr Jim Brown: The proceeds we could then put back into helping the kids who have been afflicted or into drug rehab programs, and everybody would benefit.
Rose: Yes, they would.
The Chair: I misspoke myself a little earlier. We have six minutes, not eight minutes, per caucus. Rose, our next questioner is Lillian Ross, also of the Conservative Party.
Mrs Ross: Hi, Rose. Thanks very much for assisting us here today. One of the comments made by a young presenter here, Mallory, was that what a lot of these young kids need is love. They need a pat on the back every now and then. To help me understand, can you tell me what your involvement is in this area. How long have you been involved? I have to assume that you're involved in either helping kids or that you yourself have been on the street. Can you help me with that?
Rose: How long have I been involved?
Mrs Ross: Yes.
Rose: I'd have to say since March of this year, and I am not involved as of the beginning of July this year.
Mrs Ross: Good for you. One of the comments, as Mr Brown has stated, is that a lot of us have heard that what you need to do, because these are children we're talking about, they are victims, is get at those adults who are abusing children and making them victims. I understand that you strongly agree there needs to be stronger enforcement against those types of individuals. Is that correct?
Rose: Oh yes, very much so. If you got rid of the pimps -- not even really the johns, just the pimps, because the pimps put fear into the girls. Because they're so young, they think that these pimps will actually do cruel things to them, and they will. They start poking them with drugs and do everything else to sort of dope them into staying, because they get them addicted and then they have to stay.
The Chair: Rose, the next questioner is Rick Bartolucci of the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: Hi, Rose. Thanks very much for your presentation. I have two very, very brief questions and then John Gerretsen from the Liberal Party will ask some others. Certainly a part of the bill is a punitive one for johns and pimps, and you're certainly concerned with that, as you should be.
Another part of the bill is the education component of the bill and the importance of offering and creating programs for young children and for their parents, so that they can get over this hurdle and no longer be sexually abused or exploited through prostitution. Do you see these programs as being very important in this bill?
Rose: Education would be a big one, but a lot of these girls won't go home. The parents probably won't have anything to do with it. They probably won't let their parents have anything to do with them, because they feel ashamed and everything else. So for the girls the education is excellent, but before you get them into the education, they need the money first. There would have to be social assistance or something to help them get back on their feet, because a lot of them won't go home.
Mr Bartolucci: The importance then of a safe house is critical in this legislation as well?
Rose: Yes, it would be, very much so.
Mr Bartolucci: Mr Gerretsen will now ask some questions.
Mr Gerretsen: Good morning, Rose. Can you think of any other programs that could be put into place to actually help these young men and women lead a more productive life? I realize that the notion of having a safe place to go is absolutely paramount, but then after that something else has to happen. Can you think of any particular kinds of programs that we could put into place or recommend putting into place to help people change their lifestyle?
Rose: I know of one that is already put in place that I'm attending right now, and that's Elizabeth Fry. But other than that, schooling. When you go to school, you have to pay this much money to go there and this much money for the books and this much money for this. Cheaper schooling would help and something to live on, basically. As long as these girls have food in their stomachs and a roof over their heads, they will probably be willing to help themselves.
Mr Gerretsen: I suppose as well a mutual support system so that you can share your experiences, share your good experiences as well that come out of this change of lifestyle. Would you agree with that?
Rose: I'm sorry, I didn't hear most of the question.
Mr Gerretsen: I suppose that a support system, in other words, a system whereby these girls can learn from each other and learn from each other's experiences etc, would be a great help too, would it?
Rose: Yes, it would be a great help.
The Chair: Rose, the next questioner is Ms Martel of the New Democratic Party.
Ms Martel: Hi, Rose. How are you this morning? Thank you very much for agreeing to participate in the committee process. Let me begin by asking you a question which I hope doesn't sound silly, but I don't have a clear idea of what perspective you're coming from in terms of your participation this morning. I heard you say that you were involved in a program with E. Fry, so am I safe to assume that you were a victim of prostitution yourself?
Rose: I was involved in prostitution.
Ms Martel: Were you involved at an early age?
Rose: I was 16 when I started and 17 when I stopped.
Ms Martel: Did you have, along with your involvement in prostitution, either an involvement with drugs or an involvement with alcohol as well?
Rose: I was one of what you would call the lucky ones, because I don't do drugs and I'm too young to get into the bars or anything, so I had a hard time achieving an alcohol problem.
Ms Martel: The program that you are with at E. Fry, what does it consist of?
Rose: They basically help me come to terms with what I've done and they're helping me try to get assistance. They're getting me back into school. I'm going to be getting counselling and everything else. They're a great help.
Ms Martel: Am I right to assume that you yourself were able to make a conscious decision to get out of the sex trade and get help from E. Fry? Is that how it happened?
Rose: Yes. I was the one who ended it and I'm the one who's keeping me out of it.
Ms Martel: Are you an exception to the rule in the sense that are you really one person who, unlike many, many others, has been able, for whatever reason, to make a voluntary choice?
Rose: Yes. I'd have to say that I am the exception to the rule, because most of the girls who do work are drugged up and they have no choice but to stay because, "Where am I going to get my next hit from? Where am I going to get" -- you know?
Ms Martel: Right. So the idea that someone in authority, ie, in the case of this bill, a police officer, can apprehend a young person involved in the sex trade is one that has to be a focal point of this bill, because unlike you, many other people would not even be making a voluntary choice, they're not capable of making a voluntary choice?
Rose: Yes, very correct, very well said.
Ms Martel: Do you have any idea, then, although you might not have been in this position, where there are safe houses in this community? Are there safe houses in this community where police could take youngsters?
Rose: Not that I'm aware of.
Ms Martel: So in order for this bill to ever work, we need both financial resources for safe houses and we need financial resources for programming.
Rose: Yes.
Ms Martel: Otherwise, whatever new authority we give to police to apprehend people, nothing positive is going to flow from that.
Rose: Right.
Ms Martel: While I recognize you've made it also very clear that whatever we can do to deal with pimps, to take away that threat, what is also important here is that there has got to be a recognition of an allocation of financial resources to deal with safe houses, to deal with programs.
Rose: Yes.
Ms Martel: Thank you very much for helping us this morning. We certainly appreciate that you were willing to participate.
Rose: No problem.
The Chair: Rose, this is Annamarie Castrilli again. I want to thank you on behalf of the committee. You have been very brave to come, by telephone, and tell us your perspective; it's exactly the perspective we need in order to make our work worthwhile. Thank you very much.
Rose: No problem.
The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to break for lunch at the moment. We will reconvene at 1:30 sharp.
The committee recessed from 1209 to 1335.
Mr Bartolucci: Just before we go into our 1:30 presentation from Foyer Notre Dame, earlier this morning there was a presentation given by Patty Taylor from Cecil Facer Youth Centre, and in it there was a comment she made. I think the chief has received some clarification with regard to that particular comment. If the committee deems it fit, I'm wondering if the chief could clarify the record from the police perspective, because I believe it's everyone's hope that these hearings focus on the bill as opposed to anything else.
The Chair: Mr Bartolucci has put on the floor changing the agenda slightly to allow Chief McCauley to appear again. Any discussion on that?
Mr Jim Brown: I would support that wholeheartedly, to have the chief come back.
Ms Martel: I agree as well that we do that.
The Chair: Very well. I think we have a consensus. Chief McCauley, thanks very much for being with us again.
Mr McCauley: Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the members for allowing me to take this opportunity to perhaps speak to the record on some comments that were made this morning. I understand that the statements were made by a representative of Cecil Facer institution.
The committee should be aware, first of all, that being in the position we're in, we're surrounded by controversy from day one. We're always at the front of the parade. We're no stranger to controversy, nor are we so naive as to believe that all we do is above reproach. I can tell you, though, without hesitation that at any time if anything bordering even close to these kinds of allegations was ever brought to the attention of this service, it would have been put under a microscope.
I have staff with me today: Constable Corrine Fewster, who heads up the program, and Sergeant Dwight Tuple. Could you just stand up so everybody can know who you are.
When these kinds of comments are made, definitely I imagine in an unsolicited fashion, by somebody who is purporting not to be sure if they're true or not, it puts everything in a very difficult position, trying to ensure that the credibility of what everyone is doing is sustained.
This person, I feel, has acted completely on their own. This person has worked with our committee at various times and has never spoken to any of the members of that committee, our police officers, when they have been there. I feel this is just a real red herring that has been thrown into the middle. I can assure the committee that we're going to follow this matter up completely and examine it under the microscope in every way. As well, I'm going to be dealing with the organization itself.
The way these matter should always be handled is that if there's any kind of allegation, it should be reported to authorities. These are the kinds of things we're trying to do when we develop this bill. We're trying to develop ways in which we can uncover situations where people are put at risk.
First of all, the integrity and credibility of this service stands for itself. Whenever we have had embarrassing situations, we've exposed them publicly and dealt with them in a very public fashion. For somebody to attack us in this fashion, without any evidence, to me is clearly irresponsible in all avenues. I cannot countenance for a moment or imagine how I would react if somebody came forward to me and made some allegation about a provincial institution, and I came to a public situation such as this and, without anything to support it, just simply rambled on about it.
Madam Chair, I can assure you that we're going to follow this up. I can assure you that the credibility of this service is second to none, as is the credibility of the men and women of this service who have worked very hard to provide these various levels of service that are now available to the community that would not be there without our work and our sincere devotion to what we do.
I am not only hurt by this but I am angered by it, that this would happen to us. I am embarrassed for Mr Bartolucci and the rest of the members who appear here today that this would come up in this fashion. I just want to speak on behalf of all of the men and women of the service to say that we don't deserve it, nor will we take it lying down, nor do we sweep anything under the carpet, and our record stands for itself when we talk about that.
I am thankful for an opportunity to address the committee in this way.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Chief McCauley, for taking the time to be with us again this afternoon to put that on the record.
FOYER NOTRE DAME
The Chair: Could I call upon Foyer Notre Dame, Rodney Bazinet. Welcome. Thank you very much for being here. We're delighted to have an opportunity to hear what you have to say.
Mr Rodney Bazinet: My thanks to the all-party standing committee for this opportunity to talk on and around the issues of Bill 18, the Protection of Children involved in Prostitution Act, 1998.
My name is Rodney Bazinet. I am the executive director of l'Association des jeunes de la rue inc, the association for street youth here in Sudbury. For the past four years I have operated, as divisions of this association, the Foyer Notre Dame House emergency shelter program for street youth 16 to 18 years of age, the Community Outreach Services Streetwalk counselling program, as well as the community response street program and the breakthrough crisis and counselling residential centre program. Prior to this appointment, I was employed for nine years with the Regional Children's Psychiatric Centre, a division of Network North at the Sudbury Algoma Hospital.
I am an active member of the emergency housing and shelter advisory committee to the District of Sudbury Social Services Administration Board and a steering committee member of the Community Alliance On Social Issues.
I'd like to begin with a few words about my interest in Bill 18, my support of the context of this bill and what I believe is the spirit of this new legislation.
We have an urgent need to address the inability of our current existing legislation to act in intervention, support or counselling on prostitution, nor has our existing legislation resulted in any direct reduction of child prostitution in Ontario.
Ontario has always been a leader in Canada and other parts of the world in terms of its child protection legislation. The fact is that Ontario has an outstanding track record for its commitment to protecting children at risk. We've earned that record by passing effective legislation and by putting into place laws that are relevant, tough, fair and enforceable, such as the CFSA. It has been a very strong working model in our organizations.
Protecting children at risk is one of our community's highest priorities. We believe the province's child protection legislation must be efficient, effective and workable, and we as a community must ensure that we provide the protection these children deserve.
As it stands now, our legislation has gaps in being able to intervene effectively or to provide assistance to the at-risk children who need us the most. These are the children who are locked in the grasp of sexual abuse and the exploitation involved in child prostitution. I am discussing this having seen first hand the long-term devastation and destruction of innocent children.
So that we not get confused, freedom of choice is not an issue at this discussion of child prostitution. A 14-year-old who chooses prostitution as a means of survival can't really be said to have made a career decision. As one who has had contact with literally thousands of youth, I confirm that 14-year-olds cannot make that decision.
In a survey that was conducted in 1997 in Vancouver -- I've had an opportunity to go over the raw data myself -- originally conducted by Donna Karmo, 200 prostitutes were surveyed. The results were astonishing and I was somewhat moved by them. Some 78% of the 200 reported starting prostitution as a youth; 70% of those were under the age of 15. Ninety per cent had reported being survivors of child sexual abuse prior to their career choices towards prostitution. The average age of those being sexually abused was 10 years old. Two thirds of those were abused by father figures. Their average age of entry into prostitution was 13 years of age.
All the prostitutes in the analysis were runaways and homeless prior to starting into prostitution. Their only motive was basic financial survival. That was the reason mentioned by over 90% of the youth for prostituting.
A majority of the youth prostitutes described family structures with outward appearances of stability. Some 75% reported religious upbringing; 40% were raised by both mother and father; 60% reported families with alcohol and drug abuse in the home; 79% reported physical abuse in the home prior to their running.
I have heard it said that sexual abuse and incest of youth is like the boot camp of prostitution. If incest is boot camp for prostitution, it's ludicrous for us to expect a young woman to somehow dump all of that training and become something she feels she was never intended to be. As Andrea Dworkin pointed out in her book Prostitution and Male Supremacy in Life and Death, "The training is specific and it is important not to have any real boundaries to her own body; she must know that she is only valued for sex; she must learn about men only what she learns from the sex offender."
I return to my figure: 90% were sexually abused prior to entering into that career choice. A quote from a 13-year-old prostitute who claims she is recovering -- and that's kind of difficult to swallow in itself -- when asked of the pros and cons of prostitution:
"There is only one pro, and that's money. The disadvantages? Well, it's degrading. You develop a total hatred for yourself for being so low, filthy and dirty, like a slave, but you can't get out so you stay high. The scariest thing is opening your eyes and finding someone on top of you.... It's hard to forget the faces and the smells, especially the smells.... The only thing to do is not feel anything and pretend you don't care. I don't think I care about anything."
To understand the necessity of creating systems which can intervene without the child's consent for removal, we must first understand the development of the thought process of the child. How do we create a prostitute who will not save herself if given the opportunity? If she is a victim, why does she not run to the police as soon is she is on the street? This learned helplessness -- and I refer to the term "learned helplessness" -- usually occurs in three stages and is always introduced by somebody.
The first stage of the development of a prostitute is her abduction. A lot of people assume abduction is somebody jumping them in the street with handcuffs, and that does happen, but for the most part it's coercion. This is when an abductor removes a girl or a woman -- or a male; I'm referring primarily to girls in this scenario, as boys open up a whole new realm of discussion and I'd like to focus in the 10 minutes that I have -- from a setting which is familiar to her to a setting which is unfamiliar to her. This is a setting where she has no allies and is often without knowledge of what resources are potentially available. Most often she is drugged regularly. To my experience, this is most commonly with intravenous opiates such as heroin, for its physical addictive qualities.
When she comes to consciousness of her predicament she is often disoriented and ignorant of where she is -- what city, what building. She generally has little knowledge of her surroundings. Her abductor usually strips her of the most ordinary powers and resources, resources which even the most powerless of people retain. Through force she is often not able to do anything on her own for herself.
On completion of that, she is entered into a seasoning process. While he holds her in isolation and captivity, he often brutalizes her in many ways: frequent rapes, severe beatings, verbal and physical degradation, deprivation, intense and enduring pain, and threats of her murder.
The animal brutality serves several training functions, first by placing the victim in a life-threatening situation. Through this, he maximizes the urgency for her to take action on her own behalf while making it impossible for her to do so. This helps finalize the process of alienating her from herself through total helplessness. The result is traumatic loss of self-respect, self-esteem and any real sense of self. Brutality also develops intimacy to her abuser, both by being invasive and by the intensity of the one-on-one contact. Chemical dependence is usually strong in seasoning, and her body is often betraying her with cravings of injections of drugs.
The abductor then switches from constant aggression to intermittent aggression. This intermittent aggression creates occasions for positive feeling on the part of the victim. She is now in a world that is distorted of moral proportion, where not being beaten, not facing death, and being permitted to urinate when she has to have become occasions to be grateful. Gratitude is a positive and has a binding effect. Her intimacy to her aggressor increases through this phase. Now any time she is not being beaten, she considers herself to be well treated.
The shift to less constant abuse gives her an opportunity to try to act in support of her physical survival. She is discovering how to be good to her captor and avoid making him mad. She also needs the drugs that he provides. She is often tested at this level by the introduction of strangers to test her will. Good decisions are rewarded with no beatings. By pleasing him, she can delay more beatings and avoid being killed, but any wrong decisions, any self-serving behaviours she demonstrates, whether real or perceived, will often result in savage beatings. Listening and following instructions are reinforced with a positive. No hitting, more drugs, clothing, sometimes food, candies and sweets are reinforcement. Displeasure results in more brutality.
This makes the victim's task of anticipating his will extremely difficult and keeps the stakes high. All of this draws her very close to him emotionally. Every ounce of her will and sensitivity is drawn into the most intense focus, towards his wants, his needs, his desires. She at this point becomes very clingy and does not want to let him out of her sight. Any will she had to escape is channelled to the service of his interests.
