Human Trafficking in [Canada Street Children in [Canada] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Canada] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
first ten years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 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. Canadian women and girls, many of whom are aboriginal, are
trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation. NGOs report that Canada is a destination country for
foreign victims trafficked for labor exploitation; some labor victims enter
Canada legally but then are subjected to forced labor in agriculture,
sweatshops, or as domestic servants.
- U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009 [full country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Aboriginal women fair game for predators amid public indifference Untold scores of society's most
vulnerable members - young native women - have gone missing across the
country only to be forsaken by a jaded justice system and neglectful media.
The death and disappearance of aboriginal women has emerged as an alarming
nationwide pattern, from western serial murders to little-known Atlantic
vanishings. Grim statistics and anecdotal evidence compiled by The Canadian
Press suggest public apathy has allowed predators to stalk native victims
with near impunity. Human
trafficking in Vancouver Women become trapped in sex trade
after being lured to city with false promises. Imagine being beaten, forced into sex work,
and told you’ll be killed if you try to escape. The constant threat of
violence means you’re too scared to go to the authorities, but even if you
did, there’s little chance of retribution for your attacker. This might sound like something that would
happen in a third-world country, or during some bygone era, but it’s
happening now in Vancouver, and is a reality for many victims of human
trafficking. “I can’t understand why Canada
hasn’t successfully prosecuted a single person for human trafficking when you
look at other countries like the U.S., Australia, and the U.K.,” says Perrin.
“We’ve made the same commitments and been to the same conferences, but Canada
has been all talk and no action. We’re just beginning to turn the corner;
we’re where other countries we consider ourselves in the same league as were
10 years ago. We’ve had a decade of inaction on this and it’s allowed
traffickers to profit; we need to make it more risky and less profitable for
them.” Human
Trafficking May Be Closer to Home Than We Think INTERNATIONAL
TRAFFICKING - Coming into
Canada from other countries, these victims are often afraid of police
authority because their police may be corrupt. This fear is exploited by
captors. Trafficking is often confused
with being smuggled into the country, but trafficking is unique because it
requires three steps — recruitment, movement and exploitation. Women often believe they are being smuggled
into the country — they want to sneak into Canada, with dreams of a better
life here. But soon they learn they have been sold and must now work as
slaves. DOMESTIC TRAFFICKING - Women are first befriended by a
recruiter who often becomes their boyfriend and then convinces them move to a
new city. The traffickers will use
threats; they may beat or gang rape the person or threaten to kill their
family — anything to keep them there.
"They wine them and dine them ... All of a sudden they are moving
from one city to another city. Once they get there they are sold and forced
to live on the street." ***
ARCHIVES *** Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS –
Thousands of persons entered the country illegally over the last decade.
These persons came primarily from East Asia (particularly China and Korea, but
also Malaysia), Central and South Asia, Eastern Europe, Russia, Latin America
and the Caribbean (including Mexico, Honduras, and Haiti), and South Africa.
Many of these illegal immigrants paid large sums to be smuggled to the
country, were indentured to their traffickers upon arrival, worked at lower
than minimum wage, and used most of their salaries to pay down their debt at
usurious interest rates. The traffickers used violence to ensure that their
clients paid and that they did not inform the police. Asian women and girls
who were smuggled into the country often were forced into prostitution.
