Invisible Chains (26 page)

Monitoring and enforcement of employers will be vital to the effectiveness of these important preventative measures as will providing foreign workers with “whistle-blower” protections for reporting on offending employers (i.e., support in finding alternative employment and seeking redress for lost wages and misrepresentations).

Canada has taken action on behalf of other regions and continents as well. The Canadian International Development Agency has worked with the UN Interagency Program to address the issue of trafficking in the Great Mekong Sub-Region (which includes Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and China). It also committed to provide three million dollars to combat trafficking in West Africa. Moreover, the government has funded prevention projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.

While these efforts are admirable, focused co-operation between Canada and its main source countries for human trafficking (i.e., the Philippines, China, Moldova, and Romania) should be enhanced to more effectively prevent the abuse. When engaging in diplomacy and development, Canada should encourage these source countries
to improve their response to human trafficking. For example, the Canada Border Service Agency's Migration Integrity Officers and the RCMP's Liaison Officers should enhance co-operation to prevent human trafficking at the source country stage.

As has been emphasized throughout this book, human trafficking remains a global blight that must be eradicated on the same scale. This requires that Canada focus greater attention on the problem and co-operate more closely with affected countries.

15

BATTLING TRAFFICKING ACROSS CANADA

T
he soft, steady beat of drums
echoes through the streets of Winnipeg as more than a hundred people walk side by side from Thunderbird House to the Forks at Odena Circle. There a sacred fire is lit in the four directions. It will burn from sunrise until sunset.

This is the Grandmothers' Sacred Walk, an annual procession of Aboriginal women leaders who aspire to reclaim the streets of Winnipeg from child sexual abuse and exploitation. The grass-roots initiative began in 2007 when clan mothers, elders, and grandmothers formed Kookum Gaa Na Da Ma Waad Abinoojiig, the Grandmothers' Protecting Our Children Council. In the words of the group's founders, its purpose is to “emphasize the sacredness of children and the importance of keeping them safe.... We are here to say that despite our damaged and painful history, our hearts are not on the ground, our nations are not conquered, and we don't want to see our children hurt anymore.”

Having decided that they could no longer passively witness the abuse in their midst, members of the community took it upon themselves to raise awareness and educate the public about the sexual abuse of First Nations children in Manitoba. They hoped that greater understanding would bring about change.

We can learn a great deal from the wisdom and inspiring example of the grandmothers. They understand that a broader response from our society is needed to end exploitation in its many forms. If we fail to prevent this exploitation, it will continue to threaten and destroy the hopes, dreams, and lives of many vulnerable individuals.

In the
Palermo Protocol,
Canada committed to initiating comprehensive policies, programs, and other measures to prevent human trafficking, including the following:

•  establishing educational campaigns in co-operation with nongovernmental organizations

•  launching measures to improve the detection of trafficked persons at the border

•  alleviating factors that make individuals vulnerable to trafficking

•  discouraging the demand that fuels human trafficking

In pockets across the country, there are some encouraging examples of such initiatives. By profiling these programs, I hope to inspire a wave of new and expanded initiatives that could make Canada a global leader in preventing human trafficking.

Prevention education and raising awareness

Chantal Fredette works for the provincially supported Centre jeunesse de Montréal—Institut universitaire, which developed the Cinderella's Silence program, introduced in
Chapter 5
. Reaching out to young girls who could be recruited by street gangs or others, the program explains the methods used to entice girls into sexual exploitation and the harsh realities that ensue.

Cinderella's Silence includes a detailed facilitator's handbook with discussion guide, relevant laws and statistics, information about victim psychology, lesson plans, activities and handouts, as well as contacts for resources. Targeted at youth between twelve and eighteen, the program is widely used. For instance, Projet intervention prostitution de Québec, which provides prevention programs in high schools, is one of the organizations that deliver Cinderella's Silence to about seven thousand students each year in and around Quebec City. Coordinator Anick Gagnon feels it is essential to reach students at an
early age when they are the most vulnerable and having various firsttime experiences.

In Manitoba, the “Stop Sex with Kids” campaign aims to prevent the sexual exploitation of children and youth through public awareness and education. Billboards, leaflets, and a powerful website portray tragic stories accompanied by shocking statistics from the provincial government, including the fact that an estimated four hundred children and youth are exploited each year in Winnipeg's street-based sex trade. While the majority are girls, boys are sexually exploited too. Yet whereas women's rape crisis lines and shelters are available in many communities, few, if any, similar services exist for sexually exploited boys and men.

Most sexually exploited youth in Winnipeg—as many as eight out of ten—are of Aboriginal descent, and the average age at which they were first violated is thirteen. Some were as young as eight, however. Almost three-quarters of those identified as sexually exploited children were at the time in the care of the provincial government's Child and Family Services, and more than 80 percent of child sexual exploitation is conducted in “gang houses” or “micro-brothels,” small apartments or condos where the victims are isolated and to which johns are directed. Manitoba is one of the few provinces to mount a high-profile awareness campaign confronting demand.

At the national level, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection has developed excellent educational materials for children of all ages on topics such as sexual abuse and exploitation, and healthy relationships versus controlling ones, the goal being to build resistance to sexual predators. Unfortunately, however, most school boards across Canada have yet to incorporate the voluntary prevention materials into their curricula.

For its part, the federal government in recent years has launched modest awareness and educational initiatives to prevent foreign human trafficking. It produced an information booklet in fourteen languages for distribution in Canada and at embassies abroad that outlines the risks and warning signs of human trafficking. Citizenship
and Immigration Canada has also distributed information about trafficking to temporary foreign workers and live-in caregivers, so that potential victims are familiar with employment, health, and safety standards.