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The last stage to making her profitable is criminalization. Criminalization is necessary in order for the abductor to return her to public settings for economic gain. He forces her to participate in or be an accomplice to singular or many criminal activities, which may involve drug trafficking, witness to murder or prostitution, and holds the possibility of her incarceration close at hand. She therefore believes she is and is viewed by everyone else as a criminal. Now she cannot return home or turn to police. Her abductor now becomes her protector. At this point she often feels that in his world exists her only chance at acceptance, economic and chemical dependence, and social interaction. This life he has constructed is hers: a life of prostitution and victimization.
The Council for Prostitution Alternatives in Vancouver has reported that prostituted girls were raped approximately once a week against their will. A Canadian report on prostitution and pornography found that women and girls in prostitution had a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average.
Through all this can we assume these girls can just choose to go home, go back to school, get a real job, make better friends? These choices are not even reality. Young girls under 18 need a system that can protect them and provide a place to heal their wounds.
She requires stabilization from crisis. This emotional healing may never occur, depending on how much damage was done. As a caring society we must ensure that she is given a safe house, meals, clothing, emotional support, money, quality programs, vocational retraining and counselling. We must remember that she is by all standards a victim and should be accessing the systems and supports that are available to her to the utmost of our ability as a community.
We must make penalties for perpetrators and offenders high enough to be a deterrent. The fines must exceed what they make from their girls. They must be sentenced and incarcerated, and their incarceration completed to full duration before release.
We must give his victims as much time to heal and develop self as they can in case he finds them again. His crimes should be made public as a warning to young girls of the danger he poses to them.
As a health care professional, I recognize the post-traumatic stress disorder that most often accompanies this level of victimization. It is very difficult to treat and often requires long-term intervention and counselling. Most common therapies and treatments don't work. In most cases I have dealt with, the victims return to the streets in a very short period of time under a new feeling of independence, but back into prostitution nonetheless.
In my shelter, I lose these girls back to the street usually within a period of 48 hours of their choosing to change. Their struggle with physical addictions to hard-core drugs and the availability of easy money are often too strong for young girls. They often come to the shelter with a real desire for something better, usually after a bad trip or a beating. The desire for change is real. In the first 12 hours they usually sleep. Upon awakening, they appear very sombre and distant; their pupils are often dilated or quite enlarged, depending on the drugs they've been using. Trembling begins shortly, with sweating and complaints of not feeling good. This is often followed by intense sweating, aggression or aggressive acting-out episodes, usually blamed on chores or rules or limits. Our experience has been that it's usually just verbal outbursts. It has never been physical outbursts. Then they pack up whatever they brought with them and state they can't handle it here, and they return to the street.
In our few follow-ups that we are able to do at this point, the girls are most often under the influence of drugs and alcohol very shortly after leaving the shelter. That's a very moving experience. I'll go into detail with it in questions and answers.
Bill 18 will allow our officers the power with a warrant to apprehend a child involved in prostitution and return the child to his or her family or place the child in a protective safe house. The police may apprehend a child without a warrant if the child's life or safety is seriously and imminently in danger.
In my experience, a child in most cases will not recognize their environment as dangerous, through learned helplessness. Therefore, they are not able to identify their need for saving or protecting. They have a really difficult time seeing for themselves that they require this protection. This is really common among many of the young girls I met in west end Toronto when I was doing some work there in partnership with Covenant House. The young girls are in a very dangerous setting, very dangerous environments and neighbourhoods, and have no recognition of the dangers surrounding them because they are there in the box and they have a very difficult time to get out.
There will have to be the availability of age-appropriate safe house programs that are adequately funded to provide the intense counselling, intervention and protection that child prostitutes require if the programs are to be effective. We as professionals have to identify child prostitutes as a distinct group that requires supports that cannot be provided effectively in mainstream child protection programs. I thank you for your time in listening to this segment.
In my experiences in the shelter, a lot of the scenarios and situations that I come across are predominantly with 16- and 17-year-olds. It is not an omission or an error in the legislation that they include 16- and 17-year-old girls up to their 18th birthday. These children, and I view them as children because I work with them and I see them as children, have no protections as children under 16.
We cannot point any fingers. There is nobody who is not adequately doing their jobs. Legislation is not enabling them to go to the extent that's required. I'm sure that any judge in their right mind would love to throw the book, a life sentence, at a john who has abducted and destroyed teenage children. Our legislation currently doesn't allow them to do that. They have to fall within the confines of what individuals can be arrested for, what children can be picked up for. I've met with police officers who are moved by the fact that they were not able to remove 16-year-olds, who may have been in situations of requiring protection, but it's really fuzzy, because our legislation doesn't read like that.
Ontario legislation doesn't allow children 16 and 17 to be identified as in need of protection simply because they've been abandoned or are living on the street. That's a gap. The children are not going to say, "Hi, I'm a child prostitute and I'd like to be saved from this street." We as a community need to be able to recognize that and we need to be empowered to remove them from those situations, from their boxes. We need to empower them with a period of stabilization from crisis, allowing them to make proper choices. We need to give them every opportunity we can to make constructive change. We won't save them all.
By the age of 16 most of the damage is done, after several years. It is difficult, as I said, to tell somebody that you're no longer what you've been trained to do, that you should be doing something else, that you should get a real job that makes $6.85 an hour, which is more rewarding than the $200 or $300 a night you were making. This is difficult for the kids to understand because they haven't developed the maturity or the ability to grasp what's happening. We get a lot of survivors in their thirties who look back and say, "I was not able to make those choices." Unfortunately, we're not able to make those choices for them either. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Bazinet, for a very thoughtful and thorough account. Regrettably, you've used up all your time. I wish we had more time at our disposal, but we thank you for your thoughtfulness. I wonder if you might send us a copy of your remarks for the record. I'm sure members would really appreciate that.
Mr Bazinet: Absolutely. I'll forward them to Mr Bartolucci.
GERRY COURTEMANCHE
The Chair: I call Gerry Courtemanche. Welcome. Thank you very much for being here. You can make your presentation in French or English, whichever you prefer.
Mr Gerry Courtemanche: Thank you, members of the committee. Good afternoon ladies, and gentlemen. Mesdames et messieurs, bon après-midi. My name is Gerry Courtemanche and I'd like to take a few moments this afternoon to tell you a little about myself and why I'm here.
I've lived in the Sudbury area my entire life. I was born here. I was raised here. This is my home as well as my family's. In 1974, I went to work for Inco as a labourer and became a member of the United Steelworkers of America. I still work at Inco today as a lineman and a supervisor of the power service centre. As a husband and father and a lifetime member of my community, I'm not only concerned for the safety of my family and myself but also for that of my friends and neighbours.
Je crois qu'en Ontario, tous ont non seulement le droit d'être en sécurité mais également de se sentir en sécurité à domicile ou dans nos quartiers.
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From 1990 to 1995, Mike Harris and his caucus travelled the province to hear the concerns of ordinary Ontarians. At kitchen tables and coffee shops across Ontario they heard that people no longer felt that important sense of security, that crime was on the rise. After much consultation, the PC Party caucus published New Directions, Volume Three: A Blueprint for Justice and Community Safety in Ontario. The principles outlined in this document were reinforced by the publication of the Common Sense Revolution in May 1994.
Depuis juin 1995, notre gouvernement a fait de grands pas pour assurer la sécurité des communautés et sur les questions relatives à la justice.
For example, in June 1997 the Solicitor General announced the launch of the Partners Against Crime initiative. This initiative forges strategic partnerships between government and the private sector to come up with creative solutions that will prevent crime and make our communities safer.
In July 1997 the Solicitor General announced that inmates and young offenders in Ontario's provincial correctional institutions would no longer receive a weekly $5 allowance. In August 1997 the Solicitor General announced that Ontario would present submissions to the Alberta Court of Appeal in September to challenge the federal government's Firearms Act, Bill C-68. Ontario objects to the imposition of a universal firearms registration system that diverts important police resources from front-line law enforcement.
In March 1998 the Solicitor General also announced the reinvestment of $700,000 from criminal proceeds into front-line enforcement and police investigations.
During the last budget in May 1998, this government committed $150 million over the next five years to things such as establishing the community policing partnership program. This program will result in the hiring of up to 1,000 new front-line police officers to increase police visibility and presence and help target high-crime areas across the province. The Ontario government has committed to provide matching funds for up to 50% of the salary costs for these newly hired police officers. The $150 million over five years on new community safety initiatives includes for the Sudbury area $375,000 in front-line policing grants to put more officers on the streets, $77,000 in RIDE funding and $13,000 for victim support initiatives.
The budget also contains funding for the new rural crime prevention strategy. The OPP will establish special break-and-enter task forces in high-risk areas throughout the province. The strategy will also include the establishment of a provincial Cottage Watch crime prevention program in conjunction with the Federation of Ontario Cottagers' Associations. Cottage Watch is similar to the Neighbourhood Watch program in larger communities. Cottagers will be encouraged to watch for suspicious vehicles or strangers in their neighbourhoods and report them to the police.
This past June, the Community Safety Act passed into law. The act will close loopholes so justice officials can track criminals and notify the public about dangerous offenders being released in their communities.
The Solicitor General also announced the expansion of victims' services by allocating $11.2 million in 1997-98 to programs such as the automated victim notification system, the victim crisis assistance and referral service and the community victims initiatives program. The victim crisis assistance and referral service now provides immediate services to victims of crime in 20 locations throughout the province. These program will ensure that victims of crime receive the support and respect they deserve from the justice system.
Fewer offenders have been released on Ontario parole than ever before and there has been a significant reduction in the rate of reoffending by these parolees.
With regard to Bill 18, An Act to protect Children involved in Prostitution, I am supportive of the intent of the legislation as its spirit is in concert with crime prevention and ensuring public safety. I would like to mention first the points in the preamble to this bill with which I am in concurrence.
Je crois que la sécurité et le mieux-être de nos enfants et de nos familles sont les préoccupations les plus importantes de toute la population ontarienne.
I believe that children engaged in prostitution are victims of sexual abuse and they require protection. I believe that it is the responsibility of families and the community to provide that protection. I believe that it is the duty of the province to assist families and communities in providing that protection. I believe that legislation is required to ensure the safety of all children and to assist children in ending their involvement in prostitution. It seems that I am in complete agreement with Mr Bartolucci on the points he outlines in this bill.
Que d'autres personnes ou tierces parties aient appuyé en si grand nombre ce projet de loi, cela en dit long sur son caractère nettement positif.
Police forces from across Ontario have also indicated their support for this bill. I am also happy to note that there is bipartisan support for this bill. This serves as an example to the fact that this government is listening to the people of this province and acting upon their advice.
Cependant, certains é1éments de la mise en oeuvre de ce projet de loi me préoccupent. En fait, le terme «préoccupation» est un peu fort. J'estime seulement qu'il faut clarifier certains é1éments.
Although the Child and Family Services Act definition of a child is the same as that proposed by Bill 18, children's aid societies only provide child protection services to children up to the age of 16 unless the child is in the care and custody of the children's aid society. The bill as currently written would thus create new service delivery expectations for the society.
The Child and Family Services Act does not include a definition of "protective safe house" as per Bill 18. Although the children's aid society and/or police may confine the child to a protective safe house for a period of three days, the children's aid society does not have the authority to lock up children. A child who is apprehended under the bill could escape and leave the safe house, thus the safe house concept as defined is particularly problematic since it cannot protect children in isolation from other legislation.
The Child and Family Services Act gives both police and the children's aid society the authority to apprehend children under the age of 16 if there are child protection concerns which include prostitution. The CFSA does not give police or the CAS the authority to apprehend youth who are older than 16 unless they are in the care and custody of the children's aid society.
The bill would impose limitations on the rights and responsibilities of youth aged 16 to 18 who are legally able to live independently from parents and leave school. We could therefore anticipate that some young people might challenge this legislation in the courts on the grounds that being detained in a safe house is a violation of their civil liberties.
The bill should also be more clear about what factors a worker or guardian should consider in determining that a child is capable of providing for his or her own needs. This will prevent the children's aid society worker or guardian from future liability which may arise if the youth further endangers his or her own life, following discharge from a safe house, through prostitution or other acts.
En terminant, le projet de loi devrait mettre l'accent sur la prévention. Notre société doit élaborer une stratégie permettant d'éviter que les jeunes se tournent vers ce style de vie.
We all know that the best possible social program is a job. The economic recovery of Ontario is underway. Ontario continues to create new jobs at a rapid pace. Consumer and business confidence is up. Welfare rolls continue to decline. In spite of the problem that we are talking about here today, crime statistics indicate that crime is on the way down.
I think that in the spirit of bipartisan support for this bill, all the people of this province and politicians of all stripes should continue to work together to provide constructive criticism as opposed to just criticism and to offer solutions as opposed to simply condemnation.
Only by working together can we proceed in creating the greatest place on earth to live, work and raise a family.
Merci, Madame la Présidente, and thank you to the committee members.
The Chair: Merci bien. We have two minutes per caucus for questions, if you'll entertain some, Mr Courtemanche.
Mr Courtemanche: Please. Yes.
The Chair: We begin with the Liberals.
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Mr Bartolucci: Mr Courtemanche, you are setting a first. You are the first presenter here today with a very biased political slant. I suggest to you that the spirit of this bill is one of tripartisanship, whereby we try to stay away from any one political ideology.
Having said that, though, I want to ask you a question with regard to the legislation. You say there is a conflict between the Child and Family Services Act and this legislation. I know there is. A simple question: Are you in agreement that the age should be raised to include those who are 16 or 17 or do you suggest that this bill is flawed that way and it should stay at 16, as the Child and Family Services Act does? What is your preference?
Mr Courtemanche: As a father, obviously my concern is for the family and for our children. My preference would be to include children up to the age of 18. I would certainly hate to see any of our children taken advantage of by, if I may be so bold to say, some of the leeches that are out there in society such as the johns and that.
Mr Bartolucci: So you would also be willing, then, if we increase it to include 16- and 17-year-olds, to very much support the necessary financial resources which will have to be allocated to Bill 18 if it were to become law in order to implement the programs?
Mr Courtemanche: The bill itself, Mr Bartolucci, if I may say, to my way of thinking is perhaps reactive. We have a problem that we are reacting to. I tend to believe we need a strategy to prevent the problem itself, and that's where we should perhaps focus some of the monies as well, to put into place a program that would prevent our children from being out on the street, from being taken advantage of. But as you say, if as a last resort not only is education going to be one of the things but enforcement as well, then if monies need to be allocated for that, very much so.
Ms Martel: Let me follow up on that point, because clearly from all the agencies and victims who were here before us, there are any number of new programs that are going to be needed to give effect to this law and there are any number of new funds that will have to be allocated to provide safe houses for victims. In that respect, when the John Howard Society was before us, they encouraged an amendment to section 10 of the bill and I'll read it for you. "The minister" -- that's the Minister of Community and Social Services -- "may establish programs that in the opinion of the minister are necessary to assist children in ending their involvement in prostitution." The John Howard Society suggested that we change the "may" to "must" to force an obligation on the Minister of Community and Social Services to fund these programs. Would you agree with that amendment?
Mr Courtemanche: At this point in time, not having been party to those discussions and simply hearing it, I have to go back to what I said previously. The allocation of resources -- obviously there are only so many monies out there -- needs to be looked at as well as something that is reactive. I think we also need to allocate monies to something that is preventive, if you want. But certainly once all the analyses have been done and the resources, the monies, have been allocated and part of the decision is that some funds are required there, then by all means we should be looking at allocating monies to where we best see solutions to this problem.
Ms Martel: So you would encourage your colleagues who are going to deal with clause-by-clause on this that they should support an amendment that says the minister "must" provide programming.
We talked about education programming here this morning. That was thrown in the mix, so we're not making a distinction between programs to help prostitutes after. We're talking about the broadest possible education.
Mr Courtemanche: Correct me, or perhaps you can provide clarification. If the question is, do we need to allocate monies to fix this problem and hopefully arrive at solutions, my personal opinion on that would be yes.
Ms Martel: You'd encourage your own colleagues to support an amendment?
The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr Brown for the government.
Mr Jim Brown: Good afternoon. Some people would say, and I might be one of them, that Mr Bartolucci's bill doesn't go far enough, and some people would say that the young people involved in escort services and massage parlours, strip clubs and adult entertainment bars should also have a measure of protection just the same as child prostitutes, and I'd like to ask your opinion on that.
Second, this morning I mentioned that kids are kids and we seem in Mr Bartolucci's bill to be somewhat ignoring the pimp and the john and the drug dealer, because usually the pimp is a drug dealer. One of my ideas was to attack the assets of the pimp and the drug dealer, realize them in cash and throw it back into a program to help the kids break the cycle; in terms of johns, to seize the cars. They've done this in other jurisdictions because if there are no customers, there is no business and if there is no making money on the kids, then the kids would be left to themselves. Some people would say that Mr Bartolucci's bill hasn't gone far enough and should include more types of work that kids do. What would your comments be, particularly to attack the adults who are using the system, the pimps and the johns?