Traffickers used intimidation and violence, as well as the illegal
immigrants' inability to speak English, to keep victims from running away or
informing the police. Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2003 [52] The Committee is also
concerned about the increase of foreign children and women trafficked into
Canada. [53] The Committee recommends … www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2008/12/26/7852636-sun.html
A different picture emerged of a
flesh trade often thought of as foreign nationals tricked across borders. It
became apparent that Canadian women and girls were being victimized by
Canadian men. The first two human trafficking convictions -- one in May,
another in November, both from the Peel Regional Police vice unit -- involved
domestic trafficking victims who were forced to prostitute and hand over all
their earnings to pimps. The "rules" identified by police -- always
checking in with their pimps, meeting daily quotas, the list goes on -- were
strikingly similar across the board, when comparing the cases to the other
nine human trafficking charges Peel has before the courts. The first conviction, which
involved two teenaged girls -- one just 14 years old -- who worked seven days
a week and brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars for their trafficker,
created "a ripple that has reached every region of the country,"
Perrin said. Child
prostitute alleges she was lured to Victoria streets www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=%202f361123-b251-4fc1-97d0-2c578968d52f A man released on bail in October
is back in custody after police discovered he allegedly lured a 14-year-old
female to work as a prostitute. She alleges that she met the
Victoria man over the internet. He lured her to Victoria from her family home
in the B.C. Interior from where she has been missing for three weeks. Once
here, he took control of her possessions, including identification and
wallet. She says that when she tried to leave, he beat her and threatened
her. Why
Canada has failed to deal with human trafficking www2.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=815e5425-18e2-4e45-81d7-0e369203b0b5
Only one victim -- a child sold to
slave traders by parents -- came forward voluntarily. Fear, threats and
coercion probably kept some away. But,
Perrin says, in most provinces, especially Ontario and Quebec, it's almost
impossible to find any help. But since
the solicitor-general's office to combat human trafficking was set up two
years ago, there hasn't been a single victim rescued or charge laid. During the two years that Canada identified
31 trafficking victims, the United States found 17,000. It's not that Canada is clean; the
Americans have identified it as both a source and destination country for the
victims of slave traders. It's more
likely because Canada has no national strategy for finding traffickers, no
national plan for identifying and helping victims and little understanding of
who the victims are. Canada is
obviously doing many things wrong. Flesh
trade targets natives - Young Aboriginal women used as a sex commodity in
cities across Canada www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2008/09/29/6916776-sun.html
"There's a total myth that
Aboriginal women either consent to or are born into the sex trade," says
Jo-Ann Daniels, interim executive director for the Metis
Settlements General Council in Edmonton. "The average age of Aboriginal
girls who are human trafficked is between seven and 12 years old. "It is Aboriginal girls and
women who are specifically targeted in this country to be trafficked, in such
huge numbers that it does not compare to any other population," Daniels
says. "We believe that it is the root source of Aboriginal women ever
being involved in the sex trade. We believe that Aboriginal women and
Aboriginal girls have been domestically trafficked now for, I would say
probably since the '50s when there began to be Aboriginal movement into urban
areas or there were more contacts between Aboriginal communities and
towns." YOUNG, NAIVE - Sethi
quotes an Aboriginal outreach worker as such: "Girls tend to believe in
the promises of the traffickers as they are young, naive and vulnerable in a
new and big city. They are unsuspecting of the motives of the traffickers,
since they belong to communities that have a culture of welcoming
strangers." Foreign
workers lured with lies www.cerium.ca/spip.php?page=impression&id_article=7846
DEBT TO PAY - Like many trafficking victims
who are smuggled into this country, these victims are, too, told they have a
debt to pay off. We found you a job, now you owe us some money. And there is nobody telling them
otherwise. "There’s nobody to
check up on them," Sikka says. With no official agreement obligating the
federal government to tell the provinces who, when and how many people are
arriving as temporary foreign workers or live-in caregivers, employment
standards branches across the country, no matter how good their intentions,
don’t have the necessary information to check up on workers, Sikka says.
"There’s no mandatory orientation done," she says.
"It’s absolutely, 100% necessary. I think it’s the primary thing we can
do to stop the types of trafficking that are going on in Western Canada
particularly." Debt bondage aside, workers can
fall into a "vicious cycle" of exploitation simply by not being
informed of their rights upon arrival, Sikka
says. Something as simple as informing
workers about the procedure of changing employers would be helpful for
foreign workers who are granted visas to work at one place, but upon arrival
in Canada, are shuffled over to different employers. By the time they figure out they are
working illegally, experts say, these workers may be hesitant to speak out
about an exploitive situation for fear of deportation. "They can change employers if they
want, but they’re just not told," Sikka says.
"Nobody informs them they have to go through that procedure." UQ
study looks at foreign sex worker exploitation and human trafficking www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=16004 Australia and Canada's records in
combating human trafficking were among the worst in the developed world,
according to a University of Queensland
researcher. Dr Andreas Schloenhardt, a senior lecturer in UQ's
TC Beirne School of Law
said trafficking in persons remained a phenomenon not well understood and
poorly researched. "This is
despite greater public awareness and acknowledgement of the problem by
government agencies," he said.
