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Results: 1 - 15 of 350
View Arnold Viersen Profile
CPC (AB)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank our witnesses for being here today.
I want to acknowledge the pain and harm that you've experienced from traffickers and men who buy sex. I want to thank you for choosing to appear at this committee in spite of all your pain. I hope that we can bring our committee to some understanding of the realities that Canadians across this country face and help to prevent others from being trafficked, so thank you very much.
Previous witnesses talked a little bit about the role of group homes and child welfare systems as places where youth are lured from. I was wondering if I could get each of you to comment about that a little bit.
We'll start with Trisha.
Trisha Baptie
View Trisha Baptie Profile
Trisha Baptie
2021-06-22 12:04
Child welfare, in the simplest of terms, is a complete, unmitigated disaster. It is horrible.
I was at my mom's house. Someone came and told me to pack my stuff in a garbage bag, and 45 minutes later I was in a house where I didn't know anyone. There was some guy who kept grabbing my ass, and when I told my social worker I didn't want him to do that, she laughed and said, “Boys will be boys; just stay out of his way.”
We need to be working on keeping families together. Yes, that can be hard, but it's still the best. My group home was so unsafe, and since no one listened to us about how unsafe it was, we decided we would rather take our chances out on the streets. I was 12.
You know, you're on the streets and you meet a guy named Telly, and Telly invites you back to his place. You have drugs and alcohol, and you think you're so cool because Telly wants to hang out with you, and suddenly you understand that everything comes for a price, right? That price is sex at 12, when he's probably in his thirties or forties.
I think we need to also expand what “family” means. I think colonialism has put a very narrow definition on what “family” means.
I'm sorry that I'm stuttering. I don't even know where to start. It's just so bad. We need to tear it down and start all over again. That's the only way I see it working. I've been a foster parent for my friends' kids and I've done emergency placements for whatever reason, and kids want their parents no matter what. Let's fix those parents so that we can fix those kids so that this ongoing cycle of in and out of care can stop.
That's all.
Bridget Perrier
View Bridget Perrier Profile
Bridget Perrier
2021-06-22 12:08
What I'm seeing with child welfare.... I was lured out of a child welfare-run girls' home. The older girl that lured me and got me into prostitution was my older sister.
Staff didn't have a clue. They were maybe five years older than some of us. They were young girls working in a group home with haywire teenagers.
I was set out to fail right away. We know that when non-indigenous people adopt indigenous children, 97% of the adoptions fail. My parents were told that. A good thing is that my adoptive parents always stuck by and would go look for me.
Just last week I was in Thunder Bay and I was talking to a survivor, and she didn't even know who her child welfare worker was because she'd had 14 worker changes. Her daughter is showing high-risk behaviours, and nobody's listening to her. When I talked to the worker, the worker didn't know what I was even talking about.
The issue is that child protection was designed from the get-go to fail indigenous people. Like Trisha.... I'm actually the first survivor in Ontario to adopt a child. I'm fostering a high-risk 14-year-old right now whose mother is out there on the street. For us to get her treatment by saying that she's at greater risk to be trafficked is....
My foster daughter comes home from the treatment centre and says that a staff member drove her to a hotel at 14 years old. The 21-year-old staff member drove her to a hotel. The staff member has been fired and all that, but still, what is going on? I'm a mother of four girls. I had to battle child welfare to keep my children with me. Even to this day, when they knock on my door, I still feel like, “Uh-oh, I did something bad.” There's that threat.
My kids are older now. My youngest is nine. It's over my dead body that anyone's going to ever take my kids from me. I have a little boy that was massively injured. His mother too, my niece, was exploited. My son received an injury in the care of Children's Aid, a broken neck. If that injury happened in my house, all my children would have been removed, but because it happened in a registered foster home, it's brushed under the rug. So many other kids' stuff has been brushed under the rug.
I get it. There is a protection element when a girl is very vulnerable, especially when we're dealing with a mom who's in prostitution or in the midst of exploitation. We have to protect the young children. However, we need to look elsewhere, at family members or whatever. We need to look at whatever will work for that person. I really don't have many nice things to say.
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 11:07
Good morning, Chair and committee members. My name is Coralee McGuire-Cyrette. I am the executive director of the Ontario Native Women's Association.
This year marks ONWA's 50th anniversary, making us the oldest and largest indigenous women's organization in Canada. With a mandate to address violence against indigenous women, ONWA works on such key safety issues as human trafficking, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, and child welfare.
Before I begin, I want to acknowledge the bravery, wisdom and leadership of all survivors on this issue, as they are the experts. ONWA has been working with survivors for many years. This experience forms the basis of our recommendations. Survivors and knowledge-holders have reminded us that motherhood is the oldest profession, and this is what we must reclaim in our work.
I'll be framing my presentation today based on three key points. While I do not have the time today to explore them in depth, it's imperative that they are kept in mind while we continue.