Mr Courtemanche: On that very question, I would also fully support any program that would attack what I deem to be the leeches on society. If by seizure, if by whatever means some of their assets could be turned into monies that would be required to fund the various programs to which I've previously answered questions, then yes, I truly believe that should occur. Whether the proceeds come from drugs, whether they come from johns, from wherever they may come, whether they're vehicles, boats or even homes, you may even go that far. Yes, funds from those should be turned over to funding the solutions.
La Présidente: Merci, monsieur Courtemanche, pour votre présentation aujourd'hui.
M. Courtemanche: Merci beaucoup pour le temps. Thank you, everyone.
The Chair: Thank you for sharing your time with us.
Mr Gerretsen: Do you want to move that amendment?
The Chair: We'll have plenty of time for amendments.
MITCHELL DAY
The Chair: May I ask Mitchell Day to come forward? Is Mitchell Day here?
Interjection.
The Chair: Mr Brown, you'll leave discipline to me, I hope.
Welcome, Mr Day. We're very happy to have you here.
Mr Mitchell Day: Madam Chairman, members of the committee, before I start, I'd like to apologize in advance for any coughing or other noises that I may make due to the fact that I am fighting the flu right now. I apologize and, hopefully, you will excuse me ahead of time.
Just a quick overview. My name is Mitchell Day and I'm speaking here as a private individual, just concerned about social issues in general. I wanted to make a few passing comments about Bill 18 and the general direction that it has.
Over the past couple of years there has been a lot of attention brought forward about issues involving the sex trade and about prostitution. There has been a lot of media commentary about it and there has been a lot of discussion in various legislative committees on a federal and provincial basis. I find that one of the aspects that was never really addressed was making an adequate distinction between adults and minors in this in a way to address it.
In many ways I believe that Bill 18 is a very good start to addressing this issue rather than going more for the punitive and using the legal system to address the problems of children who, due to circumstances often beyond their control, are forced by necessity or by coercion into the sex trade and will now have at least the flexibility as determined by either the police or, more correctly, by social services to determine whether there are other options that can be brought to break this vicious cycle.
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As we already know, children who end up in the sex trade usually end up there for a considerable period of time. There are obviously histories of drug abuse, suicide and they are more prone to violence and other social pathologies which we won't go into detail on that have to be addressed. Unfortunately, we need help from our federal counterparts in addressing this issue too because we would like to see changes to the Criminal Code, but that is obviously beyond the scope of this.
Other points that I like about this bill are that there is enough inherent flexibility within it between the ministry and all parties involved to determine by age or by the circumstances whether child protection services are required or whether a return of the children involved to the families is most appropriate. In that sense, I believe this is a very good start. As we gain greater experience on behalf of the Legislature and all parties involved, amendments should be made over time that will better address this problem. That's basically it.
The Chair: Thank you very much. You've left us ample time for questioning. We have about six minutes per caucus.
Ms Martel: Thank you for the presentation. We heard this morning from a number of people about some difficulties in accessing services, first with a reference to Sudbury which said in Sudbury there were long waiting lists for drug and alcohol, virtually no service to deal with prostitution and people who are trying to get out. But once you got outside of Sudbury, it wasn't even a question of a waiting list, it was a question of not having the service at all in many communities in northeastern Ontario, and there was a specific reference to Timmins. Clearly, the effectiveness of the bill hinges on two things: (a) police having adequate resources to do the surveillance and to be able to apprehend victims and (b) having the resources in terms of both the protected houses and the programs to make this work. Otherwise, whatever we do here is not going to matter.
I raise with you again the same kind of question that I raised earlier to Mr Courtemanche. One agency in particular has said it has to be an obligation of the minister to fund programs, be it education, be it rehabilitation, but there has to be an obligation; otherwise, this will probably not happen. Is that a point of view that you agree with?
Mr Day: Obviously the funds should be made available to the various agencies because if we're talking about crime in general, it would be safe to say that it is a focal point of this government about preventing crime and fighting crime, that considerable funds would have to be put in on the preventive side to achieve savings in the long term. Obviously if you can prevent crime, then you reduce your costs of policing and incarceration. However, the definition of obligation has to also have in there the flexibility for the minister and the parties involved so that programs can be funded and adjusted according to the needs of the individual areas and also based on experience of this.
So in a point I would say conditionally that it should become an obligation, but there should obviously be the flexibility upon the ministry and the committees responsible for oversight on this to make changes that they see necessary based on experience.
Ms Martel: Do you think we're going to need new funds to put into effect all of these safe houses that are talked about in the bill and all of the intensive programming that certainly became clear as a need from even the victims who came to talk to us today?
Mr Day: I think it's a very real possibility. Not being familiar with the budget for that, I do not know whether any more internal savings could be achieved without affecting bottom-line services, but if additional monies were needed to achieve this goal, then it may have to be considered by the Legislature.
Ms Martel: So you'd be supportive if a member of any party put an amendment that said, "Additional new resources should be set aside to make this initiative go into effect"? You'd be supportive of an amendment that would work like that?
Mr Day: Yes. If the Legislature thought it was necessary, then yes, I would be supportive.
Mr Chudleigh: Thank you very much, Mitchell, for your presentation today. It's always struck me as strange, and Ms Martel just used the term again, that we refer to these people as victims -- in youth prostitution they certainly are victims, but I believe they're equally victims when they get older. If they're still in the prostitution business, they are still victims -- yet in our society, in western society throughout the world, we arrest the victims.
By and large, the perpetrator of the crime, who I believe would be the john, for instance -- he is the one seeking the services and therefore is seeking the crime to be committed -- in many cases he gets to walk away. I think the whole emphasis of our society should change and we should put far more emphasis on the arresting of the johns, the charging of them, and those charges should be much higher than they are now because of the hardships that they bring to our society.
Equally, the pimps, who are not only aiding and abetting this crime but also assisting in the drug trade, should be dealt with far more harshly under the laws than they currently are. First-time offences should have mandatory long-term jail terms, taking away some of the opportunities for what some of them would suggest is easy money, these people who prey on our society. I think the former witness talked about the leeches of our society. I'm not sure. Leeches have a purpose -- I think they can use them in fishing and they make good bait -- but I don't think pimps have much of a purpose in our society at all. I just think the whole emphasis should be changed. Do you have any feelings on that?
Mr Day: You are correct in the fact that there is a supply-demand relationship in this. I believe that more emphasis should be put on the demand aspect of it, as you mentioned.
I have some friends who are involved with projects like this in Calgary, where there's a significant child prostitution problem. They strongly believe that programs such as john schools are wholly ineffective and do nothing to take care of the problem, as some minor conditioning does not necessarily change the behaviour of a john. I believe the point that when it comes to child prostitution, as my colleague who was an ex-Calgary police officer said, kids should be in school, johns should be in jail. It should be focused on a supply and demand aspect.
That being said, however, there are certain social pathologies that do lead minors into prostitution. Some efforts to remediate that should be looked into, obviously, because if it can be stopped on the supply side, before people are entering it as minors, then some efforts should be put there. But obviously equal emphasis, if not more emphasis, should also be put on the demand aspect by becoming much more aggressive with the arresting of johns, especially those who solicit minors, and they should be incarcerated because for all intents and purposes it is statutory rape.
Other aspects should be done to also remove prostitution off the street and to ensure that it is understood by society that people who openly solicit the sex of minors should be punished heavily.
Obviously, as I mentioned earlier, john schools are not a way to do that. It must be much more aggressive and punitive. Measures such as publishing names in the papers may or may not work. There has been some history of it in the United States where they've had some success with it. Maybe that is something to look into. Obviously there are certain legal issues there about right to privacy that have to be addressed. Bill 18 I believe just addresses the supply side but there should be legislative efforts to address the demand side as well.
Mr Gerretsen: I've got a question for you, sir. I find it rather curious you praise this government for taking a tough stand on law and order. That's certainly the image that it would like to project across the province, that it's concerned about law-and-order issues. Yet at the same time, I can tell you -- and it's too bad I didn't bring the document with me -- that the Solicitor General's budget over the last four years has been reduced by something like 40%.
When you consider that that's the main department that gets involve in law-and-order issues, don't you think it's rather ironic that a government that likes to promote an image of being all in favour of law and order and all the issues relating thereto would cut its budget by 40%, when at the same time you've just openly admitted that maybe for a program like this to be effective, more money has to be spent? How do you justify all that?
Mr Day: Unfortunately, I do not know the particulars of the Solicitor General's budget and all that. Assuming that your assumption is correct, that 40% has been cut, then my response would be that I would have to understand what type of efficiencies have been brought out through these cuts and whether bottom-line services have been affected or not, and I'm not particularly sure.
If I may speak in generalizations about addressing the problems of crime in this province, I think one of the largest spots for expenditure is obviously in the court system. One of the biggest problems with the legal system in this province, with the criminal aspect, is excessive bottlenecks in the judicial system, the fact that there are many cases where charges are being stayed due, if I'm correct, to section 11 for undue time for trials. Obviously efforts have to be made there. That would be the largest bottleneck, I would probably say, in the criminal justice system in Ontario right now.
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Mr Gerretsen: Just for your information, the criminal justice system is being paid for out of the Attorney General's budget and it's got nothing to do with the Solicitor General. The Solicitor General's budget is mainly involved with issues of paying for the police services and the fire protection services across this province. I can assure you that that budget has been cut by 40% over the last four years. Do you not think there's some inconsistency there, that the government that preaches law and order in effect hasn't been paying the necessary price for that?
Mr Day: Not necessarily, because it can also be contingent on issues that the public considers, such as sentencing recommendations. Obviously we're all aware that one of the biggest outcries from the public is when someone is sentenced and a judge gives an excessively lenient sentence. Things like sentencing recommendations, truth in sentencing, aspects like that are aspects of the criminal justice system that can be implemented without significant cost to the Attorney General's department. That is one aspect which can address the problem without incurring additional funds.
As for the cuts, I'm not sure because I've not seen any significant changes to the bottom-line services that are offered, to my knowledge.
Mr Gerretsen: But longer sentences, by the way, mean more money because people will be staying in prisons longer. To house a prisoner nowadays, I think it's about $40,000 or $50,000 per year provincially. So longer sentences aren't going to save you any money necessarily. It may cost you more money to run the system more effectively.
The Chair: Mr Day, did you want to briefly respond to that or are you finished?
Mr Day: One solution, you could always just privatize all the prisons and try to save some money there.
The Chair: That, of course, you understand is beyond the scope of this legislation.
Interjections.
The Chair: Order, please. Thank you very much for appearing before the committee and articulating your views. We're very grateful to you.
SUDBURY AND DISTRICT HEALTH UNIT
The Chair: Could I call upon Jackie Moffatt of the Sudbury and District Health Unit? Welcome, Ms Moffatt. We're pleased to have you here. You have the committee's undivided attention on this very important piece of legislation.
Ms Jackie Moffatt: Honourable members, thank you for the opportunity of making a verbal submission to Bill 18.
I am an assistant director of health protection working at the Sudbury and District Health Unit. I'd like to start by thanking Mr Bartolucci for introducing this important private member's bill in the Ontario Legislature.
It's important to realize this bill isn't about prostitutes or any opinions and attitudes that we might have towards those individuals who are engaged in the sex trade. It's about children. And not just somebody else's children. These very easily could be our children. In Sudbury we are well aware that up to 50 children, both boys and girls, as young as 11 and 12 work as prostitutes. This is really unacceptable from all aspects of the issue.
I think it's important that we not get blinded by our biases and judgements, and that's the general public in particular, but hold as a basic tenet for such a bill that sexual exploitation and sexual abuse of children cannot be allowed.
Surely Bill 18 is about the protection of children engaged and trapped in selling themselves to an increasingly eager market. It also seeks to prosecute those who are putting these children at imminent risk, the pimps and the johns etc.
Kids are entering prostitution for many reasons, including family dysfunction, sexual abuse, drugs, peer pressure and the lure of easy money. No matter what the reason, the scenario is most often the same: There's an initial perception of independence, freedom, peer acceptance, an escape from problems, ready cash and perhaps the excitement of living on the edge.
It soon, however, loses its allure. The pimp no longer is as caring as he seems to be and turning tricks for money becomes disgusting or at the very least tedious and monotonous. There's pressure to bring in more and more money, sometimes to pay for the drugs that initially may have been supplied. They are now needed, these drugs, often to get through the day. The self is lost, and what might have been exciting now holds a lot of personal risk.
At this time I'd like to present you with a number of hidden issues that I see from a public health perspective. Although not always seen as imminent dangers, these risks can and often do pose serious harm.
We know that Canadian teens are now taking more risks when it comes to sex. The federal statistics presented at a June meeting of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada revealed some very disturbing statistics. Despite the efforts of parents, teachers and health professionals to provide accurate information about sexuality for teens, teen pregnancy in Canada rose 18% from 1987 to 1994, and as many as 50% of teen pregnancies were unintended. The increase in the number of abortions for women in the age group 15 to 19 years was 50% greater than the increase in women who were 20 years and older.
Sexually transmitted disease rates are climbing. The rate of chlamydial infections in the 15-to-19 group is nine times the average for that among all women. Chlamydia, as you may know, often goes undetected and can lead to chronic infections, including pelvic inflammatory disease, which at its very worst can be life-threatening. As well, it leads to infertility in later life.
To address these findings, a panel of doctors and physicians, teachers and representatives from family planning and the general public got together and made a number of recommendations. These are interesting, but I'm trying to put them in the context of this group that we're looking at today.
In the recommendations, they said parents should be more involved, as should teachers and health professionals, in teaching kids about sex, contraception and STDs. Physicians should ask questions about sexual health in routine health histories. Not bad recommendations. Condoms should be promoted for use in all sexual encounters to prevent STDs. Abstinence should be promoted as the choice for contraception, and couples should try hugging and kissing and masturbation rather than intercourse. Not bad ideas, but they're not very relevant to the group we're talking about today.
For example, the children that we're talking about likely don't have parents in the picture, or at least most of the parents would not know that the child is engaged in prostitution, and it's unlikely that the conversation would address key issues that street kids need to know about safe or safer sexuality and to be streetwise.
Many of these kids don't attend school or they're too tired or too busy to go to school regularly, so they miss out on any sex education, including risk reduction strategies that might be taught. They often have a lot of misinformation acquired from peers on the street. I can attest to that because in my clinic we often see young people who we suspect or who will acknowledge that they're in the sex trade. It's not unusual for these young people to miss out on immunization for hepatitis B, which is now given at the grade 7 level.
These kids often do not trust organized health care systems and tend not to approach physicians or sexual health clinics or other service agencies. We need to come to them with our programs. I think that's very important.
As for condoms and condom use, kids may lack the knowledge of STD prevention or the assertiveness to insist their older johns wear one. A john may refuse to use a condom, lie that he has one on, threaten violence or, an added attraction, pay more for services that don't involve a condom. Kids often believe that they're invulnerable at this age and risk-taking might be worth it, or several of them may see themselves as not even worth protecting.
The recommendation for abstinence or modified safe behaviours is not at all relevant. The john wants sex, not a safe behavioural substitute, and he wants it with a child, the younger the better.
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These kids have their cards stacked against them. They're very vulnerable on the street, and those recommendations I put forth originally by organized health groups such as the college of gynecologists and obstetricians aren't going to work. Programs need to be tailored to meet the distinct needs of this very young group. I'm very pleased that Bill 18 will encourage programs designed to fit those distinct needs, including the health needs of this population.
I would like to quickly enumerate some additional health risks for these children that are probably not very obvious to the general public or perhaps yourselves. In public health we are now aware that early sexual experience and multiple partners are both factors that entertain invasion of the human papilloma virus. Four strains of this virus are currently found to be the cause of an alarming 85% of all cervical cancers. These kids are at a high risk of developing cancer.
Prostitutes tend to get involved with the drug scene, including intravenous drugs. A clouded consciousness can lead to more risky behaviour such as the sharing of dirty needles or the inability to problem-solve to get out or keep out of a dangerous situation. Sharing dirty needles for drugs, body piercing and tattooing mean somewhere along the line contracting and passing on infectious diseases such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C as a definite possibility. Hepatitis, as you know, can severely reduce the quality of life and lead to other problems at a later date. As well, HIV-AIDS, a life-threatening STD, can be acquired by using dirty needles. Both hepatitis B and HIV-AIDS are of course sexually transmitted.
Being constantly run down and ill-nourished poses another threat for these individuals. We like to believe that tuberculosis is gone, but in fact it's not, it's on the upswing, and these kids are prime candidates for tuberculosis.
Along with prostitution, again, comes the serious loss of self. Sex for these kids is something one does to live or for excitement. It does not become a healthy, enjoyable part of one's being.
Bill 18 has the potential of having a positive impact on protecting these kids and giving them back the remaining aspects of their childhood. A hard stance on those individuals who set up prostitution rings and escort services using children is warranted.
I would like to enumerate a few comments on the bill which are meant to be helpful. The bill focuses on protection of children up to the age of 18. Most legislation involving children uses 14 and 16 as a benchmark. Many people are married at 18. As well, I believe criminal law concerning arrest for prostitution-related offences is set at 18 as the beginning of adulthood. Likewise, those agencies dealing with children under various legislation use 16 or 14 as the cut-off date.
