Human Trafficking in Canada: Watch Out for the Olympic Bump

Every year, the U.S. State Department releases a Trafficking in Persons report which rates countries on their efforts to combat human trafficking.  Each week, I'll be providing a brief glance at human trafficking in one of those countries, based off the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report, with my own (often snarky) analysis added.  This is just a snapshot of what's going on in the country.  For more information, you can check out the full text of the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report here.

This Week's Country..... Canada

Basic Info

The U.S. State Department ranks the U.S.'s neighbors to the north as on Tier 1, meaning they are doing their part to fight human trafficking. But despite Canada's best efforts, they have a human trafficking problem like everywhere else in the world: Canada is a source, transit, and destination country for trafficking victims. So does Canada have the political and economic stability to truly tackle trafficking? As long as the hockey victories are flowing like LaBatt Blue, they have the resources they need. They just need to treat trafficking like they do a loss by the national hockey team.

Who Are the Victims and What Are They Doing?

Women and young girls are trafficked into commercial sex. Ouch. Being forced onto the street in a negligee during a Manitoba winter is especially cold -- pun intended. Men and women who migrate to Canada voluntarily are also forced into sweatshops and agricultural production, while girls and women are forced into domestic servitude in private homes. And, of course, pedophiles from the U.S. who don't want to pollute their own country with child abuse slip across the border and buy children for sex in Canada.

Where Are They Coming From and Where Are They Going?

Since not a lot of Canuks are trafficked internally, their airports and seaports are hot with international trafficking victims. Women are trafficked to Canada from just about every part of the world: Latin America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe. And that U.S.-Canadian border is sure a sweet spot to traffic people back and forth between two wealthy countries.

What's Gotta Happen?

If Canada wants to slap shot human trafficking away from its borders, it needs to focus on the following: use proactive law enforcement techniques to catch and prosecute traffickers, learn to recognize and prosecute labor trafficking cases, and coordinate anti-trafficking efforts between national and local governments. Oh, and they should be on their guard for the 2010 Olympics and the possible bump in sex trafficking that might result.

Photo credit: Ian Muttoo