"Strategic policies, concerted government action, along with
prosecutions and convictions of traffickers are only slowly forthcoming and
the support available to victims of trafficking is only marginally
developed." One of the major obstacles to
government policy making, program development by non-governmental organisations, and public awareness about the
exploitation of foreign workers and the trafficking in persons was the lack
of any reliable and comprehensive account of the nature and extent of this
problem, he said. Anecdotal evidence
and statistical estimates without a sufficient evidentiary basis were the
only sources of information currently available about Australia and Canada's
involvement in trafficking in persons.
This was in contrast to other countries where comprehensive accounts
of human trafficking were published annually by government agencies. Exploited
workers Canada's 'slave trade' www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/488074
Skilled Filipino workers packed
into filthy house, denied pay, threatened with deportation It was 5:30 in the morning when
Edwin Canilang realized he had been bought and
sold. Crowded in the back of a van
heading north of Toronto with four other Filipino men last summer, the
skilled welder faced another unpaid day on a cleanup detail at a bottling
plant. Some were pressed into service at
a water bottling plant, run by De Rosa's family. Others dug ditches or picked
up garbage around a large rural estate where De Rosa lives. The workers, threatened
with deportation, did every menial job thrown at them. None of the work
involved welding and plumbing, the trades that brought them here. Que.
couple could face human trafficking charge in teen prostitution case www2.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=2410189b-25bf-47f0-9166-82af82b3ccfe
Emerson was charged with 13
offences, including kidnapping, forcible confinement and procuring and living
off the avails of prostitution after the police gangs section discovered that
three teenage girls had been held captive for up to a year in a condominium
building in Gatineau, just across the Ottawa River
from the nation's capital. Investigators said Wednesday that
one 17-year-old girl they believed was an accomplice turned out to be a
victim who had been held prisoner for a year. Two other 17-year-old girls are
alleged to have been held for five to six months while they engaged in
prostitution. Gatineau's
Assistant Crown attorney Diane Legault said
Thursday the two accused likely will face new charges, including human
trafficking. In November 2005, the
Criminal Code was amended to make the "recruitment, transporting,
transferring, receipt, holding, concealment or harbouring
of a person, or the exercise of control, direction or influence over the
movements of a person for the purpose of exploiting them or facilitating
their exploitation" an indictable offence. SPECIAL
REPORT: Human Trafficking - It happens more than you think in Canada www.canada.com/globaltv/ontario/story.html?id=c7ccee8e-c196-426a-a098-fa1d426ac0fe Slavery is alive and thriving in
the 21st century. While human trafficking is indeed a global issue, Canadian
citizens are often trafficked within their own country, enslaved, bought and
sold from province to province. Every situation is different; often victims
are lured into a horrific exploitive setting not by strangers but by someone
they know, a relative, a neighbor, or even a friend. Hundreds of thousands of children,
young men and women have vanished from their everyday lives -forced by
violence into a hellish existence of brutality and prostitution. They're a
profitable commodity in the multi-billion-dollar industry of modern slavery.
The underworld calls them human trafficking and it is all happening in our
country. Human
trafficking a growing problem in Canada, B.C. expert says But Perrin said Canada's first
human trafficking conviction this summer did not involve a foreigner, but
rather a 13-year-old in the Greater Toronto Area who was bought and sold by
Canadian men on the popular online classified advertisement website Craigslist. In May, former Toronto man Imani Nakpamgi admitted in
court that he made more than $400,000 selling two underage girls for sex,
according to the Toronto Star. Both girls had been reported missing, either
by their family or child welfare officials. UPDATES
ON BC man charged with human trafficking sentenced to 15 months During Ng's trial, provincial
court Judge Malcolm MacLean was told Ng brought women to Canada, promising
them jobs as waitresses and then putting them to work as prostitutes in his
east Vancouver massage parlour. One woman, whose identity is protected by
court order, told MacLean she had been brought to Canada by Ng to work in
what she thought was a restaurant.
Instead of a waitress job, the woman testified she was taken to a Ng's
massage parlour and told she was expected to pay
him $11,000 a month by prostituting herself.