I would encourage you to reconsider the age-defining definition of 18 years. I think part of this is that we like to think children are not sexual at an early age, and believe me, from seeing the thousands of kids that we do in our clinic, they are sexually active, including and up to intercourse, at very young ages.
It will be difficult to enact the bill without a clear definition of what is meant by "serious and imminent danger." Some work needs to be done in this area so that law enforcement, child and family services and other service providers are very clear on when and how they are to step in and rescue a child. It is not the prostitution that is the danger, it is situations such as violence and abuse that pose the danger. I would hope that some of the softer threats that I've expanded on earlier in this presentation will be considered for inclusion into this definition.
Section 10 addresses programming for this population. I would encourage further elaboration in this section. Programs such as Unhooked, currently in the works locally, spearheaded by Elizabeth Fry and other community partners and the public, can serve to get these kids off the street and to provide them with protection, a safe house, life and skills training and referral and advocacy to meet their social and health care needs.
I would also encourage you to build into this bill recommendations to study the reasons why these kids are going to the street in alarming numbers in the first place. Using primary preventive strategies may help us to identify those at risk before the kids hit the street and suggest early intervention strategies such as follow-up of at-risk babies and families.
In closing, I'd like to acknowledge that, although it seems to be a rarity that a private member's bill tends to become law, perhaps this bill is an example of one that has the potential to do just that. I would recommend my support of Bill 18. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Moffatt. We have two minutes per caucus. We begin with Mr Bartolucci for the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks very much, Jackie. Your presentation was excellent.
Jackie and I have talked previously about some of the concerns she has with the legislation. You've articulated them extremely well. You've also articulated the positive aspects of it, and I thank you for that.
In defining where a "child's life or safety is seriously and imminently endangered," would you suggest that procurement by a john is that instance when that life is at risk?
Ms Moffatt: No, I would not. Not imminent.
Mr Bartolucci: OK. Could you expand that, because we talked about that and I think it's important for the committee to hear.
Ms Moffatt: Maybe you can parallel that to other legislation. My background is mental health, and within the mental health legislation and also the Health Protection and Promotion Act it is very clear what is meant by an imminent and serious threat of danger. I don't think the procurement or the person being in prostitution is what I would refer to as a direct, imminent danger. I think it's the violence that comes out of that. I think you have to have some pretty strong data that indicate that abuse is there.
I don't know if that's helpful.
Mr Bartolucci: So you're looking at the aftermath of what happens as what is imminent danger for that child in the future.
Ms Moffatt: Yes, and I think from reading the bill, it's not heavily defined, but what you are looking at is the potential that anybody who prostitutes a child is putting them in imminent danger. I suppose that's a potential, but in actuality, do you have the data to support that? I don't think you always will. I think you need to give some examples of what is meant by that.
Ms Martel: Thank you for coming today to make the presentation. Sorry that I am still confused about this, because you talked a great deal about other pieces of legislation which use different age criteria. Am I right in assuming that you are convinced that we need to include 16- and 17-year-olds in this legislation?
Ms Moffatt: No. What I'm suggesting is that you look at a lower cut-off than the 18. With consent to treatment, a child can give consent to what happens to him or her at any age as long as they understand the risk and the benefit of not having a specific treatment. So 18 to me is often an adult, especially when we're considering that in relation to other legislation. To me, that's fairly old. Many people are married at that age. They might have made the decision that that's what they want to do for a living at 18. We like to believe that people do not really want to be prostitutes, but yes, there is a significant group of women out there, older women in particular, who make that conscious choice and don't want to be protected.
Ms Martel: What about the case, because we heard it earlier this morning, that many prostitutes also are involved heavily in drug use or alcohol abuse? I wonder about a 16- or 17-year-old's ability to make good choices or reasonable choices if what is part and parcel of what they are doing is also to be always in a haze because it's the only way they can cope. I understand other pieces of legislation. I am concerned about someone's capacity to cope and make intelligent choices and make decisions when they are 16 and 17 and dealing with all these other issues.
Ms Moffatt: Maybe that's where we have to look at it a little more broadly. When you have a clouded consciousness etc, maybe then you have to look at other legislation again, such as the Mental Health Act, which clearly stipulates when a person is not able to make the decisions for himself or herself, and if they are in a position of not making a decision because they are always in a drug haze, then you can enact that legislation.
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Mrs Ross: Thank you very much for your presentation.
At the beginning of your presentation, you commented that in Sudbury there are approximately 50 children involved in child prostitution. I find that astounding. The mere fact that one alone is involved is astounding.
I'm curious, and I'm a little confused by this. You talk about the Consent to Treatment Act, and you say 18 is too high an age, that the age should be lower. But is consent to treatment -- I'm confused. Can a child of 11 or 12 --
Ms Moffatt: It's limitless. An eight-, nine- or 10-year-old child may make a decision in relation to their health care and decisions around their care as long as there is evidence and proof that the child can understand the risks and benefits. It is ageless. It used to be you always had mom and dad to sign. Currently, you do not. Mind you, people in practice always have built-in safeguards, but that's the law at this point.
Mrs Ross: As a health care worker, would you think there should be something there, and at what age would you say it should be, that parents should have some involvement in that, that children shouldn't be allowed to make those decisions on their own? What age are you talking about?
Ms Moffatt: I would not make an age limit on that. I think each child is individual; each parent is different. I would not make a determination of that and set a date where the parents should or should not be involved.
We know within health care that 13- and 14-year-old children do come to see their physician, do access services, and they do not need the consent of a parent to do that; neither does the health care provider have the right to call the parent and say, "I'm calling because Jackie is here and she wants the birth control pill." So it's a tricky wicket.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Moffatt, for being here today and providing some very valuable insights to the committee.
Is Richard Pentney here? No?
ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY, SUDBURY BRANCH CHILD PROSTITUTION ADVISORY COMMITTEE
The Chair: I would then call Marianne Zadra, board member of the prostitution program of Elizabeth Fry. Welcome, Ms Zadra. We're pleased to have you here. We've heard about the Elizabeth Fry Society all day, so we're happy to have you here to give us a first-hand account.
Ms Marianne Zadra: I appreciate this opportunity to speak.
For more than a year now, the Elizabeth Fry Society, Sudbury branch, has been aware that child prostitution does in fact exist in this city. This fact alone causes us great concern. In an attempt to determine the scope of this issue, we developed a Child Prostitution Advisory Committee. We began round-table discussions with other agencies in March of this year. Through these discussions we have come to learn that approximately 50 prostitutes are working in the downtown area of the city. Between 15 and 25 of those prostitutes are under the age of 16. That number could be higher if we were able to determine how many child prostitutes are working through escort services. This type of prostitution is largely underground and difficult to investigate.
The children working the streets are lured to this way of life for many reasons. For some it is the perceived glamour of the lifestyle. For many it is the money. But for most, it is the belief that this lifestyle is better than what they already have. And perhaps for a time it is better. However, what usually happens is that the party scene and late nights include heavy drug use, so 11-, 12- and 13-year-olds are introduced and become addicted to drugs like crack, cocaine and heroin. At first these drugs are free, but it's not long before these kids not only have to pay for what they've already used, but need to buy more for their addiction. The only way they can make that kind of money is through prostitution. This kind of livelihood brings with it threats of violence and life-endangering diseases, as Jackie Moffatt outlined in her presentation prior to me.
Those who orchestrate this scenario largely are the pimps. They have a psychological and emotional hold on these kids, one which is extremely difficult to break. If prostitutes ever summon the courage to leave on their own, it is usually because they are in an extremely desperate situation. Some never have the courage to leave.
This is why I support Bill 18. It enables police to remove children from dangerous situations which these children may not have the maturity or lucidity to react to themselves. In some circumstances, this removal may be seen as a forcible rescue, but likely will be far better than no rescue at all. In addition to this, the restraining orders outlined in the bill will hopefully serve to further protect these children, and the penalties may work as a deterrent to some pimps.
It is very important to recognize that these children need a safe place to live. If it is not the home of family or friends, it must be a place that is considerably better than the streets. Once these children are removed from these dangerous situations, they can begin their long journey back to a safer life.
The advisory committee on child prostitution, spearheaded by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Sudbury, has developed a program, which is called Unhooked, to help these children realize alternative, healthier lifestyles, with such components as drug-addiction and sexual assault counselling, peer mentoring and mainstream activities. We believe these program components, along with outreach work in the streets and public education campaigns in schools, will serve to bring this issue into the open where this problem can be addressed. Bill 18 supports this action.
This legislation alone will not wipe out child prostitution, but it is a step in the right direction. All children deserve to be protected. I thank you for this opportunity to express my thoughts.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have approximately five minutes per caucus. Ms Martel of the NDP.
Ms Martel: Thank you very much for coming here today. Tell us more, please, about the program, because we've heard a number of other presenters make reference to it, specifically: who you're looking to for funding, the resources you're looking for, how many children you think you're going to be in a position to serve, is it a regional initiative, are we talking about northeastern Ontario etc.
Ms Zadra: The program initially is set up for 18 months. We've designed it that way because it is very new and we're not sure how it's going to go. We do realize, first and foremost, that something must be done. We recognize there's a problem and we must act.
The program will deal with prostitutes in the Sudbury area. We don't know how far we'll be able to reach. We're trying to get as far as we can with outreach, with education through schools, with public awareness campaigns. The whole program is designed to begin in September. We are still looking for funds. We've been actively seeking funds to operate the program for several months now. We have gone to the federal Department of Justice. The crime prevention pot hopefully will send some money our way. We have set up some meetings with regional health and social services, and we have also had discussions which will hopefully bring our project to the province and perhaps get some funds through there too.
Ms Martel: The amount of funding that's being requested is --
Ms Zadra: It's in excess of $200,000 for the program for 18 months.
Ms Martel: This is dealing specifically with those children that the agencies, to the best of their ability, have been able to identify as child prostitutes?
Ms Zadra: Yes. This program is voluntary. There is no way you can drag these kids in and try to make them conform to certain things. They have to want to get help. We realize there may be times when these children will have to come in more than once to the program. The program is very open-ended, so anyone can come in at any time and start receiving assistance. Initially, of course, the program will identify what their needs are, health concerns, addiction concerns and that sort of thing, and then move on to psychological and mental health issues and anything else they may require. It's a work in progress. We know we have to make changes as we move along in the program to improve it, but it's definitely a place to start. We've covered as many bases as we can possibly foresee at this time.
Ms Martel: But you would not be acting as a safe house, in that respect?
Ms Zadra: No. We would like to eventually see a safe house set up somewhere. Right now this is a program that would tentatively run from about 1 in the afternoon to 9 at night, given the fact that children are going to be in school again and some prostitutes do continue with their school work sometimes or else say they are in school when they in fact are working on the street. We're trying to make the hours conform to what we think they will be able to use, and that may change too. We'll find that out. But right now we're hoping to deal with the kids when they come in on their own. We also hope to deal with the parents of these kids, help them, give them support. As well, we have tentatively worked out an agreement where these kids will not be criminalized.
Ms Martel: Do we have a safe house in this community?
Ms Zadra: Not for these children. There are different areas where they can go. Some are taken to Sudbury Youth Services, for example. Some of the older ones can seek some refuge at Genevra House. But there is no one place for children or women who have this particular problem in their lives.
Ms Martel: So for the purposes of this bill, we need to address that as much as we need to deal with the counselling and programming issues that you're trying to find funding for.
Ms Zadra: In the program right now we're hoping to find maybe some temporary places for them to stay, maybe some willing community members. But there is nothing definite right now. Some safe place which removes them from the dangerous elements in the city would be ideal, eventually.
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Mr Jim Brown: Good afternoon. You're probably not aware, but the province itself has a program for crime prevention, called Partners Against Crime.
Ms Zadra: Yes.
Mr Jim Brown: So you are aware. That's substantial, and we're trying to build some public-private partnerships to expand the amount of money available many times what it is right now.
In the discussions that go on, they're children involved in this terrible aspect of criminal activity, really. But it's adults who have got them in this problem, whether it's strip joints, massage parlours or whatever. We're not talking too much about what we should do about the pimps and the johns. It's the pimps and the johns that make the system work, unfortunately. What do you think we can do to attack those adults who are making a lot of money on our kids? What do we do to shut them down? What do we do to attack the root cause of this problem? Indeed, those adults are the root cause.
Ms Zadra: I agree with you. You may know that our local police force has already begun a program that's called DISC: deter, identify, sex-trade consumers. It has worked rather effectively to target the johns in the short time it has been in existence. As far as the pimps are concerned, I'm not sure how you would deal with that. I think police need larger teeth to bite into this problem. They have to be given a certain amount of authority, because what happens in their situation most often is that the girls are the only ones, or the boys sometimes, who can testify against the pimps to bring them forward on criminal charges, and they are very afraid to do this, for very good reasons. If there is some way the police can actually do their work with regard to the pimps, I would like to see that.
Mr Jim Brown: The province has put an extra $150 million into front-line policing, and we hope that will achieve some relief in that regard.
In terms of what else we can do, my question to some other people who have presented was, what if we had civil enforcement? What if we took the cars of the johns, which would be a very big economic disincentive to get involved in this market, and seized the assets of the pimps and did it civilly, not criminally; actually froze their assets and sued them for cost recovery, the cost to OHIP, the cost of treating their victims and so on and so on; and if we seized the assets of the drug dealers? Pimps and drug dealers go hand in hand. What would you say about that?
Ms Zadra: I would imagine that anything that makes this profession less lucrative for them would probably go quite some distance in dealing with this problem in a beneficial way. My only concern is that some of these activities may be forced underground because of that and therefore we are less able to see --
Mr Jim Brown: They're already underground. By definition, they're already underground.
Ms Zadra: Yes, I know. Further underground.
Mr Bartolucci: Marianne, thanks very much for your presentation. Thanks for leaving some time for some questions. You know section 13 deals with the demand side of this. Do you not think a combined prison sentence or fine of $25,000, 24 months in jail is pretty indicative that we're addressing the demand side of this as well as the supply side? There are some other alternatives that have been explored in other provinces, such as the suspension of drivers' licenses in British Columbia and the seizing of cars in Saskatchewan, if I'm not mistaken, so there are some other initiatives going on. But certainly I don't think this bill is totally isolated from the demand side, and I think we should make that point clear.
When we define "protective safe house," we're not necessarily looking at putting a lot of money into new construction, correct?
Ms Zadra: Yes.
Mr Bartolucci: Give us some alternatives of where a protective safe house could be.
Ms Zadra: I know through some of the discussions we've had with former prostitutes, for example, that they would like to see something that is, as I said, removed from the immediate threat. They are afraid of the drug pushers who may be after them for some money they owe or think they owe, and the pimps, of course, especially if they're younger, because they want them out on the streets earning money for them. If they can be removed, some of the girls have said, to maybe something like a farm setting, something that's wholesome, something that keeps them away and also is difficult for them to leave -- certainly, if it is a rural setting, they can hitchhike and get back into town and get back into work. No one can really stop them from doing that and you're certainly not going to want to keep them under lock and key. This has to be something that is a mindset change for them, something they want to do. But if you can make it easier for them by making it a little bit difficult for them to get back in to the scene, then I think it's beneficial.
Mr Bartolucci: It could be existing centres that we have already, it could be existing foster homes, it could be existing facilities. We're not looking at spending great degrees of money in building new centres, but what we are very adamant about is that there has to be some type of resources attached to the program side. Correct?
Ms Zadra: Exactly. One idea that was bandied about was some sort of reciprocal agreement with certain agencies, similar agencies or similar programs in other cities. Not only can we take them out of the area but out of the city altogether, so they do not know who the pimps are, they do not know who the other working girls are and it's much more difficult for them to get back into it. As long as they agreed to that, it would probably go a long way in acting as a deterrent for the girls.
Mr Bartolucci: Do we have more time?
The Chair: You have a couple of minutes.
Mr Bartolucci: That's great. Marianne, for the committee, could you please outline those agencies and those groups involved in Unhooked, just to show the broad scope that could be a model for other communities to follow.
Ms Zadra: There are many, and they change from meeting to meeting because time restrictions don't allow everyone to come to every meeting we have. We have people representing sexual assault crisis centres, health, native health issues, spiritual issues, addictions, most definitely, and there are some people who are just concerned citizens and people who come from the life who used to live that life formerly.
Mr Bartolucci: Along with our police services?
Ms Zadra: Definitely. I don't mean to exclude them. Police services, young offender agencies.
Mr Gerretsen: How does the program work?
Ms Zadra: The program has yet to start. But it will work by offering these girls a place to come where they can, at first, as I said, get their immediate needs addressed and assessed, and then take it from there and see what they are willing to do and help them along with any changes they may be wanting to make in their lives.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Zadra, for appearing here today. You've given us a great deal of information and we value it.
Before I call the next presenter, I want to repeat what I said earlier, for members of the public and certainly the media who are here: There are individuals who are appearing before us who are doing so out of courage and conviction and it's important to protect their privacy. I would ask that no film or pictures be taken of the next presenter.
