(Quebec) A group of community and voluntary organizations denounces “political interference”, after the adoption of a motion in the National Assembly which asks the government to cease all public funding of organizations which encourage forms of sexual exploitation of minors.
Posted at 5:21 p.m.
Patrice Bergeron
The Canadian Press
The Table of Provincial Groupings of Community and Voluntary Organizations (TRPOCB) demanded on Friday an apology from all the parties who voted in favor of this motion tabled by the Parti Québécois (PQ).
PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon particularly targeted in this motion the Intervention Project for Minor Prostitutes (PIaMP), which received $350,000 in public funds last year, notably from a program managed by the Ministry of Health.
He believes that the organization trivialized sexual exploitation by promoting “sugaring”, that is to say a relationship between an adult and a minor who “offers their company for various activities” – according to the definition that appears in a document produced by PIaMP.
According to the TRPOCB, the parties made a “moral judgment” while “generally (they) defend the autonomy” of community groups. What’s more, the organization is funded by a standardized, “very supervised” program, like 3,000 other community organizations.
“It is very serious that ministers and MPs use their platform to judge, in public, the approach of any group whatsoever,” wrote the chair of the Table, Stéphanie Vallée.
The Intervention Project for Minor Prostitutes (PIaMP), which works with people aged between 12 and 25, for its part accused PQ leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon of making “inflammatory” remarks and fomenting “ moral panic.”
But he persists and signs. At a press conference Friday morning in parliament, he suggested that these were “personal attacks” and that elected officials, in a democracy, can want things to change.
“When we say that there is something positive in the fact that minors exchange their sexual services in exchange for remuneration, then we say: “the problem is me”. Moral panic doesn’t work. »
He also criticizes the organization for its positions revealed during the special parliamentary commission on the sexual exploitation of minors held in 2019-2020.
He read a quote put forward by the PIaMP: “The organization immediately stands out from the discourse reducing people who exchange sexual services to the status of victims and proposes an intervention approach putting forward the free will of young people. »
-The PIaMP also argues that “sugaring”, “sugar daddies”, can be part of an emancipation strategy where young people use their free will.
“Someone aged 12 does not have to exercise their free will to enter into a “sugar-daddy” relationship or any other form of sexual service in exchange for remuneration, it is sexual exploitation, it must be said, it must be named,” lamented the PQ leader.
“There are all the elected representatives of the National Assembly, except one abstention, who said: that’s enough,” he concluded.
The motion did not specifically mention the PIaMP, but the PQ leader had targeted it in a press scrum before it was tabled.
In a letter sent Thursday to The Canadian Press, PlaMP said it adopted a “pragmatic position regarding exchanges of sexual services.”
Its risk reduction approach “is not an invitation to prostitution,” assured the organization.
“Recognizing that young people can gain positive things from exchanges of sexual services is not an incitement to prostitution,” we continue.
In one of its documents, we can read that “sugaring” is “presented as sexual exploitation”, but “in reality, it suits certain people, for example because they (sic) build relationships of trust and feel respected and supported by their SD (sugar daddy).”
The Ministry of Health and Social Services allocated nearly $230,000 to PIaMP through the Support Program for Community Organizations.
The Ministry of Public Security, for its part, granted a total of $120,000 to the organization.
The PIaMP’s mission is to “listen, support and assist in (their) efforts any person aged 12 to 25 who exchanges or is likely to exchange sexual services for any form of remuneration”, we can say. read on its website.
