Читать книгу The True Story of Canadian Human Trafficking - Paul H Boge - Страница 10

chapter three

Rain pounded the jet bridge as travellers from Winnipeg to Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier disembarked from the plane. Drops pelted the roof and glass, creating a loud reverberating beat. Joy Smith, wearing a black coat over a black pinstripe pantsuit and pulling her carry-on suitcase, stepped off the walkway into the airport. Ever since her early morning flight took off, her mind had been processing all the many tasks she had to accomplish today.

And that list was about to get much, much longer.

Her phone rang. She brushed a strand of white hair away from her ear and checked the number. It was unfamiliar to her.

“Hello,” she said, in a tone conveying both gentleness and strength. The line was quiet. “Hello, how can I help you?”

“Is this Joy Smith?” a teenage girl’s frantic voice asked.

“Yes, it is. May I ask your name?”

“Are you the member of Parliament who’s helping victims of human trafficking?”

“Yes, I am. Please tell me how I can help you.”

“I … I …” The stressed voice on the other end tried to continue. Erratic. Accompanied by heavy breathing. Like someone who was about to pass out.

“It’s going to be all right. Tell me where you are, and I will get you help.”

“I think …”

“Yes.”

“I think I’m a victim. I need … I need …”

“Are you safe right now?”

“I … I …”

The girl was becoming hysterical.

“It’s going to be all right. May I have your name?”

The line went quiet again. As if the girl on the other end was wondering if saying this over the phone was safe.

“Samantha.”

“Samantha, where are you?”

“I’m at Ottawa Hospital in emergency. The one by the experimental farm,” she whispered, feeling perhaps she had now gone too far in giving out both her name and location. “A man who said he was my friend forced me … He’s in emergency … This is the first phone call I’ve made in months … Please help me. Please help me.”

“Samantha, do you see a security officer?”

The line went quiet. “No, I—wait—yes.”

“I want you to go that person and tell them that a member of Parliament is coming to see you. Can you do that? I’m coming to you right now.”

“Please hurry. I am so scared. If he knows I phoned someone he’ll … he’ll …” Deep, heavy breathing. Then a chilling whisper. “If he knows I phoned someone he’ll kill me. Do you understand me?”

“I’m on my way.”

Joy heard the line go dead.

Joy parked her car, then hurried in the pouring rain through the emergency entrance. She approached the security desk, scanning the area for a fragile, terrified teenager.

“Joy Smith?” a voice said.

Joy turned to her left. A shell of a girl approached her. Dishevelled red hair. Pale white skin. Blue miniskirt. Skimpy grey shirt. Sunken cheeks. Lifeless green eyes. She looked like a ghost. There was so little left of her that her frail appearance made it seem she could disappear into thin air.

“Samantha?”

She nodded.

“Everything is going to be all right.”

The moment Samantha heard those words, something in her relaxed. Like she was in the presence of safety. Like she was a young child and her mother had come into her room to calm her fears of a lightning storm.

Joy turned to the short, well-built security officer, introduced herself, and asked if there was a private room they could use. The officer led them to a small room with a table. Seeing a vending machine nearby, Joy pulled out her wallet and inserted her credit card.

“What kind of drink would you like, Samantha?”

She seemed shell-shocked by the question. Her brain tried to imagine what it was like to be given a choice. She tried to recall something as simple as making a decision for herself.

Joy understood the look of indecision in her eyes. “Whatever you like, Samantha. What’s your favourite?”

She stalled. Blinked. Her mind tried to turn into gear. It was like getting a car started that had been left frozen over winter. Her difficulty breathing spoke of the unbearable trauma she had experienced. She sounded like a wounded child when she asked, “Is there a sports drink?”

“There is. Any particular flavour?”

She bit her lip, as if she feared repercussions if she asked too much. “Red?”

Joy hit the button. She gave Samantha the drink. They sat down. Joy closed the door.

“Thank you for calling me, Samantha. That took a lot of courage. Can you tell me what happened?”

Samantha’s hands began to tremble. Like a voice inside her mind was warning her of impending doom. That perhaps she wasn’t as safe as she thought. She leaned her elbows on the table, placed her hands on either side of her head, and gripped tight, as if it was the only thing she knew how to do to keep it from exploding.

“If he knows I’m here, I’m going to die.”

“You’re safe now. I promise you that. I have many, many friends, and I assure you I will get you to a safe place. Everything is going to be all right.”

Tears began to stream down Samantha’s face. How did it ever come to this? She covered her eyes, as if doing so could prevent her from looking back into her past. She stayed that way so long it was as if she had turned into a statue frozen in unimaginable grief and pain. Then, finally, she let out a breath.