JEAN
The Chair: May I ask Jean to come forward. Thank you very much for being here. I know it can't be easy for you, but we're very appreciative that you're here.
Jean: Good afternoon, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. I first became familiar with Bill 18 when I saw Rick on television talking about the bill and young children involved with prostitution. I contacted him and shared my story with him and told him that if he needed any help I would be willing to give some input. Then Pat Nurmi called me concerning a committee that was going to be addressing this issue. I am sitting on the committee of Unhooked right now as a consultant and an ex-worker.
I'm here out of concern for the young people, not only in Sudbury but all over, who at this very moment are engaging in a sexual act with a stranger or someone they know for money. That is what they call prostitution. Instead of the young ones playing with their friends or oohing and aahing at their teen idols, they are learning the ways of an adult world filled with drugs and crime and selling their bodies, not by choice most of the time.
The world of prostitution is a very dark one. Television tends to glamorize this profession, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of it, the whole thing, the act itself is a very dehumanizing one. You can have a limo pick you up, but you are still in a room with a total stranger with sex being the focus. You can have a taxi pick you up to take you to your next date, but you are still lying down with a stranger. You can be walking down the street wearing the most expensive dress and telling yourself that you're better than the other girls, but the fact of the matter is that you still have some old guy lying on top of you wanting you to pretend that you like it, and really you don't even know him. The young ones may not have a choice because if they don't perform and pretend to like it, it could result in a beating, leaving not only physical scars but also emotional ones.
Poverty and abuse, I would say, are two of the contributing factors that would provoke someone into prostitution, poverty because if the finances are not there to support oneself, this alternative work starts to look really good. The lure of easy money has a strong appeal, but it isn't very easy considering the hefty price a person has to pay, ie, disease, low self-esteem etc. I say abuse, because when a child grows up in an abusive environment they are a product of that environment, learning to hate, to be angry, to distrust people, and the list goes on and on.
My personal story involves the things I've mentioned above: abuse, self-hatred, anger, low self-esteem etc. I would ask that you keep an open mind while I share my story with you, not for my own benefit but for others.
My story starts off in Sudbury. I come from a middle-class family and for the first six years of my life lived in the flour mill area. We lived in an apartment building which was owned by my grandparents. Needless to say, being the firstborn, I was my grandmother's favourite and she neglected my other three siblings. Her abusive nature and the love-hate triangle I had with my father and grandmother ended the day she died in January 1997.
I talk about my grandmother because she had a lot to do with my upbringing, whether my parents liked it or not, and they didn't especially. My mother used to fight with my father all the time about me and my grandmother, which used to make me feel bad.
At the age of seven we moved out to the valley and that's when the abuse started. I was born with a few disabilities, my legs and my eyes. I was told every day that I was useless and would not amount to anything, and I believed it, mostly because my grandmother had pity on me and kept telling my mother to do everything for me because I wasn't capable of doing it for myself.
In grade 2 I got the nickname of "Granny" because I walked slow, wore glasses and talked funny. Along with this name was also a great deal of abuse, which consisted of being tripped, thrown down the stairwells, beaten up in the school yard, along with the relentless name-calling. This ruined any chances I had of a normal childhood or a date in high school, and this lasted until I quit in grade 11.
I remember the feeling of wanting to die at the age of eight and the suicide attempts started at the age of 13. At that time I ended up in the Algoma sanitarium because of my attempt. Being accepted by the other kids was my main focus and I tried hard, especially with the boys because I wanted to be like the other girls. The hatred I had for myself was so strong that I didn't feel loved at home so I went elsewhere to get it. My grandmother babied me, insulted me, put me down and also reinforced the idea that nobody liked me, and I believed it.
I turned to sex as a way of finding love and acceptance. The love and acceptance level I received lasted as long as the sex did, so then I went back to square one, finding love and acceptance, which meant finding someone to be with again. That is when I started getting sex, love and commitment all mixed up. I thought sex was love and I needed a lot of love, which meant it brought me a lot of partners. I basically grew up with no self-esteem, people skills or any social skill required to function in society, get a job or just the basic skills of getting along with people.
I moved out of the house when I was 16 years old, and my grandmother paid for my first apartment. I got on welfare but I was never without money because my grandmother also supported me financially, which hindered me a great deal, but I didn't know that at the time.
I started drinking and doing drugs as soon as I got on my own. When I was 21, my grandmother moved into Pioneer Manor, which meant I was going to be cut off from my money supply, so I had to find a way to get more money because I hadn't really been without.
I had a friend who had a friend who was a dancer, and so she got me in touch with an agent at the Coulson who sent me to the Soo for my first gig. That is when I was first approached about prostitution, about prostituting myself for $150. I said no, because I didn't do that kind of thing. I was offered quite a bit of money that first week.
After a while, the money that I was offered to prostitute was too good to refuse, so a year and a half into my stripping career, I started making about $450 or more a day or every two days on top of my pay for dancing. When I couldn't stand the world of dancing any more, I came back to Sudbury, and of course the money wasn't coming in any more like it used to, so I turned to hooking on Elgin Street, which did not bring in $150. It brought in $40 to $60 if I was lucky, and the guy told me I could get an extra $20 if he didn't have to wear a condom. I lost out on the extra money because I thought my life was more important.
I valued myself on how much money I received. When I was on the road I got $150 for my services and I felt great about myself, but when I was at home on Elgin I got $50 or $60 and hated myself.
The dancing, the drinking and the prostituting continued until August 1989, when I joined Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and quit everything, and then my personal healing journey began. I received a lot of therapy, numerous counselling sessions in treatment centres. I had to learn to grow up and deal with people and learn that I was not the most terrible person that I thought I was.
It has been a very long road in the last nine years. I would like to be honest in saying that when I'm broke I think about going back to the old lifestyle because I have no money, but it's not worth the guilt and self-hatred that the lifestyle brings.
When I was a kid, I didn't say to myself, "When I grow up, I want to be a hooker or a stripper," but that's what happened. The children are the most valuable assets that this world has, because they are the future, and I don't want my future growing up to think that money is more important than self. This is why I agree with Bill 18. That would give more power to the police to go in and remove these kids from a devastating, dangerous situation and lifestyle.
Although I support Bill 18, this is not the solution to this problem. Education and prevention is, which will require financial backing from the government to curb this problem.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the office of Rick Bartolucci for the help with the use of their computer and Pat Nurmi for listening to my tears and comforting me through this process.
If there are any questions, please feel free to ask me now.
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The Chair: Thank you very much for your statement here today. We have just over three minutes per caucus. We begin with the Conservatives.
Mrs Ross: Thank you, Jean, very much. I want to ask you a couple of questions. You say that you are involved in the Unhooked committee.
Jean: Yes.
Mrs Ross: Unfortunately, I didn't get an opportunity to ask some questions on that, but one of the things that she talked about was that the program is going to run 18 months. As someone who has some understanding for the problems out there, I'm curious to know, because it's all voluntary, how you would have reacted to a program -- obviously you think it's a good program, but how do you get yourself involved in that, committed to an 18-month period?
Jean: I started at the age of 21, but people had tried to give me the help at that time and I refused it. Between 11 and 15, they're minors, so they would have to be forced into it, but sometimes forcing someone into a program might not work. Like Marianne said earlier, it might take two or three times, just like alcoholics. They go through two or three times for treatment before they get it.
Mrs Ross: In August 1989, you said, you joined AA. Are you still a member of AA?
Jean: Yes.
Mrs Ross: Good for you.
A lot of comment has been made about the fact that these are mere children we're talking about, and as horrifying as it is to have them involved in these crimes, there is not enough done to protect them or to penalize those adults taking advantage of these children. Would you agree that there should be stiffer penalities for adults?
Jean: I don't know. Some of these people in prison, it's like a swinging door. They get used to that lifestyle, so that's all they know. Yes, I agree with stiff penalties but also rehabilitation to help these people, because going in and out of jail is not helpful.
Mr Bartolucci: I want to thank Jean for her presentation today. You're a very, very brave young lady, and you know what you have done hopefully is to affect the future of many other children, and I would suggest to you that your contributions here today are enormous. I want you to understand that.
The committee knows how difficult this must be for you, and certainly I do, having witnessed you coming in and out of the office and putting this presentation together. Understand that what you have done today is significant in scope and very meaningful in reality. You have effected change in a very, very positive way. Whether it be defined as Bill 18 or whatever else, know that somewhere along the line, Jean's contribution has been enormous. The children who are affected by this won't be able to thank you because they'll not know that you contributed in a very substantial way, but we do, and you should know that we consider your testimony very, very important. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Mr Gerretsen, do you have a question?
Mr Gerretsen: No, only that I think you have given very stunning testimony here today, very stirring. Thank you.
Ms Martel: Thank you very much for coming here today to share your story with us. Tell me, what was it that finally allowed you to decide, first, to get into AA, and second, to make a decision to leave the sex trade?
Jean: My drinking had taken over my life. I was not nice to be around; that's what a lot of people told me. My aunt came into my life, who is in AA, and convinced me that I didn't have to live like that any more. I didn't believe her. Being in that kind of life, you get used to it. I got used to it and I thought that was the only life to live. I basically went into AA just to shut my aunt up, because I got tired of her telling me all this stuff: "You can change." "Yeah, yeah, right." So I went into AA and then I stayed, but not without a lot of therapy, a lot of counselling, numerous treatment centres to get me here.
Ms Martel: Your addiction, in relative terms, started much later than some of the other kids that we've been focusing on today.
Jean: I think my addiction started when I was two, because I started sipping on my dad's rye and Coke to have that little bit of alcohol in my system. At the age of eight, I started raiding the liquor cabinet.
Ms Martel: In terms of making the conscious decisions you did to get into AA, to leave the sex trade, you were older in relative terms than a number of --
Jean: Yes.
Ms Martel: You would have never gotten out of this had you been 12, 13, 14 and left to your own devices in a voluntary way. You would have had to have been apprehended in the same way that this bill focuses on apprehending children to start to make a difference.
Jean: Yes.
Ms Martel: You just could have never made those choices, for all kinds of reasons, at an earlier age.
Jean: No. If I had a role model who I looked up to who came into my life and told me that I didn't have to live that way, like my aunt when she came into my life at the age of 25, then it would have probably mattered, made a difference when I was younger. At the age of 15, when I started going with boys, I think if I knew that I could have gotten money for what I was doing, I would have taken it.
The Chair: Thank you very, very much, Jean. I speak for the whole committee when I say that what you did here today was very brave and we appreciate your being here.
SUDBURY SEXUAL ASSAULT CRISIS CENTRE
The Chair: May I ask the Sudbury Sexual Assault Crisis Centre to come forward, Alexandra Dean. Welcome. Thank you for being here. You have 20 minutes for your presentation. Whatever time you don't use, we may follow up with some questions.
Ms Alexandra Dean: That sounds great, thank you. As you know, my name is Alexandra Dean. I'm the office coordinator of the Sudbury Sexual Assault Crisis Centre.
I'm here as a representative of our organization in support of the passing of Bi11 18. The bill itself is not difficult for us to support, as it represents one of the main philosophies of our centre. That is to eliminate sexual violence against women and children, as well as to ensure and work towards an egalitarian society that values and honours these members of our communities. I'm sure that's a philosophy and ideology that everybody here also shares.
The whole purpose of this bill is to protect the rights of children, whether they be sexual, emotional or physical rights. It is incumbent upon society and all of us individually to ensure the safety of children. As human beings, we must all be concerned with what's going on in this world. We are a collective, the result of collective influences, forces and conditions. What affects one person in the context of exploitation affects all of us, our families and our communities. By accepting the objectification and abuse of children, our passivity will have detrimental consequences on the living conditions of our present status and that of future generations.
When anything threatens the rights of our children and threatens our children, we have to decide on what is the right action. But what is the right action? One that gives children an opportunity to grow up without violence, oppression, subjugation and violation of their bodies and spirits. We all have a vested interest in creating safety for all of our children.
So why do children and youth become involved in prostitution? As with all social issues of concern, there are root causes for their existence. Child and youth prostitution is a painful and difficult survival strategy for many. In many cases, teenage and child prostitutes have entered this field as a direct result of sexual, emotional and/or physical abuse within the context of their homes and their environments. Another common reason for juvenile prostitution is due to the fact that they are being forced to enter the sex trade by a person who has been trusted by us to take good care of them -- their parent, their guardian, or somebody who is in a position of authority.
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Youth prostitution is personally dangerous and destructive in terms of self-alienation and proclivity for violence inherent in this activity. Though many youth first experience some form of prostitution at home, most join the ranks of over one million runaways each year. They act on a healthy impulse for survival by escaping home situations that include neglect, divorce, physical and sexual abuse.
Introduction to prostitution usually occurs through initial contact with a customer. A man drives up to them on the street or picks them up while they're hitchhiking. He offers money to "help them out." The deed in exchange is sexual. The youth is seldom surprised, since the dynamics of their home life have contributed to this behaviour as an option. Frequently, youth recall a sexually negative childhood label pronounced by a significant family member before the child was seven years old. If the youth's behaviour persists, as necessity may dictate, she becomes vulnerable to the pimp, who offers food, shelter, clothing and discipline, which is usually interpreted as genuine caring through the provision of structure and control.
The youth is visible on the street and is either approached directly by a pimp or introduced through other street people within a week. If the youth does not willingly accept the pimp's offer of protection, direction and support, intimidation and threats of violence are sufficient inducement to concede. The youth in prostitution lives a structured, controlled and very monitored life under the watchful eye of the pimp. Nevertheless, it is an adult lifestyle involving alcohol, drug use, after-hours bars and sex for trade. Their activity is always known and their movement is severely restricted according to the pimp's wishes.
The families of children in prostitution are usually unstable and disordered in the extreme. They often become so extended that family history is almost impossible to determine. Step-parents and foster siblings further complicate the situation, since they may change frequently. Only 2% of families with a child in prostitution contain both natural parents. Another mitigating factor in the youth's dysfunctional family is the almost total lack of structure. The youth receives few guidelines on how to spend time, define self and view the future. Chaos demands attention to the problem of finishing the day with little motivation or energy for reflection on the quality of that experience and how it impinges on the youth as a person. Consistency and limit-setting are conspicuously absent. Sadly, the only consistency in many of these children's lives is the threat or realization of neglect and abuse.
The preponderance of juveniles in prostitution with a history of abuse is striking. Statistics always vary; however, it has been estimated through studies that 95% of youth in prostitution are victims of violent physical abuse, 90% are victims of sexual abuse by a non-family adult and 80% are victims of blood family incest. One myth surrounding prostitution is that a sex trade worker cannot be sexually assaulted. However, 85% of young prostitutes are raped, beaten, sodomized and abused by either their customers or pimps.
One of the problems with the laws regarding prostitution is that there is little distinction made between adult and juvenile prostitution. There is a very distinct difference with relation to the dynamics of their lifestyles and their needs. Typically, youth are arrested and either returned to their homes or placed in a juvenile facility. Due to the root causes I've just mentioned, especially in the case of incest survivors, when the juvenile is returned home they will most likely run away again, and this only continues the cycle. Rarely do they receive any counselling, support or assistance.
This bill takes this important aspect into focus by attempting to create a method of facilitating change and support in the juvenile's life. By creating a safety net for these youth, social service providers, law enforcers and mentors can become more involved in what is happening in the child's life and why they are in the sex trade in the first place. These providers will be in a better position to provide support and alternatives to both children and their families.
I trust that with this information it is not difficult to see why the passing of this bill is a positive step. What sadder commentary on our social behaviour would there be than to sit idly by and not do anything to create change? Now lack of information or ignorance is no longer a rationalization for passivity. Knowing that the life of a young prostitute is filled with violence, abuse and fear, it is our obligation as human beings to do something about it. Not responding to this social issue reinforces the idea that the body is a commodity and does not belong to the person.
There is an old African proverb that states it takes a whole village to raise a child. Our communities need to work together in ensuring that a child's life is filled with love and honour, not neglect and pain. Our responsibility in raising children is to teach them above all else to respect others and themselves. But when the paramountcy of self-respect and love is not given to children, but rather violence, threats, self-destruction and fear, then it is tragically all too clear why some youth get involved in prostitution.
Our silence does not protect them but further perpetuates the false lessons they have learned about objectification and non-value. Prostitution is not isolated from us; it is not something we can ignore. Your support of this bill is the first step in ensuring that the lives of our present youth and future youth will be protected.
The Chair: Thank you very much. We have a few minutes per caucus. We begin with the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks very much, Alexandra, for an excellent presentation. A twofold question: First, at the assault crisis centre do you see children between the ages of 12 and 17 coming in who are physically abused related to prostitution?
Ms Dean: Do you want me to go with that one first?
Mr Bartolucci: Sure.
Ms Dean: Within the context of the centre we're certainly aware of the prostitution that is going on in this city. It is incumbent upon us by law that if we hear of anybody under the age of 16 we do have to report that, so no, we don't specifically see children under 16 years old. However, through discussions with other people who either know them or have seen them, either friends of theirs or potentially family members who are worried about them, we're well aware of it. The majority of the women we serve are incest survivors, so in that context as well, there are a lot of women who may no longer be in the sex trade who have this history. So we know this isn't an anomaly.
