44th Parl. 1st Sess.
April 27, 2022 02:00PM
- Apr/27/22 2:28:45 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will inform the Prime Minister that there is no statute of limitations on fraud charges. This is very serious. This is a big deal. The Prime Minister of Canada has potentially committed criminal offences. We are talking about possible charges against the Prime Minister of this country. The Prime Minister has to know how serious this is. The Prime Minister has to know he is not above the law.
Has the Prime Minister met with private criminal counsel regarding these potential charges?
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- Apr/27/22 7:01:04 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, they say the devil is in the details, and Bill C-5 is an excellent example of this. While the parliamentary secretary will only want to talk about criminal justice reform, the reality is that buried deep in Bill C-5 are insidious changes that will deeply harm the most vulnerable. Bill C-5 would extend house arrest to a number of serious crimes, including criminal harassment, sexual assault, kidnapping, abduction of a person under 14 and trafficking in persons for material benefit, in section 279.02. Extending house arrest to those offences places victims at serious risk from their abuser or trafficker. When I asked the minister about this, he seemed unaware that this was in his own bill, and when I asked the parliamentary secretary about it, he claimed that Bill C-5 would help marginalized communities, except that these changes proposed in clause 14 of Bill C-5 would only lead to more harm to marginalized communities.
Victims of human trafficking deserve to have confidence that the justice system will put their safety first. Indigenous women are significantly overrepresented, estimated to be at least 50% of the victims of human trafficking in Canada. By letting the traffickers serve their sentences in the community, the government is telling victims that their lives and safety are not a priority. Victims of human trafficking experience anxiety, depression, substance abuse, suicidal tendencies and PTSD because of the abuse by their traffickers. They also experience physical abuse, torture and injuries such as broken bones, burns, scars and broken teeth. These are all very common injuries. Also, after conviction, pimps and sex traffickers will seek out their victims and continue to retraumatize them through psychological and emotional abuse.
The one hope victims have that gives them strength and courage to come forward and testify is that the trafficker will be locked away for a few years. Now the Liberals are destroying this hope for survivors by allowing their traffickers to live at home in the community. It is these victims, many of whom are indigenous or racialized, who will be further harmed by the changes in Bill C-5. If these changes go through, their traffickers will be eligible to serve their sentences in the community.
This past month, a human trafficking trial has been taking place in the small Ontario town of Cayuga for a young woman who was forced into prostitution. Like the vast majority of victims here in Canada, she knew her trafficker before he began trafficking her. He was her drug dealer when she was only 17. When she turned 18, she was convinced by the drug dealer that he was her boyfriend and that he could help her get her dream career. Instead, he and his friends advertised her body online for sexual services. For months she was forced to perform sexual acts on eight to 10 men per day in hotels throughout southern Ontario. She was blindfolded between locations. The five traffickers monitored her phone and profited from her exploitation.
Let us say this trial ends in the conviction of all five of these traffickers. Under Bill C-5, the court could sentence these traffickers solely to house arrest rather than prison. How is this mindful of the survivors of trafficking? The safety and healing of these survivors are not even accounted for in Bill C-5.
Human trafficking is a serious crime and it is happening within 10 minutes of where we live. It has long-term, serious effects on its victims and is much closer to home than we think. In no world should convicted traffickers stand a chance of not serving jail time.
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- Apr/27/22 7:05:02 p.m.
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- Re: Bill C-5
Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak to Bill C-5, particularly to dispel some possible misunderstandings about the impact these sentencing reforms would have on the human trafficking regime in the Criminal Code.
Some critics of this bill suggest the proposed reforms would allow hardened human trafficking offenders, who may be linked to organized crime or who are otherwise observing harsh sentences, to serve their sentences at home. This is simply not true.
Currently, all offences that carry mandatory minimum penalties of imprisonment in the Criminal Code are ineligible for a conditional sentence. Bill C-5 would not change this. If the proposed reforms were to pass, offences carrying MMPs would continue to be ineligible for conditional sentences. To be completely clear, the offence of human trafficking, as well as any child-related trafficking offences, carries mandatory minimum penalties of imprisonment and thus would continue to be ineligible for a conditional sentence.
I want to make clear that when there is no MMP for any provision, CSOs can only be considered by the court in a specific set of circumstances. Namely, where a sentence of less than two years is appropriate, where serving the sentence in the community would not endanger the same of the community, and where such a sentence would be consistent with the fundamental purpose and principles of sentencing, including deterrence and denunciation.
Our government is committed to fighting human trafficking. With former bill, Bill C-75, which came into force in June of 2019, we took measures to facilitate the prosecution of human trafficking offences under the Criminal Code.
In September of 2019, we launched the national strategy to combat human trafficking, which brings together federal efforts and is supported by an investment of $57.22 million over five years and $10.28 million ongoing. This builds on previous investments of $14.51 million over five years and $2.8 million per year to establish a Canadian human trafficking hotline, which launched in May of 2019.
In February of 2021, we also launched the national human trafficking public awareness campaign to raise awareness among Canadian youth and parents of the misperceptions of human trafficking and increase understanding of the warning signs.
Our government has taken strong measures to combat human trafficking at it roots, instead of fuelling the ideological tough-on-crime narrative, which has not proven to be true empirically, has not served our communities and has not made us safer nor helped victims.
Let me be very clear. Human trafficking is a serious offence for which courts impose stiff, denunciatory terms of imprisonment in the majority of cases, and that is what we and all Canadians expect from a court system. I have the utmost faith that, after the passage of Bill C-5, sentencing courts would continue to impose fit and appropriate sentences that reflect the seriousness of each offence and the moral blameworthiness of the offender before them in all cases.
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