Invisible Chains (31 page)

Victoria's regulatory approach has not prevented human trafficking. In June 2010, the Victorian Parliament's Drugs and Crime Prevention Committee identified “a clear and close connection between sex trafficking and the legal and unregulated sex industry.” It also recognized “growing concerns” about the prevalence of sex trafficking, finding evidence that the state capital of Melbourne is second only to Sydney—the largest city in the country—as a destination for sex trafficking in Australia.

Legalization normalizes the purchase of sex acts, sanctioning the prerogative of men to treat women as commodities—and the state, in its role as tax collector, serves as pimp. “When legal barriers disappear, so too do the social and ethical barriers to treating women as sexual merchandise,” says activist Dorchen Leidholdt.

Claims that legalized prostitution will exclude criminal elements are also false. Amsterdam's red light district has had vast sections shut down due to serious concerns about the infiltration of organized crime and human trafficking. At one point, the city was investigating more than eighty violent pimps. As well, more than three-quarters of the women being sold for sex in Amsterdam reportedly hail from Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, often from economically depressed regions or continents where full equality for women is a distant prospect.

The 2005 report commissioned by the European Parliament, mentioned earlier, found that legalized prostitution generally results in
higher
levels of violence. In the Australian state of Victoria, officials have warned that escort workers who are alone in an unfamiliar environment may encounter “unpredictable client behaviour.” In New Zealand, officials say that regulation of the sex trade has not improved conditions in brothels with a history of problems and that exploitative contracts continue to be used.

In short, it is impossible to simply
regulate
the abuse, misery, and exploitation out of the commodification of women and girls as mere sexualized objects. The social experiment of regulated prostitution has failed miserably and done nothing to stop human trafficking.

In contrast, Sweden's innovative approach aims to
abolish
sexual
exploitation by criminalizing sex act purchasers and offering help to those being sold. In July 2010, an independent inquiry headed by an eminent judge resoundingly endorsed the Swedish model in a much-anticipated report entitled
Prohibition of the Purchase of Sexual Services: An Evaluation, 1999–2008.
It found that the Swedish model has disrupted organized crime, deterred sex act purchasers, changed public attitudes, and cut street-level prostitution in half. Plus it found no evidence that the problem simply moved indoors as some skeptics had speculated.

Importantly, the inquiry also found nothing whatsoever to suggest that Sweden's abolitionist model had negatively affected those being exploited. It recommended sustaining support for those being sold, creating a national centre against prostitution and human trafficking, and doubling the maximum penalty for purchasing sex acts to up to a year in prison.

Sweden's approach is growing in popularity and has recently spread to neighbouring countries like Norway and Iceland, such that it is now called the “Nordic Model.” In Ottawa, the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women has recommended adopting the Nordic Model, as have numerous Canadian NGOs, women's groups, and faith-based organizations. In the words of a British NGO, the model offers “a broad and progressive political vision … that actually aims to end the exploitative industry of prostitution rather than legitimise it, which essentially ends up expanding it.”

17

BUILDING A NEW UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

I'm on my way to Canada

That cold and distant land

The dire effects of slavery

I can no longer stand—

Farewell old master,

Don't come after me.

I'm on my way to Canada

Where coloured men are free.

—”THE FREE SLAVE,” GEORGE W. CLARK (CIRCA 1850)

I
n the mid-nineteenth century, an extensive network of secret paths and safe houses, known as the Underground Railroad, formed the escape route to Canada for fugitive slaves from the United States. Over thirty thousand slaves travelled this path north on foot or by wagon, seeking liberty for themselves and their families. Abolitionists developed a code language to help slaves avoid detection—they called Canada “The Promised Land.”

Some one hundred and fifty years later, Canada is no longer a safe haven from exploitation but rather a destination for human trafficking. Once again, we have a moral duty to protect and assist the exploited, whether they are foreign nationals or Canadian citizens. The time has come for Canada to resume its role as a defender of freedom.

A draft national strategy gathers dust

In 2002, the federal government created the Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons (IWGTIP) to coordinate Canada's response to human trafficking. Its mandate was to propose a national plan of action by 2005. While multiple drafts of
A Federal Strategy on Trafficking in Persons
have been circulating in the bureaucracy for years, none have been adopted yet.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women has also recommended that the federal government work with the provinces to create a comprehensive strategy to tackle human trafficking—again to no effect. In 2007, the entire House of Commons unanimously passed a motion introduced by MP Joy Smith calling for the same. However, no strategy has been adopted.

When I discovered that human traffickers literally had manuals on how to recruit and control victims, and how to maximize profits from their abuse, I realized Canada was in serious trouble: Whereas traffickers in human lives have a plan, Canada does not.

As this book reveals, human trafficking has taken hold across the country and is thriving due to a lack of a coordinated response from federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments. Canada must take greater steps to ensure that traffickers are prosecuted, victims are protected, and this assault on fundamental liberties is stopped. But government alone cannot solve the problem. The solution lies in a community response—and the realization that we all share in the responsibility to end trafficking and restore Canada as a safe and prosperous society for all of its citizens and newcomers.

Central to the country's failure to deal with human trafficking is a lack of leadership and accountability. Although the IWGTIP comprises seventeen government departments, it is a lethargic and ineffective body with no funding and no independent authority; it does not consult regularly with NGOs, nor does it have the ability to coordinate provincial and territorial efforts. After eight years, the IWGTIP has failed to produce results, leaving Canada significantly behind other countries in confronting this problem.

