Invisible Chains (32 page)

Step three: Ensure victims are protected, not criminalized

The House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women studied how prostitution laws should be reformed to address sexual exploitation and human trafficking. Having heard the evidence of dozens of witnesses, as noted earlier, the committee recommended that Canada adopt the Swedish approach and abolish criminal offences that punish individuals who are sold for sex acts. As seen in
Chapter 16
, these individuals should instead be granted support and treated with dignity and respect, not punishment and censure. The time has come for Canada to take this step as well.

The treatment of victims of human trafficking also requires attention. In October 2003, federal, provincial, and territorial ministers of justice established principles to ensure proper treatment of victims of crime. These tenets must also be applied to human trafficking victims:

1  Victims of crime should be treated with courtesy, compassion, and respect.

2  The privacy of victims should be considered and respected to the greatest extent possible.

3  All reasonable measures should be taken to minimize inconvenience to victims.

4  The safety and security of victims should be considered at all stages of the criminal justice process and appropriate measures should be taken when necessary to protect victims from intimidation and retaliation.

5  Information should be provided to victims about the criminal justice system and the victim's role and opportunities to participate in criminal justice processes.

6  Victims should be given information, in accordance with prevailing law, policies, and procedures, about the status of the investigation; the scheduling, progress, and final outcome of the proceedings; and the status of the offender in the correctional system.

7  Information should be provided to victims about available victim assistance services, other programs and assistance available to them, and means of obtaining financial reparation.

8  The views, concerns, and representations of victims are an important consideration in criminal justice processes and should be considered in accordance with prevailing law, policies, and procedures.

9  The needs, concerns, and diversity of victims should be considered in the development and delivery of programs and services, and in related education and training.

10  Information should be provided to victims about available options to raise their concerns when they believe that these principles have not been followed.

Canada should also adopt legislation to provide foreign trafficked persons with temporary and, in appropriate cases, permanent residence. The current system relies on a ministerial policy decision that does not afford certainty or the permanence of legislation—a concern cited by numerous NGOs. A better system for providing temporary residence for trafficking victims would improve relations among NGOs, law enforcement, and CIC, which are strained in several regions of Canada; for instance, in Alberta, where the RCMP and Changing Together had to fight for Thérèse to remain in Canada after she'd been enslaved in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then was transported here for even greater profit for her “owner.”

The
Immigration and Refugee Protection Act
should be amended in the following ways:

•  A “protection permit” should be issued for an initial period of up to six months when a specially trained immigration officer has reasonable grounds to suspect that an individual may be trafficked according to the
Palermo Protocol
definition. The narrower definition of human trafficking currently in the
Criminal Code
and IRPA should
not
be used as some have proposed.

•  If police officials and NGOs believe that an individual is a trafficked person, their views should carry significant weight with the immigration officer.

•  Immigration officers should minimize the number and duration of interviews for a trafficked person; in some cases, if a trafficked person has already given an interview or statement to police, a separate interview by immigration officials could be forgone.

•  The decision to renew protection permits for trafficked persons should rely on the same criteria as those for the temporary
residence permit guidelines for trafficked persons and not require co-operation with law enforcement.

•  Whenever immigration officials decide to interview an alleged or suspected trafficked person, they should provide a translator and allow the individual to be accompanied by a support person of his or her choice in addition to legal counsel, if available.

•  Trafficked persons holding protection permits should have access to the Interim Federal Health Program, emergency counselling, and work permits for their duration, including any renewals. Further, the fees that usually apply to any of these applications/ permits should be waived.

•  If a suspected or confirmed trafficked person wishes to return home, Canada should work with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to reduce the risk of re-trafficking associated with voluntary repatriation.

•  If concerns arise over the safety of foreign trafficked persons, they should be treated similarly to those under witness protection.

•  Canada's immigration regulations should be amended to state explicitly that foreign trafficked persons who cannot be at large in the community for reasons of personal safety should be accommodated in facilities that are appropriate to victims, i.e., not in correctional or immigration holding facilities. Placing victims like Svetlana and Dina in immigration detention while they await return to their home countries deepens the trauma for women who have fled their traffickers, only to find themselves confined by border officials.

•  Protocols between the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and provincial child welfare authorities must be reviewed, updated, and monitored to ensure that suspected trafficked children obtain immediate access to a child advocate and assistance from child protection officers.

Step four: Enhance federal law enforcement capacity to investigate trafficking

The RCMP Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre must go beyond raising awareness and providing training to actively targeting and disrupting human trafficking operations in Canada; provincial, regional, and local police forces must co-operate in these initiatives. There are some indications that this shift is slowly taking place in pockets of the country, but resources for detecting human trafficking through undercover operations, wiretaps, and international investigations are currently insufficient.