But MacLean said there was no evidence the woman was forced or coerced
into coming to Canada. Human
Trafficking May Be Closer to Home Than We Think INTERNATIONAL
TRAFFICKING - Coming into
Canada from other countries, these victims are often afraid of police
authority because their police may be corrupt. This fear is exploited by
captors. Trafficking is often confused
with being smuggled into the country, but trafficking is unique because it
requires three steps — recruitment, movement and exploitation. Women often believe they are being smuggled
into the country — they want to sneak into Canada, with dreams of a better
life here. But soon they learn they have been sold and must now work as
slaves. DOMESTIC TRAFFICKING - Women are first befriended by a
recruiter who often becomes their boyfriend and then convinces them move to a
new city. The traffickers will use
threats; they may beat or gang rape the person or threaten to kill their
family — anything to keep them there.
"They wine them and dine them ... All of a sudden they are moving
from one city to another city. Once they get there they are sold and forced
to live on the street." Royal Canadian
Mounted Police Report On Sex Slave Market Prompts Recount Of Trafficking
Victims Following the rediscovery of sex
slave rings in Canada, the vice chair of the Parliamentary Committee on the
Status of Women assigned staff to review the human trafficking data of the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The initial RCMP estimate is that 800 to 1,200
people in Canada have been victims of human trafficking, but some groups cite
figures as high as 15,000 victims. Rise
in human trafficking largely unnoticed in Canada, experts say Human
traffickers peddle young girls to work as sex slaves in Canadian cities for
as little as $2,000 - a situation most people believe only happens in foreign
lands, activists say. An increase in human trafficking
in Canada has gone largely unnoticed because Canadians think young girls
choose to take up the sex trade, according to Joy Smith, a Conservative MP
and longtime anti-trafficking activist.
“There are girls being sold in Montreal for $2,000,” Smith said. She pointed out that many dismiss
the scope of the problem by claiming sex slaves, who are mainly women, chose
to become prostitutes. “A lot of the
girls in brothels never meant to be in brothels,” Smith said. “They got there
because somebody threatened them and forced them into it.” Alleged victims of human trafficking ring in protective
custody www.mirror-guardian.com/News/NorthYork/article/39245 Police allege the victims were
smuggled across the Canadian border using false Israeli passports, provided
by "the same criminal element from overseas," and then had their
documents taken away from them upon their arrival. Victims were then allegedly
brought to a safe house and held until they started to comply with their
perpetrators' demands - whether through threats of violence or allegations
that they owed their captors for bringing them to Canada. Police say they believe the
victims would be locked in isolated rooms, away from the general public and
away from each other, each day until around 6 p.m. A driver or chaperone
would then arrive to bring them to a location or locations to work as
prostitutes. When finished, they'd be brought back home and locked up again, Ervick alleged. Ervick said the sums of money exchanging
hands would vary on a case to case basis, but he alleged each young victim
could conceivably "bring in as much as $4,000 to $10,000 a week,"
but only be given a given small sum to live off. "These women are very
vulnerable, in a country that is not their own, where they don't speak the
language and are isolated both from the general population and from each
other," he alleged. Cops arrest 6 people in human trafficking ring www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2008/01/12/4769657.html Police say the victims came to
Canada with false passports under the pretext of working as models. Once they arrived, police allege the women
were forcibly confined and told they would be working as prostitutes for the
ringleaders of the operation. Human-trafficking
charges dropped The couple's lawyer, Frank Pappas,
said "even Inspector Clouseau" could have
done a better investigation than the RCMP, who didn't interview the couple's neighbours, or the clerk at the depanneur
where the domestic bought phone cards to call overseas. "Had the RCMP investigated properly
from the outset, they would have realized that her assertion ... that she was
a prisoner was completely false," Pappas said. "Even Ray Charles
could have seen it." But Pappas said the whole thing
was a scam in order for Manaye to avoid
deportation. Social networking sites used for human-trafficking - Hundreds of Albertans get targeted each year www.kidsafecyberspace.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/SN-sites-used-for-human-trafficking-11-11-07.htm www.edmontonsun.com/News/Edmonton/2007/11/11/4648414.html They do most of their recruiting
on social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace, choosing naïve or vulnerable victims for
“grooming” who are right around 18 years old in order to avoid detection by
authorities looking for predators after underage kids. After four or five dizzyingly spectacular
dates, the predator will invite her to a private party. She will be gang-raped and
subjected to unspeakable humiliation. She might be drugged. “Her ‘boyfriend’ will tell her what’s
expected of her,” Galvin said. “She’s told the event will occur anyways. She
can either fight or submit to it, but it’s going to happen.” She will be threatened with death if she
goes to police. Her family might also be threatened. Human
trafficking an issue in Canada Human-trafficking is not issue
that gets a lot of attention in Alberta simply because most people think it's
an international issue with international victims, Trompetter
said. But it happens more often than
people think, she said. "We have national trafficking of Canadian women,
especially in the aboriginal communities. In the prairie provinces, there is
a lot of activity going on. Girls are being recruited on reserves and brought
into the big urban centres like Winnipeg,
Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton and Calgary to work in prostitution." A study by the federal standing committee
on the status of women last February found aboriginal females are at greater
risk of becoming victims of trafficking.
