Human
Trafficking in Canada
Together as One Humanity Take Action Against Human Trafficking
 
The United Nations defines human trafficking "as the
recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, or receipt of
persons by improper means (such as force, abduction, fraud, or
coercion) for an improper purpose including forced labour or
sexual exploitation."
The International Labour Organization (ILO) reported
that in
2016 more than 40 million people were living in conditions of
modern slavery, with the majority having been victims of human
trafficking. The report said 25 million of those workers were
providing slave labour in construction, manufacturing,
agriculture and domestic work. Another 5 million, the majority
young women and girls, were victims of sexual slavery.
 Canada was one of the leading
states involved in creating the 2000 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress
and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children,
Supplementary Legislation to the Convention Against Transnational
Organized Crime, known as the Palermo Protocol, which Canada ratified
in 2004. However, when it comes to enforcement of the Protocol,
Canada is an example of how false pretenses are used to provide cheap
labour and enforce the anti-social offensive whereby the standards of
all working people are lowered. Human traffickers, known as recruiters
of labour in foreign countries, are readily accommodated. Both workers
and students are recruited by extorting large sums of money under the
hoax that they will have a chance after two years to apply for
permanent residence. This has led to hundreds of thousands of workers
being denied their basic rights as workers and human beings, as well as
deported along with their families if found to be "illegal" in any way,
mostly through no fault of their own. It also swells the ranks of
so-called undocumented workers whose conditions of life and work are
the worst. Even though Canadian laws actually facilitate human
trafficking, the government insists it is illegal and that it upholds
the rule of law.
In a report entitled Trafficking
in
Persons
in
Canada,
2016,
Statistics Canada notes among other things: "By its very nature,
trafficking in persons is difficult to measure. Statistics
Canada, through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey, collects
information on incidents of human trafficking violations which
come to the attention of Canadian police. These are Criminal Code offences and an
offence under the Immigration and
Refugee
Protection Act which targets cross-border trafficking."
The report points out that between "2009 and 2016, there
were
a total of 1,220 police-reported incidents of human trafficking"
in Canada and that the number and rate of human trafficking
incidents have steadily increased since 2010. It cites as well the
Trend Database, which found that of the 1,099 police-reported
incidents of human trafficking incidents dating between 2009 and
2016, 55 per cent of the cases were reported in the years 2015 and
2016.
Between 2009 and 2016, of reported human trafficking
cases, 66
per cent were from Ontario, 14 per cent from Quebec, and 8 per
cent from Alberta. The other 12 per cent of cases were spread
over the rest of Canada. Statistics Canada notes that the vast
majority of trafficked persons are women.
The report underscores the fact that the vast majority
of
human trafficking crimes are not reported in Canada. Human
trafficking victims are made vulnerable by their very condition
and become afraid to seek help because the Canadian state
declares them illegal and without rights as humans.
Human trafficking cases are underreported with very few
convictions in Canada even though the former Harper regime called
it "one of the most heinous crimes imaginable." The Statistics
Canada report notes, "Due to challenges in prosecuting human
trafficking cases, prosecutors will often proceed with other
complementary or less serious charges. [...] This may explain the
large proportion of human trafficking cases resulting in
decisions of stayed or withdrawn."
The low rate of reporting and low conviction rate in
prosecutions shows that the entire murky system dealing with
migrant workers that the Canadian state has created is to ensure
a cheap and plentiful supply of workers for Canadian monopolies
and other businesses that profit from their work, not to speak of
the unconscionable thievery of those who directly traffic human
beings in a modern version of the global slave trade.
 The Temporary Foreign
Worker Program (TFWP), through which
businesses that show a need for foreign workers are allowed to
recruit overseas, and the more than 50-year-old
Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP), plus other worker
recruitment programs such as those run by the provinces, have
created the conditions for human traffickers to operate with
impunity within the legal margins of these programs.
The Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR) has been at the
forefront of the fight in defence of immigrants and refugees for more
than 40 years. It notes in an April 2018 submission to the House of
Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights on their study
of human trafficking in Canada that while some cases of human
trafficking are being prosecuted in the courts, Canada is doing very
little to protect the victims of human trafficking. The CCR states:
"Notably, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA)
provides no legislated protection to trafficked persons. The only
reference to trafficked persons in the legislation is the provisions in
the Immigration and Refugee Protection Regulations, which makes the
fact that a person is being trafficked a factor in favour of
immigration detention."
The CCR also wrote in its submission that even the
Temporary
Residence Permits (TPRs), which are the only tool available for
the protection of human trafficking victims who have come
forward, hardly meet the need. The CCR says, "There are very few
TPRs issued annually and they pose limitations even when issued. [...]
In the period 2011 and 2015, between 5 and 22 new TPRs were
issued per year. These numbers seem particularly low considering
that Canada has been identified as a destination country for
trafficking, and some 80,000 Temporary Foreign Workers enter
Canada every year."
Furthermore, the CCR notes that even with the few TPRs
issued
by the government, they are not extended to family members.
 In another of its reports, Evaluating Migrant Worker Rights in
Canada, the CCR in 2018 highlights the role Canada plays in
creating the conditions for the displacement of people around the
world, citing the Philippines, Guatemala and Mexico, where
Canadian private mining companies have displaced entire
communities, forcing people to look outside their countries for a
livelihood and therefore becoming vulnerable to human
trafficking. The CCR also cites Canada's trade agreements, such as
NAFTA which has been responsible for forcing Mexican farmers,
whose livelihoods have been destroyed, to seek work in Canada as
migrant agricultural workers and thus become targets of human
traffickers.
Canada's participation in wars of aggression,
occupation,
economic blockades, sanctions and other acts of interference in
the internal affairs of countries, such as it is doing right now
to organize a coup and regime change in Venezuela, has
contributed to a large number of people becoming refugees and
migrants. The UN pointed out in a report in 2018 that the
refugee crisis internationally has made entire populations
vulnerable to human trafficking, which generates a criminal
profit of approximately $32 billion annually.
In participating in this modern day slave trade, the
government, while shedding crocodile tears for human rights and
trafficking, has failed to address the problem. A simple proposal by
the CCR and others that migrant workers to Canada be provided some
stability and legality through an open work permit that enables them to
leave an exploitative and abusive work environment has so far been
ignored. Similarly, the government has ignored proposals by the CCR and
others to regulate the recruitment of migrant workers to ensure that
their rights are protected and, given that migrant workers are needed
to perform work in Canada, they should be granted immigrant status to
permanently settle, if they wish.
The Trudeau government, when it came to power in 2015
said it would act to stop human trafficking, it has not done so, just
as it has failed to resolve the serious issue of murdered and missing
Indigenous women many of whom are also victims of human trafficking.
Human trafficking and the plight of refugees and migrant
workers who are victims of this and other crimes are a problem
confronting Canadian society. Refugees and migrant workers, including
victims of human trafficking, belong to our one humanity and, more
precisely, our one Canadian working class. This working class -- by
mobilizing its independent thinking, organization and numbers -- must
seriously step up the work in defence of the rights of all. While it is
the working people who are blamed for being anti-immigrant and
xenophobic, in fact it is narrow private interests that are traffickers
of human beings who are "anti-immigrant." They blame the people to
divide the people's resistance struggle to the anti-social offensive,
while they change citizenship and immigration laws to facilitate the
importation of temporary foreign workers, many of whom have to pay
enormous sums to so-called recruiters to acquire work permits under the
hoax that when their term is finished they can apply for permanent
residence. Others in Canada on temporary work permits are exploited to
the bone and have no access to services because their status is made
semi-illegal at the best of times, such as when they are forced to work
with borrowed names and social insurance numbers on pain of deportation
if they do not accept. The movement to defend the rights of all seeks
to put an end to this system of modern day slavery not only in Canada
but by taking action here to contribute to resolving the problem
worldwide.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 16 - May 4, 2019
Article Link:
Human
Trafficking in Canada: Together as One Humanity Take Action Against Human Trafficking
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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