Mr Bartolucci: One final question: I mentioned this earlier this morning, but a part of this bill that I consider to be significant suggests that the minister would implement some type of programming, whether it be education, treatment etc, or a combination of many. Do you see this as vital to the success of eradicating the problem?
Ms Dean: Oh, it's essential, absolutely essential. As I said, there are so many root causes to the problem that if you simply put a band-aid on it, that doesn't solve anything. You have to look at providing services and support and alternatives for children and for their families as well in terms of how we can support these kids, how we can support each other in creating change. Also in the context of sexual violence, by nature we need a lot of education on that.
Ms Martel: Bearing in mind that the victims you see and deal with in the centre are usually incest survivors and not child prostitutes, tell me a little bit about what services you are in a position to offer or can access, what they are, are there waiting lists, and if you were to put this bill into place, what would it mean about what we have to do to make sure we can have child prostitutes then access those services?
Ms Dean: We are involved with the Unhooked program as well. There are two things, actually, that our centre is involved in in terms of providing support. One is that we have a 24-hour crisis line, and that allows children to access somebody, whether it's 4 o'clock in the morning, and that's already in place. We're also potentially going to be opening our doors one night a week for places for people to go, a safe space to go until the facility that is intended to be created, pending funding and all that great stuff, is happening. In terms of waiting lists, currently we don't have a waiting list, which is actually really great. That's an unusual thing. Certainly we would be able to provide services in terms of one-on-one counselling as well as group services. That's something that is also very helpful.
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Ms Martel: What do you do about counselling for drug or alcohol addiction if your survivor comes in with that as part of their dilemma?
Ms Dean: The main focus of our counselling services and our resources is around sexual violence, so if somebody is coming to us around that context and there are other things involved in that, we would be able to provide some services in terms of alcohol and drugs as they relate specifically to sexual violence. If somebody is coming to us because they're looking to get off either drugs or alcohol, we would refer them, because that's not our resource.
Mr Jim Brown: Good afternoon. Thanks for the great presentation. In your presentation and several presentations throughout the day, people are talking about support for the victims, the kids. I keep coming back to the adults who are involved in the trade who make it happen and what we can do about those adults: the pimp-cum-drug dealer, the john. My suggestion is that we take the car of the john, which would make a truly effective weapon to stop the business, and go after the pimp-cum-drug dealer and seize their assets and do whatever we can to take away the incentive for doing business. I'd like your comments about that and what else we can do to get at the real root causes, which are a bunch of ruthless adults, called pimps and johns, who are using the kids.
Ms Dean: What we can do to create change in that?
Mr Jim Brown: Yes, and go after the people who are really causing the problem.
Ms Dean: It's a really complicated question, actually. It's not something that can be answered really quickly.
Mr Jim Brown: But you'd agree that those are really the catalysts to this whole problem we've got? If it weren't for pimps and johns, we wouldn't be talking here today.
Ms Dean: No, actually I don't agree with you on that. I agree that this certainly is a big part of the problem, that if there aren't people there using these services, then there's no service. However, simply in terms of our social conditioning, we don't believe children when they tell us that they are being hurt at home. That's a big problem.
Mr Jim Brown: But if there were no pimps and johns, there'd be no trade; there'd be no prostitution. There might be some other problems, but the problem of prostitution, if there were no pimps and johns, wouldn't exist.
Ms Dean: That's half the problem. That's the point I'm trying to make. I agree with you that there have to be stronger deterrents to keep people from using these services, but what I'm trying to point out is that that's only half the problem. If those customers are not there, you still have the issues related to why these children are getting involved in prostitution in the first place.
Mr Jim Brown: There wouldn't be any prostitution, but the kids still may have a problem; I give you that. But if we were tougher with the guys who are making it happen, we wouldn't have it happening.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Dean. We appreciate your being here and giving us your experience at the centre.
ELIZABETH FRY SOCIETY, SUDBURY BRANCH
The Chair: Heather Campbell, president of the Elizabeth Fry Society. Welcome, Ms Campbell. We're delighted to have you here and we're looking forward to your presentation.
Ms Heather Campbell: It's going to be brief. I'll just read from what I've written here today.
I am responding on behalf of the Elizabeth Fry Society, Sudbury branch. My position within the agency is president of the board of directors. Our mandate as a non-profit agency is to assist women who are in conflict with the law or at risk of becoming in conflict with the law.
We have historically assisted older prostitutes who have been placed in jail for soliciting, their history having begun as young teens escaping abusive situations and finding only the street as an alternative. Growth, education and opportunity were all taken away. Trying to escape their present circumstances, they find themselves on the street. Knowing no better, they rely on adults who have made the streets their home.
The fear of going home to a dysfunctional environment, a need for drugs, a need for love and caring by some adult figure all contribute to a blurred sense of reality. Soon it leads to drug use, disease, debt, daily violence and sometimes suicide. This must be stopped.
As an agency working with women who have participated in the sex trade for long periods of time, one factor remains clear: The earlier a young person begins their prostitution activities, the earlier they will be exposed to other criminal activities to survive. This bill will be another step in acknowledging the importance of children in our community, children who are often ignored, children who never escape the street.
We at Elizabeth Fry Society want to also address these children and, as a community agency concerned, support Bill 18. We believe that children under the age of 18 do in fact require community action to protect them from the sex trade industry. However, we also want to make very clear that we want to assist these children to avoid being criminally charged and getting trapped in the justice system like many of their older colleagues. These measures must be supported by making sure that there are safe houses, programs and support to address all issues that lie underneath their reasons for ending up on the street.
As our work is focused on assisting these children, there is a need for further action to divert those forcing young children into the sex trade for their own uses. We at the Elizabeth Fry Society, Sudbury branch, are committed to providing programs to assist these children to leave and prevent those lured into the sex trade.
The Chair: We have approximately six minutes per caucus. We begin with the New Democratic Party.
Ms Martel: Thank you for coming today to present to us. Tell me about some of the other conflicts with the law that women who come into your care -- and I use that in the most positive sense -- have experienced outside of prostitution. What else is happening in their lives?
Ms Campbell: Mainly drug use. Oftentimes they will be charged for drug use, shoplifting, very minor offences, but it gets them behind bars. It doesn't address the real issues of why they're there.
Ms Martel: As I understand it, you've worked out some agreement -- I don't know if it's been formalized or not yet -- with the Sudbury Regional Police, that young children who participate in the new program that you want to put forward are not going to be charged. Is that correct?
Ms Campbell: Nothing's final yet, but that's what we're working on.
Ms Martel: I was told earlier that there would be only one or two other occasions where any police force has entered into an agreement like that. Is that true?
Ms Campbell: That sounds true, yes.
Ms Martel: So what they will be hoping to do is that on a voluntary level, if they are apprehended, they will be able to make some kind of choice. In fact, they'll enter this program, and as a result of entering the program there will be no charges laid.
Ms Campbell: The program you're talking about, Unhooked -- I don't know if it's been discussed already today -- is an alternative. Most often the girls end up in jail. There's no programming. This program will be able to divert them from being behind bars and get them into a program to address the real issues behind what's going on in their lives.
Ms Martel: The older women -- I'm careful about how I use that -- who come in, who start to deal with E. Fry I'm assuming come into your care for help after they've gone through the whole process of being charged, some kind of jail or probation etc.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Ms Martel: At that point, they may or may not have had a long history of any kind of other criminal activity as well -- and I say "criminal" in the sense of victims of crime -- that you certainly want to try and overcome at a much earlier age, hence the focus on the new program dealing with kids at a much younger age.
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Ms Campbell: The Unhooked program is designed for underage; however, we still have our existing programs that address the other prostitutes who come to us anyway because they're in the criminal justice system.
Ms Martel: What programs are you in a position to offer for older prostitutes?
Ms Campbell: We basically just have the direct serv-ice where we go into the jail and talk to them. They have one-on-one counselling. They have group counselling. This has all existed for a long time, so it's still there. The difference between the older prostitutes and the younger is that the younger -- and this bill means we have an opportunity as adults to direct them into programs that'll help, whereas for the older it's their choice. Oftentimes eating versus going to the program -- you can't address it for them. They're in survival mode by that time.
Mr Jim Brown: Good afternoon. You're talking about a pre-charge diversion program, I think.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Mr Jim Brown: We call it citizens' court, and the crime commission has made a recommendation on exactly what you're talking about. There has been a very successful operation in Cornwall for the past four or five years. They've been using post-charge, so after the charge has been laid by the police it goes to a community tribunal, which decides some sort of sanction for young people, whether it be a combination of restitution and community work, an apology or whatever.
We've recommended that we expand that program and that we go to 10 pilots and carry on from there. It's been very successful in Manitoba, where they have 70 such tribunals basically modelled after the sentencing circles of the native Canadians. I just wanted to let you know that that's high on our hit parade and we'd like to talk to you more about that.
Having brought that to your attention, I'd just like to pass the microphone over to Lillian Ross.
Mrs Ross: It's your organization that's working on the Unhooked program?
Ms Campbell: Yes, it is.
Mrs Ross: OK. We've heard a lot about the fact that you can't force these children to do certain things, that it has to be voluntary and that sort of thing, yet this bill gives police the power to get children off the streets. I would say that would probably be an involuntary action on the part of the children. I'm curious to know from your perspective how you think that would work. When we say that if they don't want to get the help, that they have to want the help first to be able to get the help, can you help me understand this?
Ms Campbell: That is a tough issue for us at Elizabeth Fry because we do not want to support anything that encourages incarceration, encourages situations where they get used to police custody or police involvement in their lives. Right now they're afraid of the police and they avoid them, but once you get in the system you get familiar with the process of the system and you can then deal with it and it just becomes a part of your life.
One thing that Corrine Fewster had mentioned once at one of our meetings was that she really cares about the girls out there and the only thing she could do to take the girl off the street was to put her in jail. For that moment, I hurt. You know what? Sometimes we only have the choice right now to use these measures to get the girls off the street. At the same time, doing that, we have to create a program so they're not in jail but they're in a safe place. If we're going to do that, OK, but let's make sure it's with something that supports it.
Mrs Ross: I'm in favour of this bill, by the way, though I'd like to see some other things included in it. But one thing I wanted to ask is that the lady who was here from the health unit said the same thing, "We need to go to them," and Elizabeth Fry goes to the group of ladies they help. How would you suggest you could go to these children to help them as opposed to them coming to you? How would that work?
Ms Campbell: It's like Corrine Fewster being on the street. They know her. We'll have outreach people they will get used to. It's a trust situation that will eventually develop. Also, having a program there in the city, they will get used to it. "OK, I know it's there. I may not go today; I may go tomorrow or I may go next month." But just having it exist and having the community support it is fantastic.
Mr Gerretsen: We've heard an awful lot about Elizabeth Fry's activities here in Sudbury. I come from Kingston, where Elizabeth Fry and John Howard play a tremendous role because of the seven penitentiaries we have in the area. What is the institutional set-up here in Sudbury? You really don't have any provincial or federal institutions here, do you?
Ms Campbell: We just have the Sudbury Jail, which is provincial.
Mr Gerretsen: Right, OK. How large is the Elizabeth Fry here in Sudbury?
Ms Campbell: Very small. We have undergone some drastic funding cuts in the last two years. In the process, though, we said, "Let's look at where our community stands and what our community needs," and that's how we discovered that child prostitution was a problem. We come across a lot of prostitutes in our work in the jails, and it made sense. We still look after the women who end up down south in the federal prisons. We have lots of work, not necessarily lots of dollars.
Mr Gerretsen: In other words, it was a definite need that your board of directors identified here and that's how you got involved in it.
Ms Campbell: Yes.
Mr Gerretsen: Obviously, we don't like to talk about funding, particularly in this climate of economic government etc, but funding is important, whether it comes from the federal or the provincial government. None of this will happen without the resources. Have you made any kind of budgetary projections of what it would cost to set up a safe house kind of environment in the Sudbury area? Has that been done at all?
Ms Campbell: The best we have been able to do is set up a program that deals with the problem for a certain number of hours a day. It's not necessarily a safe house, because a safe house requires safety. These people on the street make their money off these kids and they're not just going to give it up. They go to drastic measures to maintain it, so safe housing is another issue that needs to be looked at.
Mr Gerretsen: It seems to me you need, obviously, a facility that will be staffed 24 hours a day by some sort of supervisory person. For most of the programs I've heard about so far, those facilities are only open during the hours when probably the prostitution trade isn't at its heaviest, in other words, during the day. From the little I've heard about it, most of the activity takes place after dark, whenever that comes, until well into the small hours of the morning. That's when a lot of it seems to be happening, and that's when the safe house facilities or the other facilities don't seem to be available at this stage.
Ms Campbell: What we've come up with is just something that's, to me, small in addressing the problem, and the same with the bill. It's something that is just going to start moving us in a direction that says that as a community we think it's important to put a little bit more money and a little more effort into creating -- I mean, what do you address first? Do you address the kids? Do you address the drugs? Do you address the pimps? Where do you start? For Elizabeth Fry, we're doing what we can, and that is that we know how to help women who are in conflict with the law.
Mr Gerretsen: Great.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks very much for the presentation. You know that the legislation certainly -- Elizabeth Fry took an active part in discussing this in Unhooked. There is some aspect in the legislation which deals with the assessment of children in need of protection. From your experience and your society's experience, is that an important component? Is that a component that must stay in this bill?
Ms Campbell: Without thinking too hard on it, I'm going to say yes, because you don't know where the kids are coming from. Sometimes it's the home situation that has created why they're there; maybe not. Some of the kids are in fact living at home.
Mr Bartolucci: As a follow-up to Lillian's comments, and I agree most definitely with them, you're not going to be pulling kids off the street and forcing them to go into these programs. That's not going to work. But what you might want to do, once you get these children in -- and the initial aspect may be one that's negative, but if it produces a positive result, which can best be handled through some type of assessment, I would suggest it's an important part in the success we all want to achieve, wherever we are.
I know you said children up to the age of 18, so you're most adamant in your defence of me putting 16- and 17-year-olds into this legislation.
Ms Campbell: Definitely. At Elizabeth Fry we look at all ages, but we see your concern for those under 18, because that's where it starts. Let's do a preventive thing and look at them when they get in.
Mr Bartolucci: That's great.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Campbell. We appreciate your being here late in the day to tell us about Elizabeth Fry and your good works.
Members of the committee, we are a bit ahead of schedule. You may have noticed that we had a cancellation earlier in the day. Our next presenters are not here yet, I am advised, so we'll take a recess until they come.
Mr Bartolucci: Madam Chair, the last two presenters aren't here yet, but we did take the liberty of phoning the children's aid society in the event that whoever comes first will take that presentation.
The Chair: That will be fine. I think in any event we need a recess, so I propose that we take 15 minutes and see who shows.
The committee recessed from 1604 to 1616.
SUDBURY-MANITOULIN CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY
The Chair: We're back in session. We have with us Marion Roberts of the Sudbury-Manitoulin Children's Aid Society. Thank you very much for being here. You have 20 minutes for your presentation. In the event that there should be some time remaining, I hope you won't mind entertaining some questions from the members of the committee.
Ms Marion Roberts: Not at all. Thank you, Madam Chair, for the opportunity to present an analysis and critique of Bill 18.
Having spent the past 22 years working in child protection, I'm absolutely firm in my belief that children have inherent rights to be safe from all forms of harm, and that when that harm is of a serious nature and children cannot be protected within their own homes, they have the right to be safe and to be cared for by the state.
I was compelled to respond to Bill 18 because I believe it is crucial that when we take steps to protect children from harm in our society, we do so exercising care and attention to the interests of all parties. I am concerned that the proposed legislation infringes on the civil liberties of 16- to 18-year-olds, dismisses the constitutional rights afforded individuals under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and does not take into account existing provincial legislation, namely, the Child and Family Services Act and the Consent to Treatment Act.
I believe that if this bill were to be proclaimed into law, there would be serious effects on the children it purports to serve and ultimately would not serve its stated purpose. In this brief I will detail three major issues: (1) intent of the proposed legislation; (2) warrants and restraining orders; (3) protection of youths 16 to 18 years of age.
A larger concern I have is how governments and society in general are ignoring the underlying social, economic and systemic issues that lead children and youth to the streets in the first place. If this bill becomes law, we will be unfairly labelling abused children and youth and detaining them when the fault does not lie with them. Child and youth prostitution is a complex social ill with a myriad of underlying causes. To propose legislation to deal with child-youth victims of prostitution is addressing the problem as one of individual fault. In doing so we neglect the social conditions of inequality, powerlessness, poverty, unemployment and homelessness.
I will conclude the brief with recommendations and alternative strategies for consideration.
Child prostitution is not a new phenomenon. It has existed for centuries. The United Nations Human Rights Commission has reported that there are close to 10 million children globally engaged in prostitution. In 1997 the United Nations children's fund declared violence against women and children is the most pervasive violation of human rights in the world today. This is compounded by those who are displaced, have no visible means of support and are without shelter. How do children become engaged in prostitution? Why is the problem becoming more prevalent and what are the contributing factors that make the prostitution of children a thriving industry?
