Mr. Speaker, I must inform the House I will be sharing my time with my colleague, friend and neighbour, the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard.

I rise today to speak to Bill C-36, An Act to amend the Criminal Code in response to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Attorney General of Canada v. Bedford and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

In fact, this is legislation to regulate prostitution in our country. I am pleased to rise and speak to this issue because it is something that is of great concern to my riding. Prostitution exists in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine. It think it is an important issue and one that is of great concern to many people in my riding. Some of those people have come to talk to me about it over the past few weeks.

To give some background on this, in December, the Supreme Court ruled on the provisions of the Criminal Code that prohibit keeping a common bawdy-house, living on the avails of prostitution and communicating for the purpose of engaging in prostitution.

The Supreme Court found that these provisions were unconstitutional, as follows:

[The current statutes impose] dangerous conditions on prostitution; they prevent people engaged in a risky—but legal—activity from taking steps to protect themselves.

Currently, under our Criminal Code, prostitution is legal but there is no help for the prostitutes who engage in this line of work.

I want to address a number of things because the bill is very complex. We want to know what the government is doing to help sex workers. We all wish prostitution did not exist. However, it does exist because there are clients, people who provide their sexual services and people who exploit others for sexual purposes.

Last year, I participated in the study conducted by the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on the bill introduced by my colleague from Ahuntsic. A police inspector from Montreal said something fairly shocking. He said that, in Montreal, you can order a woman like you can order pizza. That is the situation we are currently facing.

As legislators, we must consider why sexual services are so readily available in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and small towns. I think it is mainly because there are customers, but also because the women are very vulnerable. Our government does not help them very much.

Rather than taking an approach that marginalizes extremely vulnerable sex workers, we should be taking practical measures to improve their safety and help them get out of the sex trade, if they so desire.

We do not have statistics on the number of women who truly want to engage in this line of work. Earlier, a Conservative member said it was 10%, but we do not really have any idea what the actual number might be. In order to find out, we would have to allocate significant resources; provide financial support to these women; and offer them education, training and addiction treatment. There are many things we could do to help these women so that they do not get involved in the sex trade. Many women turn to prostitution because of poverty, whereas others do so to support an addiction. That is a fact.

According to the measures announced by the Conservatives in this bill, they are going to allocate $20 million to help women across Canada get out of the sex trade. I think it is a bit of a stretch for the government to say that it will be able to solve this problem and help women with $20 million. The government should be embarrassed about this announcement, which was made just a few weeks ago, on June 4.

That is one of the first things I want to talk about. There is prostitution in Lachine, close to my riding office. I once went up to one of these women to talk to her. As an MP, I believe I should speak to everyone.

This woman told me that she was doing this type of work because she has two children, that it pays more than other work and that, if she could, she would prefer to have another job, so she could have a better life. It is not necessarily a job that she likes, but as a poor, single mother with two children to raise, it is a simple way for her to make money quickly. That is unfortunate.

Our society could have decided to give her a good education, to help her, to provide support for her family and to establish community groups that would help her with workshops to raise her self-esteem. For example, in my riding, the organization La P'tite Maison de Saint-Pierre gives self-esteem workshops to women. That is the kind of community group we can support in order to keep women out of prostitution. When I hear that $20 million will be given out across Canada, I wonder what that will mean for my riding. That is not very much in the way of concrete help for these women. That is really unfortunate.

I would like to delve deeper into the bill and see what it does. The bill will create new offences related to prostitution, namely purchasing sexual services. That means that we are criminalizing the people who buy sexual services. Once again, that is an attack on female prostitutes or young men, because I am told that young men prostitute themselves as well.

Groups that study various models around the world say that criminalizing the purchase of sexual services scares women in some ways. Even though the Conservatives say that selling those services on the street corner will be prohibited, let us not kid ourselves; given the means made available to address the situation, there will still be women on street corners.

Let us assume that a woman is on the street corner and that a client pulls up in his car; obviously, she will not take the time to talk to the man or to look inside his car to make sure that there are no weapons or other items that could be dangerous for her.

Right now, when that happens, women certainly take the time to look inside to see whether there is a rope or something that could harm her or be dangerous for her. Under this bill, she will not do that. Clearly, she will quickly get in the car, which will be more dangerous for her.

In my view, this provision does not help sex workers. Given that this trade does exist, we need to ask ourselves what we can do for the health and safety of these workers. According to the Supreme Court decision, we must work to ensure the safety of these workers. Whether we like it or not, this is a legal activity in our system, and it must be regulated.

The bill makes changes that have to do with receiving a material benefit, advertising sexual services and communicating for the purpose of selling sexual services in a public place where children can “reasonably” be expected to be present. I have a problem with the word “reasonably”. It seems inappropriate.

I want to name some people who support us because this bill does not respond to the Supreme Court's decision.

The NDP calls on the government to refer Bill C-36 to the Supreme Court. It must do more to help prostitutes get out of prostitution, for example, through education, prevention and social housing. All Canadians have the right to work without the threat of violence. This bill does not solve that problem.

Steve Sullivan, the former ombudsman for victims of crime, is one of the people who agrees with us. This very credible man said:

Back in December, everyone seemed to agree on one point: The law shouldn’t criminalize sex workers. This bill will do just that—if they communicate...in public places where a child could reasonably be expected to be present.

Emmett Macfarlane said:

These provisions are not only bad policy, but they undoubtedly raise the same set of concerns the Supreme Court addressed when striking down the old provisions last December.

It is important to understand that we need to send this bill to the Supreme Court so that it can rule on whether we will end up with the same problem. We would then have to wait another year for provisions that truly help women get out of this situation.

No one here can prove to me that the Conservatives are truly helping women in our country. I do not think that this bill is proof of that either.

Isabelle Morin

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