Back To Modern Slavery
A
Failure To Protect
Canada an international failure when it comes to helping victims trafficked in the sex
trade
Andrea Mrozek - March 27, 2006
When it
comes to helping the victims of human trafficking,
Canada
is an utter failure, according to a review released March 1 by an
anti-trafficking group. The Future Group, a Calgary-based non-governmental
organization that works with women victimized by sexual slavery in Southeast
Asia, has given Canada a grade of F in its report entitled, "Falling Short
of the Mark: An International Study on the Treatment of Human Trafficking
Victims." The group places the blame squarely on a culture of "passing
the buck" that persisted among outgoing Liberal cabinet ministers.
"This
is predominantly a question of political leadership," says Ben Perrin,
executive director of the Future Group. While former prime minister Paul
Martin's government was repeatedly pressured to change policies that were
enabling human traffickers, Perrin says that no one ultimately was appointed or
stepped forward to address the urgent matter. Human trafficking often takes the
form of women, routinely from eastern Europe and
Asia
, being brought to western countries under duress or false pretenses and forced
to work as strippers, prostitutes or in pornography. The Future Group ranked
eight countries--the
U.S., Australia, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Italy, the U.K.
and Canada
--on their compliance with certain sections of a UN anti-human-trafficking
treaty that was signed by Canada and the others in 2000 and ratified in 2002. The sections called for countries
to implement legislation that would help protect victims of human trafficking,
including providing them with sanctuary and access to support services.
Britain, with a D rating, was the second worst performing country, but only
Canada received a failing grade.
Much of
the problem appears to have been that ministers in the previous Liberal
government did not even understand how to comply with the commitments they had
signed onto at the UN. The Future Group mailed several letters to various
cabinet ministers between November 2004 and October 2005, asking the government
to detail the steps it was taking to protect victims of human trafficking in
order to comply with the international agreement. In February 2005, a letter
from foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew advised the group that the
Justice Department would handle the request. In August, justice minister Irwin
Cotler responded, advising the group that legal protection for human trafficking
victims did not fall within the purview of his department either. "Legal
status for internationally trafficked persons is an issue that falls within the
purview of my colleague the Honourable Joe Volpe, Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration," Cotler wrote. "As such, I have taken the liberty of
forwarding your letter to his office for consideration." After hearing no
response from Volpe, Perrin's group followed up with him directly on Oct. 24,
2005. Again, Volpe did not respond.
Volpe
had taken over the ministry in 2005 after his predecessor, Judy Sgro, was forced
to step aside amid a series of scandals. During one such controversy, it emerged
that the department had been fast-tracking visas for adult-entertainment workers
to immigrate to
Canada
, a policy anti-trafficking groups warned was helping human smugglers. Volpe
announced that he was suspending the special visa program, but the program was
either never actually stopped, or it was restarted very shortly afterward.
Stephen
Heckbert, director of communications for Volpe, now an Opposition MP, says he
believes the election call on Nov. 28, 2005, interfered with Volpe's ability to
respond to the Future Group's letters.
The
Future Group wasn't the only organization stonewalled by the former Liberal
government when it came to concerns about human trafficking in
Canada
. Janet Dench, executive director of the Montreal-based Canadian Council for
Refugees, an umbrella organization for refugee protection, says her group had
requested a meeting with the Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in
Persons--a government committee involving no fewer than 17 separate government
departments--in order to consult on anti-trafficking measures. The government
would not arrange it. "There is some blockage between departments,"
says Dench. "Certainly, when we have talked to Citizenship and Immigration,
we have received a very cold response."
Dench
is concerned that government officials aren't properly addressing the needs of
victims of trafficking. She notes that when police raid illegal sex operations,
such as massage parlours operating as brothels, the immigrant women found there
are routinely detained and deported. Many of these women, says Dench, are here
against their will, but may need help before being sent back to their country of
origin, where they might still face danger. "People have been abused and
exploited by criminals, and when they come to the attention of the Canadian
government or the police, they end up being re-victimized," says Dench. The
result, she says, is that the government ends up helping criminals by leaving
their victims no way out of the perils they're facing. In some countries, a
"bridging visa" allows immigrant women to stay a little longer to
recover until they can be safely sent home. "It's impossible to
characterize this as difficult legislative action because we've already got
models from other developed countries like the
United States
and
Australia, which have fully enacted the type of reforms that our study calls for,"
says Perrin.
Official
RCMP statistics indicate that 800 women were trafficked into
Canada
last year, but Perrin notes that the number is unknowable, and estimates the
figure to be much larger. He says the current Conservative government could be
more effective at addressing the human trafficking scourge by making it clear
whose responsibility it is. "You need to have one person who takes
responsibility for this and who acts upon it," says Perrin, adding that the
Liberal government seemed unable--or unwilling--to streamline the process.
"We don't think you need to give this to 17 departments to figure
out."
Page
2 of 2
AN
END TO THE STRIPPER VISA?
If
Gregory Carlin has anything to say about it,
Ottawa
should expect another condemnation of its record on helping victims of
international trafficking--this time from
Washington, D.C.
Every year, the U.S. State Department produces a trafficking in persons
report. And this year, Carlin, the head of the Irish Anti-trafficking
Coalition, will lobby to have the report single out
Canada>
for censure.
Special stripping visas began in 1997, when the Human Resource Department added exotic dancers to its list of occupations with labour shortages. Soon, foreign women, primarily from Romania, began flooding Toronto's strip bars. "There never was any exotic dancer shortage in Canada," Carlin says. "You can tell it was just a scheme because almost all the girls came from one country, and worked in only one region in Canada." He believes the industry, interested in lower-wage immigrants, fabricated the shortage story.
The scheme became public in 2004, when then immigration minister Judy Sgro issued the special visa to a campaign volunteer, which appeared to be a conflict. Officials discovered that Canada's embassy in Bucharest wasn't verifying the ages of girls coming to Canada for adult-industry work, leading trafficking groups to go public with accusations that Ottawa was abetting traffickers who were luring women--and even minors--to Canada and forcing them not only into working in strip clubs, but into prostitution and pornography.
Last year's State Department report was easy on Canada, though it noted that Canada's enforcement of trafficking laws was sometimes "weak." But Carlin expects that to change when this year's report is issued in June. On Feb. 28, he wrote to the new Conservative immigration minister, Monte Solberg, to advise him that he would be pressing Rice on the deaths of Kraynak and Wright. Solberg says that, after just weeks on the job, he hasn't yet dealt with these matters, but says he'll be watching for things in his department that might lead to, or be the result of, illegal activity. "Certainly the message will be very clear to people in the department that I don't want to see anything that's the least bit dodgy-looking allowed to go forward," says Solberg. "We have to be watchful that people don't get invited here for nefarious reasons.
Kevin Steele