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