Circumstances vary. However, there appears to be consensus in the literature. The factors contributing to prostitution are documented as follows: 85% to 90% of child prostitutes come from abusive backgrounds. It is estimated that abuse in the family is the single strongest indicator of children being drawn into the commercial sex trade industry. As a result of their vulnerability, they are prime targets for exploitation from adults, who lure them into the streets. Poverty ranks high as a contributing factor as well.
When children and youth escape abusive environments, they generally have no income and are homeless. Again, this leaves them vulnerable and open to be targeted by adults who would exploit and harm them. The National Victim Center in the United States has reported that pimps control children through battering and threats of violence or by forced use of alcohol and drugs. Al Erickson, who founded the Alliance for Speaking Truth on Prostitution, is quoted as saying, "A former pimp told me how easy it was to identify kids who'd been abused and get them involved in prostitution." The Exploited Child Unit in Washington reports: "The child prostitutes coming from abusive backgrounds are suffering from low self-esteem. Once on the street they are alone and often hungry and homeless. They are vulnerable to attention. Pimps seduce these children. Once they have gained the child's trust, a dependency is created and once the child is emotionally and financially dependent on the pimp, the child is introduced to the world of commercial sexual exploitation."
What we have here is adults exploiting children for financial gain and there is no compelling evidence that I can see in my review of this issue that merely removing children from the street will serve to accomplish anything other than adults who exploit children putting new children on the street. For every child we remove, another one will take its place. Make no mistake about it, child prostitution is a sex trade that is an extremely lucrative business.
I'll deal first with the intent of the legislation. The preamble of the proposed legislation articulates, "The people of Ontario believe that...the safety, security and well-being of children and families is a paramount concern" and that "children engaged in prostitution are victims of sexual abuse and require protection" and that the "legislation is required to ensure the safety of all children and to assist children in ending their involvement with prostitution."
There is no one here, I'm certain, who would argue with this. I too believe that children are to be safeguarded and that children are victimized and require protection. However, it is at this juncture that I fundamentally disagree with the proposed legislation. It is simple, really. We have in Ontario legislation to protect children, including children who are engaged in prostitution. I fail to see the necessity of introducing new legislation to protect children when it already exists. The Child and Family Services Act, which mandates children's aid societies, ensures the safety, well-being and protection of children in Ontario.
My position is that all mandatory services to children be under one umbrella, namely, the Child and Family Services Act. I can see no legitimate reason to have two distinct pieces of legislation dealing with the protection of children. I foresee lengthy delays and confusion for the courts, police, child protection workers and the children and families we serve.
Second, warrants and restraining orders: There has been much debate in the media that this legislation will allow police to apprehend with or without a warrant. Again, I'm at a loss. Currently there are those exact same provisions in the Child and Family Services Act for both police and the child welfare worker to apprehend with or without warrants. Therefore, I do not see that this adds to what already exists.
The new bill boasts the ability to seek restraining orders if there are reasonable and probable grounds to believe a child has been harmed or is likely to be harmed or if they have been encouraged into prostitution. Section 80 of the Child and Family Services Act stipulates that the court can already make an order in a child's best interests by restraining or prohibiting a person's access to a child or contact with a child. I believe that the proposed bill's section on restraining orders is more restrictive than what currently exists. The Child and Family Services Act, section 83, also provides for those who would interfere with a child and induce that child to leave care and also to detain or harbour a child.
Third, protection of children between the ages of 16 and 18: The Child and Family Services Act presently allows for children's aid societies under certain circumstances to provide a voluntary service to 16- and 18-year-olds. Unfortunately, the province does not fund this service. Bill 18 proposes to offer a mandatory service for youths 16 to 18 if they are involved in child prostitution, ostensibly because the bill defines prostitution as child abuse. What I fail to understand is why this province would support children between 16 and 18 only if they were identified as prostitutes. What do we tell victims of sexual, physical or emotional abuse if they are between the ages of 16 and 18? The answer seems to be, "If you're not a prostitute, we can't help you."
As a children's aid society, we would not be opposed to providing child protection services to age 18. However, it is our opinion that such a service would have to be on a voluntary basis, and for all forms of abuse and neglect, not merely prostitution. The province would need to carefully plan for the increase in costs that would be associated with such a change.
The bill as it now stands proposes that police will apprehend, with or without a warrant, youth engaged in prostitution. Once apprehended, they would be returned to a parent or brought to a protective safe house. Only then are they required to inform a child protection worker. It then becomes the child welfare worker's responsibility to bring the matter before the courts under the Child and Family Services Act. We're very concerned about this section. The authority and responsibility to justify a police apprehension falls to child welfare workers. We do not believe that we would obtain a protection order based on third-party evidence.
Bill 18 proposes that the child welfare authority has the authority to confine the 16- to 18-year-old until there is a disposition. Our experience has been that there are lengthy delays in obtaining dispositions. Does this mean then that we confine youth for indeterminate periods of time when they have committed no crime? As I'm sure the committee is aware, child prostitution was decriminalized with the introduction of Bill C-15 of the federal government some time ago, so we would be detaining 16- to 18-year-olds when they've committed no crime.
The Canadian Constitution guarantees that all of us have the right not to be deprived of "life, liberty and security of the person...except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice," the "right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure" and the "right not to be arbitrarily detained." These are rights we all enjoy. In Ontario, individuals over 16 are considered adults unless they're subject to an order under the Child and Family Services Act. Bill 18 proposes to strip individuals of their rights under the charter.
Ontario has a Consent to Treatment Act. Everyone in the province with the capability to understand the treatment proffered and the consequences of the treatment has the right to refuse. The only exception is if the individual is certifiably a danger to self or others. Therefore, Bill 18 attempts to take away rights afforded youth in various pieces of legislation merely because they're involved in socially unacceptable activities.
From my experience, children involved in child prostitution have more often than not been physically, sexually or emotionally victimized as young children. They often suffer from mental health or psychiatric disorders. It is offensive that children and youth be further victimized by detaining them in safe houses while the procurers are dealt with under the Provincial Offences Act. Ultimately, children and youth become further victimized.
I have a number of recommendations I'd like to make. The bill is not yet law. I urge the committee to recommend to the government that it not be passed into law. I respectfully suggest the following, which I believe will address the issues and concerns that prompted Bill 18 to be introduced in the first place.
Firstly, I would recommend that the Child and Family Services Act, subsection 37(1) be amended regarding the definition of "child" to include 16- to 18-year-olds.
Secondly, I would recommend that we amend the Child and Family Services Act, section 81, dealing with restraining orders, to give greater latitude in seeking orders without the requirement of a finding.
Thirdly, I recommend that we amend the Child and Family Services Act, section 83, dealing with interfering with a child subject to an order, to include those who are being provided a service without the requirement of a finding.
Fourthly, I would recommend that we amend section 85 of the Child and Family Services Act dealing with fines. Currently, the offences act fine for interfering with a child is $1,000. I would recommend that this be raised to $25,000 as a deterrent.
I would further recommend that the enforcement of the Criminal Code dealing with procurers of children for the purpose of prostitution be more strictly enforced.
I would recommend that the provincial government fund child welfare agencies more adequately in order to effectively protect children from all forms of harm.
I would recommend that the provincial government adequately fund police forces and the Attorney General's offices for the enforcement of criminal provisions which are already in place.
I would recommend to the provincial government that funding for adequate treatment programs for victims of abuse be a priority, and that there be a commitment for programs aimed at prevention, early intervention and ongoing support services for victims.
I would recommend that the provision of services for youths 16 to 18 be provided on the basis of mutual consent, to incorporate rights and freedoms.
Lastly, I would suggest that the committee lobby the government for the reinstatement of welfare benefits for youths between the ages of 16 and 18 years.
In conclusion, I would just like to say that child prostitution is a very complex issue. There are no single solutions. Concerted efforts are required to eliminate the proliferation of child prostitution by tackling it, not from a victim's perspective but rather through a multi-systemic and strategic fashion. We do not need new laws. We need to strengthen existing laws, while ensuring at all times the integrity of the individuals we serve, and to ensure their rights are protected.
We all have a collective social, moral and ethical responsibility to children, their safety and well-being. Let us not hastily attempt to address a serious problem such as child prostitution without long and careful public debate from informed persons.
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The Chair: We have a limited amount of time for questions: two minutes per caucus, beginning with the Conservatives.
Mr Gerretsen: On a point of order, Madam Chair: Since this is the first presentation we've had that is against the bill, I wonder if by unanimous consent we could allow the questioning to take, let's say, five minutes per caucus. It is a different viewpoint than we have heard today. I have some questions; other members may as well.
The Chair: I have no problem with that. Our major difficulty is the plane we have to catch. Within those time constraints we have very little latitude. We can try for a couple of extra minutes, but I would ask members to be judicious.
Mr Brown, do you want to start?
Mr Jim Brown: Yes. You touched on all kinds of stuff. Some of what you said I agree with. Let's look at consent to treatment. I think you said there's nothing wrong with the consent to treatment. As a member of the crime commission -- we've been all over the province. We've heard parents break down and cry when they say they've lost control of their kid, that the kid refuses to take treatment, that they can't do anything about it. I know there's one case in Chatham where the kid had emotional problems and it was recommended that he take treatment. The parents wanted him to take treatment. The kid told the parents, "Get lost." The kid didn't undergo treatment and it got worse and worse. So I question whether the Consent to Treatment Act in its present form is good.
The Child and Family Services Act, the CFSA: I've been told that, for example, there's a curfew there, midnight to 6 am, for kids that is covered under the CFSA. I've been told that some police departments don't enforce that curfew because they don't have protection against liability for apprehending the youngsters and taking them back to either their parents or guardian, as the officers have in the Criminal Code. Therefore, they don't get involved. I'm wondering whether that lack of protection for police officers renders some of the provisions of the Child and Family Services Act really impotent.
Thirdly, I'd like to say that this government has probably done more for victims than any other government in Canada. While we're talking about that, I'd like to point out that $150 million has been set aside for more front-line policing, to address your concern in that regard. We have an OPP cadet program that will increase the number of police officers on the street.
The real germ of what I'd like to say to you is that for the whole day we've been talking about Mr Bartolucci's bill, which I kind of like, but we seem to miss the bad guys in this situation. I would like your comments. The bad guys are adults. They're generally referred to as johns and pimps, and the pimps have a side business called drug dealing. We miss them completely, both in what we're doing now and in this bill, though this bill is a good attempt at coming to grips with a serious problem.
One of the things the crime commission has looked at is civil liability for drug dealers, civil liability for johns or pimps. What I mean by that is to seize their assets, realize on their assets and claw the money back into the victims of their crime, because it would take away the incentive to make money and that would discourage them from getting involved.
Kids are kids. We've got adults who are taking advantage of these kids and I think we have to direct our attempt at the adults. When the federal government allows consensual sex, even with consideration, 14 and up -- my goodness, that's pretty bad. But we have to deal with that, and one of the ways of dealing with it is constitutionally, provincially, civil enforcement, going after their assets to discourage them. If you have any time left, you could respond to that please.
The Chair: I'm going to allow the comment, Mr Brown.
Mr Jim Brown: Thank you very much. Madam Chair, you're just terrific.
The Chair: I do my best. Thank you very much. A vote of confidence from the government pleases me no end.
Ms Roberts: I think you asked me three questions and I don't know where you would like me to start. You had a question around consent to treatment, around the curfew under the Child and Family Services Act.
Mr Jim Brown: More importantly, what do we do with the kids and the johns?
Ms Roberts: There may be a piece that I'm missing here, but my review of the Criminal Code, and I'm not a lawyer, my read of it, is that there are sections: section 212, procuring; section 151, sexual interference; section 153, sexual exploitation; and 163, corrupting morals. So I'm not certain where the difficulty lies, if it's an enforcement issue, if it's a lack of funding from the Attorney General's office. But it appears from my read of the criminal code that there are adequate provisions --
Mr Jim Brown: But we don't take away the profit they made from doing it. All I'm saying is, what do you think about taking away the profit they made from conducting business with our kids?
Ms Roberts: I hadn't thought of that before. I don't know whether I would be opposed to that or not, I'd really have to think about that.
Mr Bill Murdoch (Grey-Owen Sound): You could give the money to the Children's Aid.
The Chair: Mr Brown, you've had your turn. We'll move on to the Liberals, Mr Gerretsen?
Mr Gerretsen: I hope Hansard got Mr Murdoch's comment there. Just for the record, I think the $150-million announcement for more police costs has just been an announcement so far. There's been no allocation of funding at all. So that doesn't mean anything currently.
Just so that I understand you correctly, basically you've taken the main components of Mr Bartolucci's bill, raising the fines, raising the age limit as well, where CASs can have some definite influence rather than just a consent influence with children while they're 16 and 17. You've taken that, strictly speaking, out of the sexual content here, the sexual abuse that's taking place, and you have broadened it for CAS purposes so you can be involved in all of the various activities where children need protection. Is my reading of that correct?
Ms Roberts: Partly.
Mr Gerretsen: OK. What's the other part then?
Ms Roberts: What I'm suggesting is that certain aspects of the bill be incorporated into the Child and Family Services Act, so that there is only one piece of legislation dealing with the safety and protection of children. The piece, I think, that is different from what I am proposing and from what Bill 18 is proposing is the issue of consent for 16- to 18-year-olds.
Mr Gerretsen: What are you saying in that respect then, just so that I'm clear on it?
Ms Roberts: I'm saying that for 16- to 18-year-olds, under the proposed bill, we would be taking away some of their rights under the charter and the Consent to Treatment Act. I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to provide any kind of a service to 16- and 18-year-olds unless it's with their consent.
The Chair: Thank you. Mr Bartolucci has one quick question.
Mr Bartolucci: Just a quick question, because one of your recommendations was that you change the age of the Child and Family Services Act to include 16- and 17-year-olds. I'm wondering, is that your opinion, or is it the opinion of the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies?
Ms Roberts: Both, and it's also the opinion of Judge Hatton's report that was recently tabled with the government. The expert panel that travelled the province for the past year is also making the same recommendation, as are youth in care connections across Ontario.
Mr Bartolucci: You realize that Bill 18 is issue-specific. The Child and Family Services Act is much broader legislation, but in and with regard to prostitution and children, section 14 of my bill would override the Child and Family Services Act. And of course, you're opposed to that, correct?
Ms Roberts: Correct.
Ms Martel: Thank you for presenting what is a legitimate perspective to this committee. Let me say that the issue I think we're all trying to grapple with has to do with how we deal with 16- and 17-year-olds, in the context that has been related to us by a number of groups that have come before us, which is, are 16- and 17-year-olds, who are under considerable pressure and probably force, whose decision-making may well be affected by the use of alcohol and drugs, in a position to make a conscious decision to try and extricate themselves from the sex trade? I think that's the issue we've had some difficulty coming to terms with, which also seems to be one that you're concerned with. How do you do that? If we don't have some kind of obligation on the part of police or a mandatory provision that allows for these victims to be apprehended, can they on their own, under all of these other influences, make a choice to get into treatment programs, make a choice to get into a safe house, make a choice to get out of the sex trade?
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Ms Roberts: For children under the age of 16, I agree with you. I do not feel that in the cases I've been involved with, they are capable of making those decisions.
The issue of 16- to 18-year-olds is a really complex one. I think people have rights to make choices, but that doesn't mean I don't believe that 16- to 18-year-olds are not victims. I think there need to be a lot of other things that have to happen, perhaps in concert with such legislation.
If we as a province said that children are a priority, then the early intervention, prevention and treatment programs would begin at a much earlier age. I know there are some efforts that have gone on recently in the province and in the federal government with the Healthy Babies program etc. There is a recognition of early intervention, prevention and treatment.
In the health and social services field, we don't always come in contact with kids who need our help prior to, so when you get 16- or 18-year-olds, there needs to be a different kind of service for them. When I talked about some of the systemic issues and some of the economic difficulties, if a 16-year-old has not come to the attention of a health and social service agency prior to 16 and they become a victim of abuse in their own home, there is no agency anywhere that they can go to for assistance. So if they're battered and they become homeless at 16, they can't collect welfare, they have no means of support and they're extremely vulnerable. The street becomes their home and they are lured into prostitution.
I think we need to backtrack as a province and say that kids should be supported no matter what, but not merely because of prostitution; it should involve all the children 16 to 18 who are homeless, who are disenfranchised. I'm concerned about a specific issue, because what about those other kids?
Ms Martel: I don't disagree with you about our need as legislators and as a society to deal with that issue. My question is, does this not represent an appropriate first step to take? All of us would like to make any number of changes, probably, to child and family services. Is there no benefit, though, in the proposal that is before us to at least start to move the yardstick to get there?
Ms Roberts: From what I've read and what I've heard so far, I can't agree with that at this time. I think there are too many unanswered questions with respect to how the Consent to Treatment Act is going to be dealt with, how an individual's rights under the charter are going to be dealt with, who is going to pay for the safe houses, how are they going to be constituted and what is the nature of the treatment. I think there are so many unanswered questions, and these are the things that need to be answered before I can give you a fair assessment. I won't jump into an answer without having a lot more facts.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms Roberts. We appreciate your coming here and bringing the perspective of the Sudbury-Manitoulin Children's Aid Society. We thank you for your frankness.