“I met him online. Then we met in person. Became friends. It all seemed so great.” She gripped her head even tighter. All those awful memories. It was bad enough to have experienced them all one by one. But now, sitting here, it was like having to relive each of those moments combined in one instant.

And it proved to be an unbearable task.

“Then everything changed. I was forced to have sex with so many men.” It all became too much. She shook her head. Pushed herself to continue. “It was awful. I worked for him for months. Eating when he told me to eat. Sleeping when he told me to sleep. I was beaten so often. There were times I was sure I would die. My friend Crystal wanted to leave. So…”

She rubbed her temples. She looked straight ahead, focusing not on Joy but on some imaginary point behind her. She was so exhausted, her bloodshot eyes seemed slightly crossed. She closed them. “He strangled Crystal to death with an extension cord.”

Samantha became silent to honour Crystal’s death. It felt wrong to continue speaking until she had at least tried to remember her dear friend in a sombre moment.

“He told me he would do the same to me if I ever tried to leave.” She stared at the red drink on the table. Desperately thirsty, yet somehow unable to make the connection to reach out and take it. “He got into a fight a few hours ago. He got knifed. Badly. I rushed him to emergency.”

She looked at Joy. A curious expression came over her. She blinked. Focused on Joy. “Strange, isn’t it? Trying to save the life of someone who will kill you?”

She reached out and grabbed the bottle. Twisting off the cap, she chugged half of it. “Now he’s in surgery, and the doctors tell me it doesn’t look good.”

Voices in Samantha’s head spoke to her.

He’s not dying. He’s going to get off that operating table, grab a scalpel, find you here in this little room and finish you off once and for all.

“He told me if I ever went to the police he would kill me. But he didn’t have to threaten me. A friend of mine in the game tried that once. But the police said they had nothing to charge him with, and she had to live with the fear of him finding her. I never heard from her again.”

This woman can’t help you.

She finished the bottle. “Word on the street was that you help girls like me. Is that true? Does a person like you help someone like me?”

You’re making a mistake.

“Samantha?”

The caring tone, contrasting so much with the negative voices in her head, was too much for Samantha, and she couldn’t meet Joy’s eyes.

“Samantha?” Joy asked again.

Something in Joy’s tone encouraged her to take a chance. She looked up. Their eyes met.

“I believe you, Samantha. I believe everything you told me.”

Samantha broke down. She squished her eyelids together, forcing out a stream of tears.

Joy put her hand on her shoulder. “And I am going to help you. All right?

“Thank you.”

“I have friends with the Ottawa Police who are going to help you. Then we’re going to find you a safe place to live. And Samantha, I’m going to be with you every step of the way.”

Samantha wiped the tears from her eyes. “You think I can get out of this?”

“I know it.”

The police arrived, and Joy stayed with Samantha while they reviewed her case. Afterwards, Joy connected Samantha to a safe house outside of Toronto run by a humanitarian group specializing in helping survivors of human trafficking.

Joy drove onto Parliament Hill, passed through security and entered her parking area. She walked to the building and showed her special MP ring to the security guard. Every MP receives a special pin, and some choose to have them made into rings. A unique number has been stamped into every member’s ring ever since the ring was first introduced as part of a security measure in 1979. Inside Joy’s ring was number 1301.

Joy entered Parliament through a door reserved only for MPs and staff. Opening the door to her office suite, she smiled at her assistant.

“Good morning, Karen.”

Karen had short blonde hair and wore dark pants and a white shirt. She smiled in a way that was both pleasant and tough. Human trafficking awards and major news articles decorated the wall behind her.

“Hi, Mrs. Smith. How is Samantha?”

Hearing the conversation at the door, Joel Oosterman stepped out of his office, finished wiping his glasses with a cloth and put them back on. His dark grey suit matched the clouds through the window behind him.

“Good morning, Joel.”

“Mrs. Smith.” He nodded to her.

“Samantha’s a survivor.” Joy said, hanging her coat on the rack.

“Excellent,” Karen said, her voice quiet. A relief to hear about someone surviving after others had not.

“That is great news,” Joel said.

“It is great, isn’t it?” Joy said, walking to her private office. “All right, let’s continue working on our bill.”

Joy entered her office, Joel and Karen followed, and she sat down at her desk filled with papers. Brushing a stack to the left she glanced at a quote on her desk by William Wilberforce that often gave her inspiration. Wilberforce served as a member of Parliament in England and dedicated his efforts to abolishing slavery. He regularly introduced bills to ban the slave trade and faced extreme opposition by those earning vast sums of money from it. Wilberforce never gave up. Some 18 years after he started, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act passed in 1807, ending slavery in the British colonies. The House stood and cheered at its success.