Victims of human trafficking have paid the price for this inaction over the decade since Canada signed the
Palermo Protocol.
We have only to recall a few described in this book: Natalie, who at eleven was locked in segregated immigration detention in Montreal for a month due to a lack of appropriate housing; Katya, whose two-decade nightmare of sexual abuse ended only when she was dumped outside a hospital in Edmonton, her life shattered; Genevieve, who felt stupid reporting her trafficker to police—he was released within days of being convicted.

To significantly enhance Canada's response to human trafficking, I am proposing action at all levels, from the federal government down to individual citizens, including every reader of this book.

The more we pretend that human trafficking does not occur or that we bear no individual responsibility in battling it, the closer it will come to our own front doors—as it already has for parents like Glendene Grant, whose daughter Jessie Foster, a likely victim of human trafficking, is still missing in Las Vegas.

Leadership from the federal government

The Canadian government must take the steps below, following the lead of other countries worldwide, to make combatting human trafficking a national priority:

Step one: A national action plan

Canada must create an effective, well-funded, and proactive federal bureau to combat human trafficking as a first step toward getting serious about eradicating human trafficking within its own borders. The bureau should be staffed with top officials possessing specialized expertise and mandated by the Privy Council Office; the latter would assist the bureau in coordinating other government departments and agencies, as well as liaising with provincial governments.

With sufficient funding, the bureau should meet the following objectives:

1  
Develop a National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking for approval by the federal Cabinet within a year.
The bureau should organize a series of federal/provincial/territorial meetings, including consultations with NGOs, to develop an effective plan. The National Action Plan should highlight time-sensitive objectives; propose necessary legislative, regulatory, and policy reforms; establish funding requirements; and identify strategic priorities to assist in the prosecution of traffickers, the protection of victims, and the prevention of human trafficking generally.

2  
Support the implementation of the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking and monitor progress
by government departments, agencies, and provincial governments.

3  
Administer the Canada Freedom Fund,
a new federal fund to support counter-trafficking programs in areas of greatest need across the country and abroad. There are examples of excellent community programs in Canada that could be expanded for greater impact; for example, Cinderella's Silence in Quebec and the StreetReach program in Manitoba, both discussed in
Chapter 15
.

4  
Report quarterly to the federal Cabinet and annually to Parliament
on progress and further action needed to combat trafficking in persons. The annual report to Parliament should include up-to-date data on prosecutions for trafficking in persons, the status of foreign victims granted temporary and permanent residence in Canada, progress on the National Action Plan, and identification of priority areas for the bureau to address in the forthcoming year. The bureau would gather statistics and monitor investigations with assistance from the RCMP Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre (HTNCC), Department of Justice, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Canada Border Services Agency, Criminal Intelligence Service Canada, and Statistics Canada.

5  
Ensure respect for victims' rights
by working with the federal ombudsman for victims of crime to complete a public report
about the challenges faced by victims of human trafficking in Canada, with recommendations to ensure their proper and fair treatment. In particular, the ombudsman should investigate whether the treatment of domestic and foreign trafficking victims complies fully with the Canadian Statement of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime.

Step two: Enact stronger and more effective laws

The definition of “exploitation” in the
Criminal Code's
human trafficking offences should be amended to recognize the subtle means of coercion used by traffickers, including all of those identified in the
Palermo Protocol.
As discussed in
Chapter 12
, the current fear for “safety” requirement is too narrow. Where the victim is under eighteen, there should be no requirement to prove that any particular method was used to exploit the child for sex acts or forced labour.

Penalties for child trafficking, in particular, must reflect the particularly grave nature of this crime. The recent passage of Bill C-268 is a major step in achieving this goal. To make certain that child traffickers are held responsible, Crown prosecutors need to ensure that appropriate charges are laid and sufficient sentences sought.

Canada's current laws do not adequately punish purchasers of sex acts who fuel human trafficking and sexual exploitation. The laws on solicitation for the purposes of prostitution of adults apply only in public places and carry a summary conviction offence suited to a minor transgression. The
Criminal Code
should be amended as follows to emulate Sweden's pioneering approach to addressing demand:

•  prohibit the purchase of sex acts wherever they take place;

•  make the offence prosecutable either by summary conviction or a more serious indictable offence at the discretion of the prosecution;

•  ensure that penalties increase with each subsequent offence;

•  provide more stringent penalties for purchasing sex acts with a minor.

Preventing Canadian men from driving the demand for human trafficking through sexual exploitation of women and children abroad must also receive greater attention. Amending the
Criminal Code
so that convicted sex offenders must give notice of their intent to travel abroad and using the Interpol Green Notice system to warn the destination country would enable that country to decide whether or not to admit the offender. If an offender failed to notify the relevant authorities, the omission would be detected readily when the offender sought to re-enter Canada or renew his passport abroad—and it would rank as a serious offence. With this system in place, individuals like child sex offender John Wrenshall of Calgary would not have been allowed to travel abroad freely on a Canadian passport and to organize child sex tours in Thailand for Western pedophiles.

Convicted sex offenders should be required by law to disclose their internet accounts and social networking website profiles to the RCMP National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre. In turn, the NCECC should be authorized to share this information with social networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace, who have agreed to remove sex offenders from their listings. Offenders convicted of human trafficking, sexual offences against minors, or those who have used the internet to facilitate sex crimes should be prohibited from accessing social networking websites as a mandatory condition of probation.