Erin Wolski, of the Native Women's
Association of Canada, told the committee aboriginal females are
"extremely vulnerable." Human
trafficking in Vancouver Women become trapped in sex trade
after being lured to city with false promises
Imagine being beaten, forced into sex work, and told you’ll be killed
if you try to escape. The constant threat of violence means you’re too scared
to go to the authorities, but even if you did, there’s little chance of
retribution for your attacker. This
might sound like something that would happen in a third-world country, or
during some bygone era, but it’s happening now in Vancouver, and is a reality
for many victims of human trafficking. “I can’t understand why Canada
hasn’t successfully prosecuted a single person for human trafficking when you
look at other countries like the U.S., Australia, and the U.K.,” says Perrin.
“We’ve made the same commitments and been to the same conferences, but Canada
has been all talk and no action. We’re just beginning to turn the corner;
we’re where other countries we consider ourselves in the same league as were
10 years ago. We’ve had a decade of inaction on this and it’s allowed
traffickers to profit; we need to make it more risky and less profitable for
them.” Reforming
Canada’s Record on Human Trafficking A young woman answers a job ad
that offers a prepaid air ticket and glamorous work as an international
model. She leaves home -- perhaps from a city in Eastern Europe or Southeast
Asia. Upon arriving in Canada, she
discovers to her horror that she has been lured into the sex trade and faces
“debts” that she must now pay off. Somehow she escapes her captors and looks
for help. The authorities detain, interrogate and then deport her. Until recently, this was how Canada
routinely treated human trafficking victims -- as illegal migrants, says
Benjamin Perrin, an assistant professor who joined the UBC Faculty of Law in
August. Organized Crime and Human Trafficking in Canada: Tracing Perceptions and Discourses [PDF] EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - The review of the cases reveals
that, in spite of the judiciaries’ implicit acceptance of the official and
counter discourse vis-à-vis the trafficking of women for the purposes of
prostitution by organized crime, judgments are, for the most part, marked by
a lack of sensitivity to the cultural, economic and social reality of
undocumented migrant workers generally and to the reality of exploitation,
violence and stigma experienced by sex trade workers more specifically.
Moreover the documents are interpreted in a manner that renders the majority
of claimants outside the discourse and hence not entitled to the
consideration afforded ‘victims’. In particular the extrajudicial and
potentially moral question of whether the women knew they would be working in
the sex trade is rendered significant. It would appear that embedded in the
sex slave/sex worker dichotomy is another dualism – innocent/culpable.