Wilberforce’s quote read, “You may choose to look the other way but you can never say again that you did not know.”

This truth gave Joy hope. On difficult days in particular. It would remind her that change takes time. That even doing the right thing can be difficult. Especially when money and power are at stake.

Her computer was to her right. Across from her stood a chesterfield and two chairs. Behind those, a TV. Her office also featured a tea and coffee service, and she offered those beverages to every guest who entered as a symbol to honour them for visiting her.

Joel sat down on a chair and Karen opposite him. They had been working long days drafting a bill that, if passed, would result in a minimum sentence of five years for human traffickers. It would mean that judges would be required to give at least a five-year sentence for a human trafficking offence. A law already existed that provided for a maximum sentence, but there was no minimum. This resulted in instances where judges gave convicted human traffickers light sentences of one year or even less. If Joy’s bill became law, it would encourage victims like Samantha to come forward and identify their traffickers, knowing that their traffickers would be prosecuted and jailed for a sufficient length of time for them to hopefully get their lives back in order.

The bill would include a summary sheet as well as a substantial amount of supporting information. The hope was that if Joy, Joel, Karen and the many other members of the team could assemble a well-researched and organized bill, then a majority of members of Parliament across party lines would support the bill.

They discussed further details of what they would research today. Joel took notes. When they had laid out a plan for the day, Joel leaned back in his chair.

“Something bothering you?” Joy asked.

Joel paused, always careful to deliver a well thought through response. “Joy … the chances of this bill going through are … well, let’s just say it’s highly improbable. We either need a minister to take this on—and that’s not likely to happen—or we need to get our name drawn in a private member’s bill lottery. And even then, we would have to be drawn early.”

Normally bills were brought forward by a cabinet minister. Joy served as a member of Parliament but was not in cabinet. Her first option, and the one most likely to succeed, was to get a minister interested in carrying the bill forward. Human trafficking would normally fall under justice, so the justice minister could champion it. The trouble was that the government had already laid out which bills they wanted to bring forward. And there would not be time to add another one into the mix. A government initiative would need to get dropped in order to make room; otherwise her initiative would get outright refused.

But she had a backup plan.

If a minister could not be found to bring forward a human trafficking bill, then a member of Parliament could introduce a private member’s bill.

A private member’s bill was a massive long shot. The House of Commons spends most of its time on business related to government. There’s only a small amount of time allocated to discussing private members’ bills. Members of Parliament who are not cabinet ministers can submit a private member’s bill. And many would like to. The question arises of how to decide which bills get attention in the House of Commons and which don’t.

Enter the lottery.

Every session, the names of those members of Parliament qualifying for private members’ bills (some 240) are drawn at random. Of those, normally only the first five will have a decent chance at presenting a bill. And even if a member gets their name drawn high enough, they face the arduous task of getting that bill approved through three separate readings. At the end of each of the second and third readings, a vote is taken. If the bill doesn’t pass at either one of those readings, the bill fails. Bills that deal with relatively minor items pass more easily. Of the 127 private members’ bills that received royal assent (became law) between 1945 and 1993, a staggering 96 of them dealt with inconsequential items like changes to the names of constituencies.

On top of that, Joy was in a minority government that might only stay in power for two to three years and could end at any time.

That meant if you were a regular member of Parliament like Joy, you had to first count on your name being drawn high in the lottery. Then, if your bill dealt with something of significance, like protecting victims of human trafficking, you had the next massive mountain to climb of convincing the other parties—and, sometimes, your own party—to vote for your bill. And you had to hope that the government stayed in power long enough to get your bill through.

It was like climbing Mount Everest and then reaching the top only to discover a second Mount Everest waiting for you.

Most private members’ bills are put on the order paper in the hopes of getting immediate attention but typically fade into nothing.

“We have to get the justice minister on board,” Joy said. “He says yes, we’re off to the races.”

“He’s our best shot,” Karen said.

“He’s not going to do it,” Joel interjected.

“Sure he will. He just has to be encouraged with facts,” Joy replied.

“He may want to do to but might not be able to do it. It doesn’t fit into the government’s agenda,” Joel said.

Joy leaned back in her chair and thought. “I don’t see how he could say no.”

“The best chance is for him to be given a good reason,” Karen said. “We have the research. We have evidence that traffickers are being convicted and given light sentences. But even if—”

Joy stood. “I’m going to have a private meeting with the minister of justice,” she said. “Time to find out our chances with this bill.”