First, in 2019 the United Nations released guidelines on combatting child sexual exploitation. They state that a child under the age of 18 can never consent to any form of their own sale, sexual exploitation or sexual abuse, and any presumed consent of a child to exploitative or sexual acts should be considered “null and void”. Additionally, article 35 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states that the government has a responsibility to ensure that children are not abducted, sold or trafficked. ONWA advocates that both principles must, without exception, be adhered to.
Second, the impact of colonization has caused the fabric of strong, self-sustaining indigenous communities to be eroded. Indigenous trauma, together with more recent constructs, has fostered conditions of normalized violence towards indigenous women and girls. Direct links have been drawn between the rates of violence that indigenous women continue to face today and the paternalistic policies emerging from colonization. This systemic discrimination has not been addressed adequately in Canada. This leaves indigenous women and girls at a heightened vulnerability to experience victimization, including human trafficking.
Article 18 of the UNDRIP affirms that “Indigenous peoples have the right to participate in decision-making in matters...through representatives chosen by themselves” and to “maintain and develop their own...institutions”. From this, ONWA asserts that it is fundamental that indigenous women have the capacity to participate in a wide range of leadership efforts to support our communities, including leading the prevention, intervention and response to issues that we face.
Third, the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened pre-existing inequalities. By virtue of our gender and our race, we are, as indigenous women and girls, disproportionately experiencing the consequences of COVID-19. This results in an increased risk of indigenous women and girls being targeted for human trafficking, as well as worsening the situation for those already in trafficking situations. The pandemic has underscored that solutions to human trafficking must be part of an equitable COVID-19 recovery plan.
In 2017 we engaged with over 3,360 community members and service providers, including 250 indigenous human trafficking survivors. The storytelling that was heard resulted in the creation of a strategy, titled “Journey to Safe Spaces”, to address this issue.
Survivors taught us what trauma-informed care is and what systems need to be changed. Their intentions were clear. They wanted to protect other indigenous women and girls from trafficking. We also learned that there are often systemic failures that subject indigenous women and children to risk. The relationship between child welfare and human trafficking is complex. In our engagements with survivors, we heard many stories. In some instances, the abuse was not identified by any service provider, and children experienced horrific childhood exploitation. In other instances, sexual exploitation began after child welfare became involved.
Children must be protected from exploitation—period. This will involve systems working together to protect and ensure the safety of our children.
Our report provides clear recommendations for change. All changes must be underpinned by the fact that indigenous women have human rights. The recommendations from survivors provided the basis for our courage for change program, which provides the only long-term, intensive case management and support. Our program supported 176 indigenous women and girls to safely exit human trafficking from 2017 to 2019. Last year, in 2020, we saw a 37% increase in exits.
Before I conclude, I'll highlight five essential recommendations, many of which can be found in ONWA's “Reconciliation with Indigenous Women”. In this report, we recommend actions that are very specific and targeted to end human trafficking while supporting survivors. The missing and murdered indigenous women and girls national action plan does not include our report's recommendations sufficiently.
First, collaborative mechanisms must be put in place to allow for provincial and national data collection on the human trafficking of indigenous women that protects the privacy of survivors who access services with data collected by the legal reform.
Second, sustainable programs and services that address human trafficking survivor-specific needs, including wraparound support and 24-hour services for human trafficking in cities all across the country, must be implemented.
Third, specialized trauma-informed services for survivors who appear in court must be created. When charges are laid against a trafficker, survivor safety must be prioritized throughout the legal process.
Fourth, the federal government needs to clear the records of survivors of any criminal offences for prostitution-related offences and with debt forgiveness for student loans.
Fifth, additional funding is urgently required to address human trafficking well beyond the provision of funds for education-related activities only. This is to include comprehensive human trafficking exiting supports, such as mental health and addictions services, housing, specialized long-term healing and supportive services.
In closing, I encourage the committee to review our “Reconciliation with Indigenous Women” report and our “Journey to Safe Spaces” strategy in full, as they provide a road map to keep indigenous women and girls safe from human trafficking and to the supports needed to rebuild their lives.
Meegwetch.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is for Ms. McGuire‑Cyrette.
You talked about the relationship with child welfare. Do you know whether child welfare agencies have taken steps to tighten up requirements, to prevent indigenous children in the system from being recruited into the sex industry?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:04
That's due to a current gap in policy right now in the child welfare legislation, which is typically about looking at the parents, actually looking at the mother specifically, so that's a discriminatory policy. I won't be able to touch on that too much here today—how the files are opened on the mother regardless of who victimizes the child—but here in Ontario, we did recently get some new legislation that looks at tightening up those restrictions and being able to charge perpetrators under the Child and Family Services Act.
The reason that is so critical and important is that then you already have an act that's there to protect and you can charge perpetrators very easily through the system and then the child welfare system is taking care of it. You're not having to rely on children to do testimony and to go through courts of law in order to prove the violence that's happened to them.
Here is an opportunity for us to really look at what child welfare reform really looks like, and a missing component that never really gets brought up is mothers, mothers and parents and fathers and the role there. We're always talking about the jurisdiction over children, yet the original jurisdiction is with the parents. The TRC recommendations on this are that we need to look at how we begin to reparent.