Therefore women who are unaware that they will participate in the trade are
potentially protected while women who experience severe labour
abuse are held accountable for their situation regardless of the exploitation
they may experience. In short the ‘sex slave’ discourse may operate against
the interests of many irregular migrant sex trade workers by obscuring their
exploitation at the same time as it renders exploitation the defining
characteristic of others. Canada's
New Government Strengthens Protection for Victims of Human Trafficking The Honourable
Diane Finley, Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, today introduced new
measures to help assist victims of human trafficking brought into Canada from
abroad. The new measures extend the
length of the temporary resident permit (TRP) for victims of human
trafficking to 180 days, up from 120. This extension also allows victims to
apply for a work permit - an option not previously available. The new measures will also continue to
allow victims of human trafficking to receive health-care benefits, including
medical treatment and counselling services, under
the Interim Federal Health Program. F1
fuels human trafficking, activists say Last year, Canada was singled out
in an international study for failing to meet its obligations for the protection
of victims of human trafficking. The 40-page study, titled Falling Short of the Mark: An
International Study on the Treatment of Human Trafficking Victims,
concluded that out of the countries evaluated - Australia, Canada, Germany,
Italy, Norway, Sweden, Britain and the United States - only Canada and Britain failed to meet
their obligations to protect victims under the United Nations Trafficking
Protocol and international best practices. Falling Short
of the Mark: An International Study on the Treatment of Human Trafficking
Victims [PDF] CANADA - Canada has systematically
failed to comply with its international obligations under the Trafficking
Protocol for the protection of victims of human trafficking. There is no evidence it has considered providing for
the protection of victims in the manner obliged under the Trafficking
Protocol. Canada.s record of dealing with
trafficking victims is an international embarrassment and contrary to best
practices. This is despite being the first jurisdiction in this Study to have
ratified the Trafficking Protocol almost four years ago on May 13, 2002.
Canada has ignored calls for reform and continues to re-traumatize
trafficking victims, with few exceptions, by subjecting them to routine
deportation and fails to provide even basic support services. The situation in Canada is so bad,
with respect to a failure to provide basic support to trafficking victims,
that individual law enforcement officers are attempting to approach local
hospitals and NGOs to cobble together funding to provide the most basic
medical assistance for these victims in major Canadian cities. Winnipeg
police to draft human trafficking policy The average model is 14 years old,
the Winnipeg-based Crawford said, and some of them are vulnerable to abuse by
recruiters, agents and photographers. Crawford says she has seen or
heard of girls being raped, used as prostitutes or sent to work in
bars. Ewatski
acknowledged that human trafficking as a crime has come to Winnipeg, although
not to the same extent as larger centres such as
Vancouver and Montreal. MP
calls for action to combat human trafficking Smith explained that women from
other countries are promised a better life in Canada, and once they are
brought here their documents are taken away and they are forced into the sex
trade. The same is true, Smith said, for Canadian women who have pursued modelling careers abroad. Human-trafficking bill introduced www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&pubid=968163964505&cid=1165574828959&col=968705899037&call_page=TS_Ontario&call_pageid=968256289824&call_pagepath=News/Ontario A Canadian teenager signs up for a
modelling program and, unbeknownst to her parents,
is forced to have sex with strangers while travelling
in Europe. A Mexican woman is smuggled into Canada illegally, and turns
tricks against her will above a downtown Toronto drugstore. The RCMP
estimates that 800-1,200 people in Canada, the vast majority of them women,
are victims of human trafficking each year, but non-governmental
organizations peg the number in the thousands. Local
Sex Crime Conference Focuses On Human Trafficking And the crime that so often happens
in the background is more present than any of us would like to think. Numbers
from the Mounties suggest between 600-800 people are 'trafficked'
to Canada every year. Many of those
being victimized are prime targets for the despicable entrepreneurs -
young women from third-world countries that have high rates of poverty,
violence, illiteracy and political and economic instability. But it's not just the more stereotyped
"sex slaves" that you often read about. While that's number one on
the list, the vulnerable can also become prisoners of domestic servitude, the
farming and fishing industry and sweat shops. Human
trafficking not just a big city problem: RCMP Human trafficking is becoming a
bigger concern all the time, he said, and it often involves forcing people
into the sex trade or making farm workers and nannies work long hours for
little money. MacIver
said it's not talked about much in small towns, so people may think it
doesn't exist. "They are not
aware of it and not educated about it," he said. According to the RCMP, between 800 and
1,200 people are victims of human trafficking in Canada each year, most
working in forced labour or the illegal sex trade. Human
trafficking victims face immigration barriers Hundreds of children, men and
women believed to be bought and sold in Canada every year in what
amounts to a life of slavery face large hurdles to stay in the
country legally once they escape their captors. Conservative RCMP estimates show that
between 800 and 1,200 people are victims of human trafficking in Canada each
year, with most ending up working in forced labour
or the illegal sex trade. University
College of the Fraser Valley expert testifies "We have to create an
environment in which it is safe for victims to come forward and seek
help," he said, keeping in mind that they are "seriously at risk of
reprisal or intimidation" from their captors here in Canada while their
families face "terrorism" back in their homeland. Successful human traffickers have
become adept at using various simple but very effective methods of
psychological control over their victims," Dandurand
said. "They know how to break a victim's self-confidence and
self-efficacy, crush their hopes, and condition them to resign themselves to
a life of exploitation in which they are trapped." Border guards uncover human trafficking network www.pentictonwesternnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=102&cat=23&id=673681&more= Six Korean women, who were
potential victims of human trafficking, have returned to Korea after they
were discovered hiding in a bush at the Osoyoos
border crossing. Human
Trafficking Could be Huge Issue During 2010 Olympics Typically, traffickers lure women
with promises of jobs that will supposedly pay them many times what they
would earn in their home country. But
the reality is they’re forced to work as prostitutes in massage parlours and must repay thousands of dollars in debt for
living expenses and forged passports.
