Canada must do more to curb human traf­fick­ing: report

Updated Wed. Jun. 17 2009 10:28 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

Law enforce­ment offi­cials must do more to pro­tect Cana­di­ans, par­tic­u­larly women and chil­dren, from being dragged into the sex trade against their will, a new report says. The report, issued by the U.S. State Depart­ment, also said Canada must pros­e­cute more of its own cit­i­zens who engage in so-called sex tourism abroad.

Accord­ing to the U.S. State Department’s “Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Report 2009,” Canada is “a source, tran­sit and des­ti­na­tion coun­try for men, women and chil­dren traf­ficked for the pur­poses of com­mer­cial sex­ual exploita­tion and forced labor.”

The report, released Tues­day, says Cana­di­ans are traf­ficked abroad for the pur­poses of sex­ual exploita­tion, while Cana­dian women and girls, “many of whom are abo­rig­i­nal,” are traf­ficked internally.

Ben­jamin Per­rin, a Uni­ver­sity of British Colum­bia law pro­fes­sor and human traf­fick­ing expert, said Wednes­day that while Canada has laws that make human traf­fick­ing a crime, it doesn’t have a national action plan to inves­ti­gate crimes and pros­e­cute offenders.

“What’s really miss­ing though is putting the pieces of the puz­zle all together,” Per­rin told CTV’s Canada AM. “The report that came out yes­ter­day crit­i­cized Canada for a lack of enforc­ing those laws against traf­fick­ers, and for a lack of co-ordination.”

The report ana­lyzed the progress being made in 175 coun­tries to deal with human traf­fick­ing. The State Depart­ment told 52 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, pri­mar­ily in Asia, Africa and the Mid­dle East, that they could face sanc­tions if they do not improve their efforts on the issue. That is up from 40 coun­tries the 2008 report put on notice.

The RCMP esti­mates that between 800 and 1,200 peo­ple in Canada have been vic­tims of human traf­fick­ing, despite a 2005 law mak­ing it ille­gal. There have only been five con­vic­tions for human traf­fick­ing in the past year, accord­ing to Perrin.

One man con­victed of traf­fick­ing a 17-year-old girl spent only a week in jail on a two-year sen­tence, because he was granted two-for-one credit for a year he spent in pre-trial cus­tody, Per­rin said.

And it was only in 2006 that Canada passed a law that allows for­eign work­ers brought here for the pur­poses of sex­ual exploita­tion to gain tem­po­rary res­i­dent per­mits so they can get med­ical care.

Per­rin also charged that lit­tle is being done to pros­e­cute Cana­di­ans who travel abroad to engage in sex tourism and the exploita­tion of women and children.

“This is a global effort to deal with this prob­lem because, quite frankly, offend­ers know no bor­ders,” Per­rin said.

Accord­ing to Per­rin, a law pro­hibit­ing Cana­di­ans from engag­ing in sex tourism abroad “has only been used three times since 1997.”

Vic­tor Malarek, a cor­re­spon­dent for CTV’s W-FIVE who has writ­ten two books on the sub­ject, said the report sheds light on what amount to gross human rights abuses around the world, includ­ing in Canada.

He said Cana­di­ans need look no fur­ther than adver­tise­ments in the backs of free urban news­pa­pers that adver­tise for­eign escorts.

“You have to ask your­self: How did these women get here?” Malarek told CTV.ca.

These women are likely not landed immi­grants, he said, nor are they business-savvy women who have decided to set up shop in Canada.

Malarek said that weak law enforce­ment against human traf­fick­ing and sex­ual exploita­tion largely boils down to misogyny.

“You have a lot of testos­terone in police forces,” Malarek said, “where they think these women are mak­ing money the easy way, on their backs.”

The report did praise Canada for com­ply­ing “with the min­i­mum stan­dards for the elim­i­na­tion of traf­fick­ing,” and for its efforts in aid­ing victims.

But it also con­tained rec­om­men­da­tions for Canada, including:

* Step­ping up efforts to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute traf­fick­ing offences.

* Enact­ing more proac­tive law enforce­ment tech­niques to inves­ti­gate traf­fick­ing cases.

* Increas­ing efforts to inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cute Cana­di­ans sus­pected of child sex tourism crimes overseas.

* Offer­ing more pro­tec­tions for for­eign traf­fick­ing victims.

A pri­vate member’s bill, intro­duced by Con­ser­v­a­tive MP Joy Smith, calls for min­i­mum five-year sen­tences for any­one con­victed of traf­fick­ing some­one under the age of 18.

Bill C-268 has passed its sec­ond read­ing in the House of Com­mons and is now before the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on Jus­tice and Human Rights.

We really need that law,” Per­rin said.

via CTV.ca | Canada must do more to curb human traf­fick­ing: report.

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