In January 2009, Ottawa announced a partnership with the Canadian Crime Stoppers Association to raise awareness about human trafficking and to encourage tips about specific cases. Crime Stoppers is planning more public awareness efforts as part of the international “Blue Blindfold” campaign, which calls on citizens to acknowledge and report suspected human trafficking.

Public awareness about human trafficking is growing slowly, but a greater knowledge and understanding of the problem is needed, along with an appreciation of how to identify and assist victims and where to report suspected cases.

Open to trade and tourism, closed to terrorists and traffickers

The pristine blue skies, billowing white clouds, and swaying fields of golden wheat in southern Alberta are the latest backdrop to the fight against modern-day slavery. Farmers and border-town communities are being asked to report to the Integrated Border Enforcement Team any suspicious activity along the province's expansive boundary with neighbouring Montana. IBET represents a joint Canada–U.S. multiagency initiative to identify, investigate, and effectively eliminate illegal movement of people and goods across uncontrolled stretches of the forty-ninth parallel.

To the west, the border between British Columbia and Washington State has also been made less porous thanks to the efforts of IBET officers, including those who participated in the foiled transit trafficking case at Osoyoos, British Columbia, described earlier. Criminal networks moving women from South Korea through Canada and into the United States for sex trafficking have been further disrupted because of successful prosecutions in Washington State. Keeping up with the changing routes used by these criminal
networks is a constant effort requiring extensive co-operation between Canadian and American authorities.

High-tech measures are also being used to extend the watchful eye of law enforcement and border agencies across remote stretches of the land border. Unmanned aerial “drones,” or remote-controlled aircraft similar to those used in Afghanistan and Iraq, fly on the U.S. side of the shared border with Canada to beam real-time video images to analysts who may be thousands of kilometres away.

Just how effective are these cross-border programs and activities? We can only guess. Officials with the U.S. Human Smuggling and Trafficking Center, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the RCMP's Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre were unwilling to discuss any details of their joint efforts. In the absence of such information, independently evaluating their progress is impossible.

It is critical that Canada and the United States provide timely legal assistance to each other in confronting the problem of human trafficking. They must work together with source countries to dismantle entire criminal networks involved in human trafficking cases. It is not enough simply to prosecute the individual who moved the victims or directly exploited them in a sweatshop or brothel. A full investigation into all of the links in the trafficking chain is needed to take apart the criminal network. With anything less, the network can simply adapt and rapidly replace a convicted individual with another criminal.

Internationally, the CBSA Migration Integrity Officers network is trying to reduce illegal migration to Canada from over forty countries, including smuggling and human trafficking. The increased vigilance has led to a substantial increase in undocumented or illegal migrants with aspirations to come to Canada being intercepted in their native countries. Documents released by the CBSA under the
Access to Information Act
reveal that whereas only 30 percent of inadmissible persons attempting to enter Canada were intercepted overseas in 1990, the number had increased to more than 70 percent by 2005.

Outreach to youth at risk

In 2009, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs received funding from the federal government to combat sexual exploitation and trafficking of Aboriginal women and children. That July, a conference organized by Grand Chief Ron Evans brought together front-line First Nations social workers, government officials, and police officers to develop programs to prevent these atrocities. The event received extensive media coverage and contributed to the provincial government's announcement that it would launch a task force to investigate missing and murdered First Nations women and underage girls in the province.

This general effort, having produced some early achievements, must be maintained. As Gord Mackintosh, Manitoba's family services and housing minister, puts it, “We are in a constant race to keep at-risk youths out of the clutches of sexual predators and street gangs.”

As well, the Government of Manitoba continues to expand “Tracia's Trust,” its Child Sexual Exploitation Strategy named after a fourteenyear-old victim. The $2.4-million strategy provides for increased resources to promote accountability of offenders who sexually abuse children and to raise awareness of the problem and develop services for victims, along with educational campaigns.

Also in Manitoba, StreetReach is a promising new initiative whereby community outreach workers help identify missing or runaway children and coordinate services to assist them, as well as track individuals suspected of sexually exploiting children. The program already has been credited with shutting down drug houses and other locations used to lure and exploit vulnerable youth.

Unfortunately, few other provincial governments have been similarly proactive—and yet prevention strategies are key to stopping human trafficking both in Canada and abroad. That's why the
Palermo Protocol
also includes an obligation for countries “to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons, especially women and children, that leads to trafficking.”

Sex, car seizures, and videotape

Cars start circling the block as the sun begins to set. Like the men inside them, they're all makes, models, and years: luxury sedans, midsized cars, mini-vans, and vehicles whose next stop is the wrecking yard. Noticeably, some of the cars sport empty baby seats. The drivers seem like any others in the sprawling suburbs of the Greater Toronto Area, except they're not out for the evening air—they're cruising for women and girls.

On this night, the men have no idea that they're in the crosshairs of an undercover “reverse-sting” operation run by the Peel Regional Police, Vice Unit. Within a few hours, ten men will have been arrested for “communicating for the purposes of prostitution,” meaning they negotiated for paid sex with an undercover police officer posing as a prostituted woman.

The female undercover (the “U.C.”) has smudged her teeth, avoided washing her hair for several days, and put on worn-out clothes. The men know that prostituted women in the area are disadvantaged and can't afford proper dental care, so a woman with good teeth is a dead giveaway.