Non-governmental organizations say women are sometimes kidnapped,
beaten and drugged before being brought to Canada for an industry that
involves low risk and high profits for the traffickers. Government and police officials are aware
of the problem and concerned about the potential the Games pose for
traffickers. geo.international.gc.ca/world/site/includes/print.asp?lang=en&print=1&url=%2Fcanada_un%2Fottawa%2Fcanada_un%2Funupdate-en.asp&id=6526
geo.international.gc.ca/canada_un/ottawa/canada_un/unupdate-en.asp?id=6526&content_type=2 HEADLINES - HUMAN TRAFFICKING:
CANADA TO ASSIST VICTIMS - [scroll down to the story] The Future Group, a Canadian NGO, said in March that Ottawa did a terrible job of helping human trafficking victims and usually deported them. Immigration Minister Monte Solberg, who said the report "was a wake-up call", said victims would be given temporary residence permits valid for 120 days and were eligible for health-care benefits. At the end of that period they could either return to their home country or apply for another permit valid for up to five years. New government
revisits visas for exotic dancers The new application stipulates
changes to the employment contracts, making work in Canada safer for foreign
women than before. Some changes include: longer employment contracts (one
year rather than the former three months), 30 guaranteed hours of work per
week, dancers keep all gratuities and tips, no physical contact between the
dancer and patron, the employer must assist the employee with applying for
public health care and insurance coverages, and the
employer must also pay for transportation from and to the dancer's home
country. Canada an “International
Embarrassment” on Sex Trafficking Canada and the United Kingdom have
been singled out in an international study for failing to meet their
obligations for the protection of victims of human trafficking, while other
developed countries received praise for their efforts. Of the countries evaluated:
Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the
United States, only Canada and the UK failed to meet their obligations to
protect victims under the United Nations Trafficking Protocol and
international best practices. Child-sex ring uncovered in Winnipeg, police allege Sgt. Kelly Dennison said about 20
girls – aged 12 to 17 – were sold into prostitution. Dennison said the other children younger
than age 12, including a baby of only 18 months, weren't necessarily forced
to perform sexual acts but may have been exposed to them because they lived
in the houses where they were taking place. MP tears strip off
Liberals, Feds continue to allow exploitation, Tory says Diane Ablonczy
accused the government of misleading Canadians last year when it claimed to
be "canceling" the controversial policy of issuing temporary work
permits to exotic dancers based on a labor market opinion from the Human
Resources department. But the
"sordid truth" is that the welcome mat is still rolled out to
foreign strippers, she told the House, citing a Sun story over the weekend. Aboriginal
women fair game for predators amid public indifference Untold scores of society's most
vulnerable members - young native women - have gone missing across the
country only to be forsaken by a jaded justice system and neglectful media.
The death and disappearance of aboriginal women has emerged as an alarming
nationwide pattern, from western serial murders to little-known Atlantic
vanishings. Grim statistics and anecdotal evidence compiled by The Canadian
Press suggest public apathy has allowed predators to stalk native victims
with near impunity. Human trafficking charges laid in B.C. www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/04/13/ng-human-trafficking050413.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
A man in The
Protection Project - Canada [DOC] FORMS OF TRAFFICKING - Most of the Chinese, Korean,
Malaysian, and Thai women found in raids on brothels, massage parlors, and
karaoke bars across the country have told police that an agent in their home
countries charged them for transportation to Canada and for job placement.