Getting parenting programs to support parents with their children is a really preventative component there, but definitely within the systems, we need to look at where child welfare has a role and responsibility to play. It's not the only role. We need systems to work together. You need police, child welfare and social services to work together to keep the child safe.
View Rachel Blaney Profile
NDP (BC)
Thank you so much, Chair.
Ms. Skye, I want to come back to you. You talked in your presentation about the importance of governance systems, and you just gave an excellent answer on human rights and how those are connected.
Could you talk about governance systems and how they impact the trafficking of persons? You also talked about the trafficking of adoption. I'm just wondering if you could talk about the governance systems, the undermining of those governance systems, and how it relates to the human trafficking today.
Courtney Skye
View Courtney Skye Profile
Courtney Skye
2021-06-17 12:07
This is really important because I think that Canada has really lapsed and not been advancing strong policy around many different forms of trafficking. Oftentimes other jurisdictions in the world have had to enact policy in reaction to Canada's not having strong policy program services legislation, because women from this country are being found in other parts of the world. International organizations have started to have a little bit more well-developed policies or programs.
Courtney Skye
View Courtney Skye Profile
Courtney Skye
2021-06-17 12:08
Yes, thank you.
I think it's important to remember. That's why I became involved with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, because they look at many different forms of trafficking and whether it's people who are being trafficked across borders for the purposes of terrorism or children being trafficked for the purposes of adoption. People might consider the child welfare system, as it exists in Canada, which has seen indigenous children continue to be adopted by non-indigenous families and removed from their communities, with that being the only way that they can be placed into what's deemed as an appropriate family, as a form of trafficking. There is also how trafficking has impacted Canada and child trafficking. Specifically, Canada for a long time maintained a program called “home children,” where children from Europe were brought to Canada to populate Canada and specifically to populate western provinces in order to bolster the Canadian population, the settler population here. Actually, about 12% of Canadians are descendants from this program.
We need to think about what those historical contextual pieces are, but also the way that their legacy continues to form and shape the policies that we have today, because there's a direct policy law line to that from the legislation that was developed by Canada in the 1800s through the 1920s, which were inherently racist and discriminatory towards indigenous people, with the legacies of the Gradual Civilization Act and such.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Earlier, we spoke about programs and services that can be provided to children survivors of exploitation and human trafficking.
What types of care and services should be available to those children, who have been so deeply affected?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:34
Is that for me? Okay, I can jump in there.
We need to take a holistic approach that includes the family, that includes the parents and that includes healing together, especially around childhood sexual exploitation. This is where culture plays in, as well as a two-eyed seeing approach, which means that we blend both mainstream services and practices and indigenous culture. We need to make sure that whatever the children need is provided—and not just for the child but for the whole family.
If we don't deal with the trauma in childhood, it carries on to mental health and addictions into adulthood. That holistic approach to healing the family unit from that experience is what's needed. We have to look at day treatment models where the family doesn't need to give up the children to go to addictions treatment services. We have to heal the whole family.
View Sylvie Bérubé Profile
BQ (QC)
Tell us, if you would, about the situation of children who disappear and fall victim to human trafficking. Has the number of cases gone up in recent years or during the pandemic? Do you have any statistics?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:36
Yes, there are statistics showing the increase in demand. That's really what we're looking at. You have to decrease that demand. Here in Ontario, we finally started to build into anti-human-trafficking strategies and making it illegal. We have to enforce those laws.
Our statistics have greatly shown.... I do believe that this year we've seen a 37% increase in exits since 2020. The demand continues to increase, especially when you're looking at access to the Internet, the sexual apps, porn and all of those pieces that continue to increase. We're being so reactive to this issue. We need to be more proactive. We need to start shutting down.... This is where police services need to be equipped with cyber...childhood exploitation in order to prevent it with regard to that piece.
We need a holistic, systemic approach to address this issue.
View Gary Vidal Profile
CPC (SK)
I'm going to jump in and pick up on that again, because you led me right down another path that I wanted to ask about. You talk about the very young children who are being exploited and whatnot. Bill C-92 is a move for first nations communities to take over their own child and family services. I'm sure you're very aware of that.
Could you speak to the benefit of children being able to be in the care of their own communities and having a culturally appropriate upbringing, and the impact of that longer term as well? What benefit might that have from a longer-term prevention perspective?
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
View Coralee McGuire-Cyrette Profile
Coralee McGuire-Cyrette
2021-06-17 12:45
Yes, it doesn't go far enough, unfortunately, because it doesn't take into account and consideration the parents and the mothers. Once again, the most successful programs we've seen are where we're able to help support mom being mom, dad being dad, or grandma being grandma. If we don't include the parents in this conversation, we're going to continue to spin our wheels.
There hasn't been any healing. When we continue to look at child welfare as the only option here, we're not actually transforming what we need to do. There's so much healing that has to happen in our communities, and we need to include the parents in all of these conversations. We need to help them on their healing journey. We need to support them. We need to begin to really unpack our current approaches.
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