Similar to the U.S. Human Trafficking Task Forces, integrated law enforcement teams of RCMP, provincial, and municipal police should be tasked with dismantling particular criminal organizations and networks that are engaged in human trafficking on a systematic basis. Specialized integrated child exploitation units already in place as well as the RCMP Centre for Missing and Exploited Children should also collaborate with these teams. The House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women recommended that funding be given to establish such counter–human trafficking police units that operate across multiple jurisdictions. The need for this is clear: Failure to mount a coordinated police response will only shift the problem elsewhere. As we've seen, violent street gangs like North Preston's Finest have expanded throughout southwestern Ontario and into Western Canada, due in part to increased enforcement activity in Peel Region outside of Toronto.

At a higher level, Canada, the United States, and Mexico should work together to help address the movement of trafficking victims across North America's borders. Along the forty-ninth parallel, Integrated Border Enforcement and Intelligence Teams should increase activities to detect and identify illegal border crossings. Further training in identifying victims in transit is necessary, along with greater public awareness in border regions about human trafficking. Prosecutors on both sides of the Canada–U.S. border should work together to dismantle international trafficking networks,
while NGOs should co-operate more closely to meet the needs of cross-border victims.

Cracking down on Canadian child sex offenders travelling abroad must be a priority for the RCMP National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre. The NCECC should be given the mandate and resources to take the lead in enforcing Canada's extraterritorial child sex crime legislation. Similar to initiatives by the Australian Federal Police and U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, RCMP liaison officers should be stationed abroad in established child sex tourism destinations to investigate Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are sexually abusing children there. In addition to identifying and charging Canadians committing child sex crimes abroad, the officers should develop relationships with NGOs in key destination countries and receive support from committed Crown prosecutors to ensure the prompt processing of extradition and mutual legal assistance requests.

An action plan for provincial and territorial governments

While some provincial governments have recognized the problem of human trafficking and their responsibilities to assist and protect victims, many continue to ignore their obligations. It is particularly alarming and unacceptable that the most populous province, Ontario, has no comprehensive system in place to assist trafficking victims. To combat human trafficking, provincial and territorial governments should ensure that they take the following steps:

•  Designate a single point of contact for each region within a province to coordinate services for domestic and foreign victims of human trafficking—either a government office like the B.C. Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons or an NGO like ACT Alberta. Victims cannot be expected to navigate the bureaucracy of governmental and non-governmental programs designed to assist them and risk falling through the cracks. Every known
victim should be assigned a case manager who will be an independent advocate and support person throughout recovery and reintegration, assisting the victim to make decisions and access needed services from NGOs and government.

•  Review provincial laws, regulations, and policies, amending them as necessary, to ensure that both foreign and domestic trafficking victims are eligible for protection services, shelter, health care, legal advice and representation, and economic assistance, all of it culturally, age, and gender appropriate. Foreign victims should receive at least the same services as refugee claimants.

•  Combat the demand for human trafficking by funding police investigations that target sex act purchasers, including their arrest, prosecution, and car confiscation where a vehicle is used in the commission of the offence.

•  Establish guidelines for the use of John Schools, as proposed in
Chapter 15
; draw on child protection legislation to investigate and prosecute suspected purchasers of sex acts with minors; and launch public awareness campaigns about the harms associated with purchasing sex acts.

•  Fund and support “exit” programs that help prostituted persons leave the sex industry. This assistance should include detox support and counselling, job training, employment opportunities, and housing support.

•  Train front-line professionals (nurses, child protection officers, social workers, immigration settlement agencies, and NGOs) in how to detect and assist victims of human trafficking as well as conduct outreach to affected communities, particularly First Nations and ethnic communities.

•  Incorporate preventive educational information about child sexual abuse and exploitation into school curricula. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection has already developed age-appropriate material for this purpose.

•  Ensure that both foreign and domestic victims of human trafficking are eligible for criminal injuries compensation
programs and other victim support services and that they are able to sue their abusers under provincial law.

•  Train Crown prosecutors about new human trafficking offences and appoint specialized lawyers to prosecute the crime.

•  Amend Crown prosecution manuals to include guidelines for human trafficking cases that ensure the rights of victims are respected and prosecutors recommend sentences to reflect the gravity of this crime. Prosecutors should be instructed to demand the seizure and forfeiture of all assets and proceeds of the crime, as well as to seek restitution (compensation) for victims as part of the sentence handed down against convicted traffickers and their accomplices.

An action plan for local police

Local police officers in our cities and towns are key front-line players in the battle against human trafficking. Most municipal police forces in Canada, however, do not have sufficient resources and officers to combat human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation in their communities, allowing traffickers to operate with impunity.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police and others have called for greater resources and action by local police forces to identify and investigate human trafficking. In Canada, local police forces should adopt the following measures:

•  Conduct department-wide training on human trafficking for dispatch staff, school liaison officers, and new recruits, among others.

•  Educate the community about the crime of human trafficking.

•  Identify government and non-profit agencies that assist victims, and develop collaborative relationships.

•  Contribute to integrated law enforcement teams that identify, assist, and protect victims, and to investigate and prosecute their traffickers.

•  Increase capacity in vice units, including resources and officers for investigating human trafficking and sexual exploitation.

•  Provide specialized training for vice unit officers, including victim identification, investigative tactics, analysis of psychological effects and the mindset of trafficking victims, and advanced interviewing techniques.