Some agents demanded payment in advance, while others agreed to be repaid
once the girls were working in Canada. The agents then sold them to bar and
brothel owners for prices ranging from Cdn$7,500 to Cdn$15,000. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 1 Civil Liberties: 1 Status: Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide Hundreds
of foreigners lured in sex trade: RCMP At least 600 foreign women and
girls are coerced into joining the Canadian sex trade each year by human
traffickers, says a newly declassified RCMP report. As many as 2,200 other newcomers are
smuggled into the United States from Canada to toil in brothels, sweatshops,
domestic jobs or construction work, estimates the intelligence assessment
obtained by The Canadian Press. And
the RCMP says the numbers may represent just the tip of the proverbial iceberg,
as it is widely believed only one in 10 victims of trafficking report the
crime to police. Washington
state a hotbed for human trafficking, report says A new report says Washington state
is a hotbed for what many say is a modern form of slavery: human trafficking,
the recruitment, transportation and sale of people for labor. The state's international border with Canada, its many ports, rural areas
and dependency on agricultural workers make Washington prone to such exploitation,
according to the report. "It is
such a hideous crime because it's really slavery," said Bev Emery, who manages the state's Office of Crime
Victims Advocacy. "It's looking at and treating human beings as though
they are a commodity to be bought and sold." Several years ago Nam was promised
safe passage to Canada and a job to help pay off her airfare. When she
arrived she found she had been trafficked into prostitution, forced to work
against her will without seeing any of her earnings. Later, when the brothel
was raided Nam was ‘rescued’ by police. But that meant going to jail for a
year before being forced to return home. S.F.
parlor hit in crackdown on sex slave trade The two later told investigators
they had been smuggled from Canada
into the United States in May and taken directly to King's, where one of the managers
allegedly paid $32,000 to the person who had transported them. The two women said they briefly
escaped in August, but were soon found by the manager and two other workers,
returned to King's and beaten. Trafficking in Persons canada.justice.gc.ca/en/fs/ht/links.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
LINKS·
Research / Academic ·
Canadian non-governmental organisations ·
Intergovernmental organisations and
initiatives ·
International non-governmental organisations
·
Federal departments and agencies members of the Interdepartmental Working
Group on Trafficking in Persons (IWGTIP) Helping
Honduran Children Return Home With support from the Human
Security Program, the International Organization for Migration and Covenant
House (Casa Alianza) have begun a pilot project
that aims to repatriate and re-integrate Honduran street children who have
been trafficked to Canada and the
United States. Embattled minister promises changes to exotic dancer rules www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/11/25/sgro041125.html At one time this article had been
archived and may possibly still be accessible [here]
"When you talk to the women
who are so desperate for a way out of [their] countries they say, 'Please
keep this program because it does provide us with an opportunity – as much as
we may not like it or approve of it – a chance of a better life.'" Sgro says once
the women get to Canada Abruptly
Ends Special Visas for Exotic Dancers after Inquiries into Underage Strippers Today in the House of Commons,
Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan announced an
abrupt end to the Canadian scheme of arranging visas specifically for exotic
dancers, or strippers, which are used to fill positions at strip clubs in
Canada. Those clubs, it has been acknowledged even by club owners, are
notorious for forced back-room prostitution work. U.S., Canadian and Mexican Representatives Meet to Combat Sexual Exploitation Other newly released information from the Penn study shows that Canada is an easy gateway into the U.S. for sexually exploited children from China, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and Central and Eastern Europe. "Due to relaxed border controls between the U.S. and Canada," Estes said, " trafficked children are able to be moved with comparative ease and meet with little or no official interference." www.docstoc.com/docs/2369049/Trafficking-in-Women-in-Canada-A-Critical-Analysis-of-the-Legal www.swc-cfc.gc.ca/pubs/pubspr/066231252X/index_e.html This report analyses the legal
framework governing the hiring of immigrant live-in caregivers and the legal
status of mail-order brides who immigrate to Canada with a spousal or fiancée
visa. All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial, nonprofit,
and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Canada Street Children in [Canada] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Canada] [other countries]