borders.”
“And now I’m asking to go a step further. To condemn it within our borders. To protect Canadian girls.”
That caught him off guard a second time. Like his mind had already chosen to disregard Joy’s earlier comment. He physically leaned back. Not a great distance. Had someone not been part of the conversation they might not even have noticed it happened. But Joy noticed. Even if he did do it involuntarily.
“Human trafficking is not happening to Canadian girls,” he said. It came out as more of an attempt to assure himself of what he knew. Or at least what he thought he knew. He fought against his cognitive dissonance. Then wondered. “It isn’t happening, is it? Not to our girls.”
“What if it is?”
“Joy, human trafficking as it relates to Canada is people being brought in from outside.”
“In part. But what if there’s more to it than that? We’re talking about a new crime here, Arthur. Something we have closed our eyes to. I’m not sure why. But we just don’t see it. Or maybe we don’t want to see it.”
Members started re-entering the House of Commons. The minister stood. Joy, too. He looked apologetically at the other member in waiting. Then to Joy, quietly enough that it would not be heard by others, “Joy, the information you’re giving me is … is staggering to say the least. I’m going to look into it. But I need to be clear with you. We are not going to put a bill forward on this.” He turned his hands palm up as an indication of a man already swamped with responsibilities who had become accustomed to rejecting new and good ideas that would capsize the boat if he took yet another task on. “But keep up the good work,” he said.
“Thank you for your time,” Joy said as the minister departed.
She took in a breath. How many conversations had there been in this lobby over the years? How many members had both good news and bad news delivered to them there? How many historically significant conversations had taken place there?
She wondered if this might have been one of them.
When the session ended, Joy returned to her office. Karen looked up from her desk. Joy motioned to her office. Karen followed her in.
“And?” Karen asked, sitting down.
“I think we have a very big battle on our hands, Karen.”
“He’s not going to support it?”
“It doesn’t look that way. He’s just … I don’t know. We passed the motion. Why is he not seeing this?”
“We can show him the bill. We can go through the evidence.”
“He’s not interested,” Joy said.
“Well, he’s the best chance we have at getting this thing through, so we have to get him interested.” Joy’s mind was already working through other scenarios. “If the minister of justice can’t be convinced, we’re in serious trouble,” Karen finished.
“He doesn’t believe there is a problem,” Joy said.
“Then how do we convince him he’s wrong?”
“He’s not going to put the bill forward. There has to be another way.”
“Well, not without him. If he is not willing to support the bill, all that’s left …”
She didn’t want to say it. The other route was just dumb luck. It was basing your plan on a lottery ticket. It was a joke of a way forward.
“You can say it out loud, Karen. A private member’s bill.”
“Lotto 649.”
Joy became quiet. The room became quiet. Almost eerily so. It felt strange all of a sudden. Like all the weight of the history of Parliament Hill was coming alive in their room.
Joy spoke quietly, her tone both soft and strange. “Can I let you in on a little secret, Karen?” she whispered.
Karen leaned forward. She titled her head slightly to the left the way she always did when she was giving someone her undivided attention.
Joy became still. All the experiences, all the many challenges, in her life and in her political career seemed to come to bear in what she was about to say.
“I know I’m going to get called in the top three in that lottery.”
Okay, that’s a little spooky. Karen didn’t know how to react. Didn’t know what to say. She felt a shiver. Like there were more people in the room than just the two of them. But what impacted Karen more than what Joy said was the conviction that Joy might in fact be right.
“That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
Karen swallowed. “You can’t know something like that.”
“I can’t?”
People can be optimistic. Even overly optimistic. But to actually know something in advance?
No one could hear their conversation. No one could pick up on what they were saying. Still, Karen chose to whisper as well. “How could you possibly be so sure of this?”
Joy paused. Like every leader, she had experienced her scars. And those scars had taught her how to be measured. How to listen. How to discern.
“My father inherited the family farm. It was a big, successful operation,” she said. “But he squandered it. He had no idea what he was doing. We sank down to poverty. It was so embarrassing.”
She shook her head as if doing so could somehow get the emotions of those painful memories out of her mind. “I remember being teased at school because we were so poor. One day at recess my brother was being beaten. I didn’t have the guts to intervene, so I ran to the schoolhouse, and a teacher came to stop the fight. By the time the teacher got there, my brother had been beaten so badly that he was full of blood and bruises.”
Joy squinted her eyes a moment as if she were right back there, trying to block out the image of what she was seeing. “I told myself that day that I would never turn away from someone who was suffering. Years later we managed to scrape enough together, and I went to university. Got a master’s degree. Began teaching. Then my son Edward changed everything for me. He was the catalyst.”
The thought entered her mind to share more about Edward. But she decided against it. Now was not the time. “I started teaching about the dangers of human trafficking. Started helping girls wherever I could. Got involved in politics. And here I am in Ottawa. Now let me ask you this question, Karen. A poor little farm girl from Manitoba becomes a member of Parliament. Does that sound like an accident to you?”
It was rhetorical. Karen knew it. Joy knew it. So they waited, both of them absorbing what she was saying.
“This thing is far bigger than me, Karen. I can’t do this on my own.” Joy glanced past her. It had been an exhausting day. Still, in the tiredness of her life, her mind focused every last bit of energy on this single issue until things became crystal clear. “I can’t convince the minister of justice. I just tried. That leaves one other option. The only way forward is a private member’s bill. If I don’t get called early in the lottery, the bill has no chance. No one else knows what I know. No one else feels what I feel. No one else will take the bill forward. And if there’s no bill, then thousands upon thousands of Canadian girls will continue to suffer in shame.”
She stopped. Squinted again. Thought even deeper. “But if there is a bill, if I do get drawn, then thousands will be saved.” She leaned forward. Put her elbows on her desk. Folded her hands beneath her chin. “And that’s how I know I’m going to get my name called.”
It was preposterous. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it just simply too much optimism? Or was it more? Had she tapped into something? Had she received some conviction somehow, someway, of what would actually take place in the future?
Joy