RON ROSS
The Chair: I ask Ron Ross to come forward. Welcome, Mr Ross. Please begin.
Mr Ron Ross: I'd like to start my presentation by explaining who I am and why I've come here today. My name is Ron Ross. I'm a lifelong resident of Sudbury with a specific concern for children in my community. I have devoted many hours to serving and protecting children in need in this community. I'm presently a Big Brother with the Big Brothers Association of Sudbury and District and I've also been a member of the board of directors. So I'm obviously interested in any legislation that would protect the young and potentially vulnerable people in our community.
I'm also a student of political science here at Laurentian University, so I'm also interested in the political process that's involved here. It's because of my concern for children who are being preyed upon, my concern for my community and my general interest in the political process that I'm here today.
First, I would like to thank Rick Bartolucci for introducing this bill. Recently the prostitution problem in Sudbury has become a great concern in this community. I'm impressed by the fact that a representative of this community has spearheaded an effort to combat the problem, not only in our community but also all through the province. I think he serves his community well by introducing this bill.
The introduction of the bill has created a great opportunity for a much-needed discussion on this topic. I feel any steps taken to protect the children of our community is positive and worthwhile. I support this initiative to protect children from the predators on the street.
When we investigate the problem and different solutions, I think we should also make sure that efforts in addressing the problems are efficient. Let's spend the limited resources we have as carefully and efficiently as we can. This will let us help even more children in this way.
It is within this context that I approach this bill. When I began my research into the bill, I tried to gather all the information I could about the problem and the proposed solutions by Mr Bartolucci. As I stated before, I agree that there is a problem and this bill may help us protect our children, but can we improve this draft and make it better? As I understand the process we're all involved in here today, this is why we're here.
I have a few concerns with the proposed legislation. First, I'm concerned with confining alleged child prostitutes for a period of up to three days. I would not like to see us victimize these children further by effectively locking them up. I think as a society we may have failed them at this point. Could this not be considered another failure from the perspective of the child and perhaps push them back to the streets? I heard somebody from children's aid indicate that voluntary treatment and support are much more effective. Then there is also the concern of infringing on the child's constitutional rights.
There's another aspect that I think we should stress. The bill in effect also gives the police and the legal guardian or the child protection worker the means to apply to the courts for a restraining order. I wonder how effective a restraining order would be if the two parties do not want to be separated. It seems to be hard to legislate that. This may not work as an effective deterrent and, again, this may also lend itself to a constitutional challenge.
I think as a society we have given our children aged 16 to 17 many adult responsibilities. Today a child of this age can drive a car, leave school, move away from home and live independently. I'm not sure we can in one instance consider them children and in the other treat them as adults.
There also seems to be an inconsistency between the Child and Family Services Act and this bill corresponding to the difference in ages. The Child and Family Services Act protects children under 16 years of age, with this bill extending some assistance and programs to children to the age of 18. I think one age should be decided upon.
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From the research I have done, it seems that this bill may come close to infringing on federal powers of criminal law, and I think that a thorough discussion with our federal counterparts would be a fruitful exercise. I have also learned that there is already a federal-provincial-territorial working group on prostitution that is investigating exactly this problem and preparing a report for the justice minister. As I understand it, this report is due to come out early this fall. This may be an opportune time to develop a comprehensive plan to attack this problem in a unified way, and we may be able to avoid federal-provincial conflicts and/or duplication that we have seen in the past with other programs.
I just hope the concerns I have brought forward today will be addressed and that my comments have been useful. I would like to thank the committee for its time.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Ross. We have some time for questions if members wish. We begin with the Liberals. Mr Bartolucci, you have approximately four minutes.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks for your presentation and for your concerns with the legislation. You didn't offer any alternatives to what I was suggesting, so maybe by questioning I can get a few out of you.
Mr Ross: I'll do my best.
Mr Bartolucci: Thanks. There is conflict with the legislation, there is actually no question about that, and I have noted that from the very beginning. I'm in favour of increasing the age in the Child and Family Services Act to include 16- and 17-year-olds. Are you in favour of that?
Mr Ross: I would be, if we could -- I don't know. I'm not sure of the effects that would have if we actually went ahead and did that.
Mr Bartolucci: It can't then be a concern if you don't know what the causal effect is. If there's a concern, there's a resolution to the concern.
The second concern you had was with regard to confining a child in protective custody in a safe house. Your alternative then would be to allow the child to continue to be in a situation where he or she is vulnerable and at risk. There can only be one or the other. Which one are you in favour of?
Mr Ross: I think we should have programs available for them, but to confine them for just three days is just enough to maybe rub salt into an injury, to aggravate it more. A three-day stint being forced to be somewhere you don't want to be, I don't think you can see the light after a three-day period.
Mr Bartolucci: The premise is that they are forced, one; the premise is that it's a situation where it is not one of value; and the third premise that you have that's incorrect is that it's a facility as opposed to a positive treatment home or environment. I think if you weigh that and read the legislation very carefully, you might not have that as a primary concern any longer. But certainly I respect your concerns, and they are legitimate concerns that we as a committee will debate certainly at clause-by-clause, and I thank you for your presentation.
Mr Ross: Just to make a comment to that, I think when a young person does not want to learn something or be taught something, forcing them into something is not going to help. I don't see how that would help out that much.
Mr Bartolucci: If you had been here for the earlier testimony, you might have heard of their desire to have something like that, real people who live the situation, but that's legitimate.
Ms Martel: I want to follow up in the same direction because I don't know what we do then with 16- and 17-year-olds. I appreciate the concern you have that if they don't want to do something, how do we force them to, but we heard some very powerful testimony earlier this morning, so we have that benefit as to just what kinds of conditions many of these children are in, that they're not in a position to make clear, concise choices about getting out of the sex trade. They are under the influence of a pimp who probably beats them. They have no other money and no source of income. They are usually under the influence of drugs and alcohol, which allows them to continue to be involved in the trade, so the likelihood of voluntarily getting themselves out of the trade and into a program is just not there.
I'm certainly open to suggestions about what we do with these kids otherwise, because I think they are kids and the influences they are under are so overwhelming that I don't know how we get them out of that situation. If we don't use a method where they can be apprehended and moved to a safe place to be away from some of those influences, to be able to make some legitimate choices in a clear way, what do we do with them then?
Mr Ross: I think we should have programs that attempt to help these children before they get out on the streets. Once they get on the streets, I don't think forcing them for three days will help that much. We can have volunteer help, an open-door policy and have programs available to these children, but like you say, it's a tough problem, and I just don't think that locking them up for a few days is going to help them much.
Mrs Ross: For the record, we are not related, are we?
Mr Ross: No.
Mrs Ross: Thank you. You have raised some concerns that I also feel. I don't have a concern about the police apprehending children and trying to help them get out of some horrific experiences. We've heard some testimony here that really children need a period of stabilization away from crisis, and I'm not sure that three days is a sufficient period. Perhaps that's something that needs to be looked at. But do you believe that 16- and 17-year-olds are children?
Mr Ross: I'm probably closer to being a teenager than most people here, so I can kind of relate.
The Chair: Hold on, now.
Mr Bartolucci: The people behind you disagree with you.
Mr Ross: I think I can relate to or remember being 16, 17 and 18. From what I remember, I was pretty much a young adult by this point, but I realize that some people will vary in maturity so that you can have a very immature 18-year-old and have a very mature 16-year-old. I think with age we fall into a problem of trying to confine people to different groups where it's really a maturity type of question.
Mrs Ross: I would agree with that, because I think every individual is different, and I think some of the testimony we have heard today is that there has to be an assessment provided for these children to help them as well so that we can gear them into programs that would suit their needs. Anyway, thank you very much.
The Chair: Mr Ross, thank you. It was very helpful to have the view of a layperson before the committee today. We appreciate that you took the time.
RICK SLEAVER
The Chair: I ask Rick Sleaver to come forward. Welcome. Thank you also for coming. We're looking forward to your presentation.
Mr Rick Sleaver: I want to thank you for the opportunity to be here this afternoon to present my thoughts on Bill 18. My primary reason for coming out this afternoon is to show my support for this bill and for its author, Rick Bartolucci. I have to say that probably over the past three years Rick and I have not agreed on a lot, to say the least. However, I consider Rick to be a good friend, and when a friend does something that's good, it's worth coming out in support. In my view, this bill is above politics because it deals with children, and that's a concern to all of us.
I believe Bill 18 is very much consistent with the Ontario government's approach to law enforcement. In 1995, the government made law enforcement a protected priority service. As it outlined in the Common Sense Revolution, the people of Ontario are rightly concerned about community safety in our province and particularly the increasing incidents of violent crime. This is why funding for law enforcement and justice must be guaranteed.
Since 1995 the government has not only lived up to this commitment but I believe has gone beyond the promise. I just want to share with you a few examples that I believe are part of that commitment. In the May 1998 budget, the government committed over $150 million over the next five years for a number of initiatives. Included in those, as part of the government's commitment to fight biker gangs in Ontario, the anti-biker gang squad will now grow from seven to 20 members and the OPP will work with other police forces on focused operations aimed at large and growing biker gangs. I think we probably saw an indication of that in Sudbury a couple of months ago, where I believe the OPP and the Sudbury Regional Police Service corralled a whole whack of bikers down on Paris Street one Saturday afternoon. So I hope that's part of the government's ongoing commitment to getting rid of biker gangs in Ontario.
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In addition, these new dollars will establish a community policing partnership, which I understand will result in hiring up to 1,000 new front-line police officers to increase the visibility. These new officers will provide an added presence and help target high-crime areas. I think this is very important.
I also understand that funds will be used to hire up to 115 OPP cadets. I think this is a positive step in terms of getting OPP officers back out on the streets and away from those mundane paperwork types of things.
I certainly think this government has a commitment towards crime control and crime concern.
I want to talk about one other initiative that I think really parallels what my friend Mr Bartolucci is trying to do with this bill. In May 1998 the Solicitor General introduced amendments to the Highway Traffic Act that would establish special community safety zones to better protect Ontarians. As I understand it, the fines have been doubled in designated community safety zones. These changes are meant to extend extra protection to areas such as school crossings and zones, school bus stops, day care centres and children's parks. I think the government is totally committed to increasing the protection that is afforded to children and I think this is what Bill 18 is really all about.
I just want to make a couple of suggestions, after reading through the bill and some of the background information. I think this is a good bill and I want to make sure that if we get this bill in place, it happens, and I'm concerned that there might be a constitutional challenge on this bill. From my limited constitutional history at Laurentian University, I'm concerned that there may be a Charter of Rights and Freedoms challenge to detaining children for an unreasonable period of time. I'm also concerned in that I understand that the Criminal Code is federal legislation and this could be considered a criminal piece of legislation.
I want to make sure that if we pass this bill, it does what it's intended to do and we don't end up with a series of challenges afterwards. I'm not sure how we'd get around those particular issues. Unfortunately, I didn't continue in that law thing for that long to become a lawyer to figure that out, but I'm sure we have some good lawyers who can help us with that.
I'm also concerned, as other presenters have noted, about the variance between the ages in the Child and Family Services Act and I want to make sure there is equal treatment. The previous presenter discussed that. I think we have to look at all the implications of changing the Child and Family Services Act to make it consistent because I want to make sure, if we're going to afford this protection to victims of child prostitution, that we do it to other forms of abuse as well.
Finally, I'm concerned about the resources. I think this bill is going to require some resources. We have to make sure that those resources are available. I think it's an important issue that overall we look at the total picture and say, "This is what it's going to cost to put this bill in place," because I don't want this bill to get passed and the resources are not there to make sure it happens.
In conclusion, I think the bill is an excellent attempt at addressing this issue of child prostitution and I really hope these hearings provide some added input into the process. I hope I've been able to add something to this debate and I want to offer my support and my congratulations to Mr Bartolucci for bringing this bill forward.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Sleaver. We have approximately four minutes per caucus. We begin with Ms Martel of the NDP.
Ms Martel: Thank you for coming to make the presentation. I was listening to the list of government initiatives and I just had to wonder whether or not, in the course of reiterating that, you might explain to the committee how come this government cancelled counselling for domestic violence at second-stage housing or how come this government cancelled the verification program delivered by E. Fry in this community, but I'm sure the next time you come to present, you will defend the government on those, Rick.
We have heard the concern about 16- and 17-year-olds, and obviously the committee will have to continue to grapple with that issue. It's a legitimate one to be raised and we have to deal with that. But I think what we have all heard today is that no part of this bill will work if in fact there are not resources that are put into place for educational programming and for rehabilitation. We need to deal with both sides.
In that regard, the John Howard Society earlier today encouraged the committee to move an amendment to change section 10, which says the Minister of Community and Social Services "may" provide funding for programs to "must," to provide an obligation. Given what I think I've heard you say, do you agree that we have to actually enforce a much more serious obligation on the minister so that funding, particularly new funding, if that's what is needed, would be in place to allow this bill to work?
Mr Sleaver: It doesn't matter whatever piece of legislation we're bringing in, we have to make sure the resources are there to make it work. In my opinion, as long as the economy keeps moving along and generating those new dollars, then I am all for it. Let's put the resources into this bill that are needed to make it work. There's no use doing something sort of halfway. Let's make sure, if we're going to do it, to do it all the way. Let's find the money.
Mr Murdoch: Just a comment. I'm sure we're all happy that the government put the $150 million in but I want to make quite clear my opposition to what they're doing with the biker clubs. The guy looking after it is narrow-minded and doesn't have a clue about what he's doing. I want to tell you that. I think it's going to be a disaster for the province and they're going to screw it up. Thank you.
Mr Bartolucci: You should have said that three hours earlier.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Murdoch.
Mr Sleaver: Can I say something about that?
The Chair: Yes, of course, you may respond if you wish.
Interjection.
The Chair: Mr Brown, do you have --
Mr Jim Brown: I couldn't follow that.
The Chair: We move on to the Liberals.
Mr Bartolucci: A quick question, Rick, and then I'll turn it over to John, who has a question for you. Thank you for your presentation and for your concerns because they are concerns we must come to grips with.
With regards to the charter challenge, certainly I consulted with constitutional lawyers who believe the preamble of the bill saves it from a constitutional challenge, and if in fact it were to undergo the rigours of a constitutional challenge, it would win. Having said that, there is always that opportunity for a constitutional challenge.
This legislation in large part was part of a legislation that I saw in Alberta. They've passed the legislation. They're waiting for a constitutional challenge and they would be more than happy to undergo the rigours of a constitutional challenge. So with regard to that, I would stand and defend it in a challenge situation.
Second, I want to know your opinion because you're right that you and I don't agree often, but we respect each other's opinions; I do yours as well and you know that. Do you agree that 16- and 17-year-olds should be a part of this legislation?
Mr Sleaver: I think so. We've got to do something to get those kids off the streets. I hope that as part of the bigger solution to the problem as well is an improving economy that creates opportunities. I see the child prostitution, I suppose, as a last resort. They don't have anywhere else to go and they need money and that's a place to go. I suppose it's incumbent upon all of us to make sure that we continue to do those things, that the economy continues to produce jobs and opportunities so those young people don't have to go to that last resort.
I know that may sound kind of pie in the sky, but I think that ultimately the best thing we can do is find opportunities for these kids.
Mr Bartolucci: Absolutely.
Mr Gerretsen: I'd gladly yield the rest of my time to Mr Murdoch if he has any more pronouncements to make.
The Chair: I'm afraid the government passed, Mr Gerretsen. You'll have to do your own lobbying.
Mr Gerretsen: I just have a question of the presenter. As you stated, they certainly trumpeted the idea that they're for law and order and they're well known for that. Also, we've had this $150-million announcement, which is exactly what it is so far, just an announcement. Not a penny has been spent.
You're aware of the fact, though, that the Solicitor General's department has cut its budget over the last three years by something like 40% and that department happens to be the law-and-order department of this government. Do you have any comments? Do you find any inconsistency there for a law-and-order government in effect to cut its law-and-order budget by 40% so you don't have the resources there to do the necessary work that's required?
Mr Chudleigh: Crime rates are down.
Mr Gerretsen: Yes, if you don't investigate, no crime takes place, right?
Mr Sleaver: Please forgive me that I don't know the specific figures, but I'm hoping that what they cut in the Solicitor General's budget was the fat that didn't need to be there in the bureaucracy, in the administrative things, and that we put more money into the front-line services.
Mr Gerretsen: But 90% of their budget is for personnel cost, not for fat.
Mr Sleaver: But I also hope that an improving economy will continue to allow those dollars to flow into the government so that we can invest in programs like this and every other program --
Mr Gerretsen: That sounds like the McGuinty plan.
The Chair: Now, now, no more partisanship, please. This is a committee to look at Bill 18, not to foster individual parties' specific leaders.
I want to thank you, Mr Sleaver, for coming here. You obviously are a concerned citizen with something to share with us and we appreciate that you took the time.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Sudbury leg of these hearings. We will reconvene tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock in London. I would remind members of the committee that taxis will be waiting outside starting now and 6:45 is when we leave, so we should be boarding about 6:30 at the airport.
The committee adjourned at 1710.