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Canada & Nigeria have more in common than one might think. According to BC Senator Mobina Jaffer, they both received “a failing grade for how they were dealing with human trafficking”.

Senator Jaffer knows this because she was asked to sponsor a Chrétien-led bill in 2005 to amend the Criminal Code by prohibiting the trafficking of persons in Canada. She travelled to Nigeria to learn more about the issue of human trafficking and what she saw led her to sponsor the bill.

Traffickers target Canada as both a destination and transit point to the U.S. RCMP estimates suggest approximately 2,000 people are trafficked from Canada to the U.S. every year. And there are probably more. Recent American reports on trafficking have criticized Canada’s ability to enforce its anti-trafficking laws.

The issue of human trafficking has caught the attention of most governments because of its increased involvement of organized crime. It is the second most lucrative illegal commerce after drug trafficking and quite difficult to monitor. Human trafficking, prevalent as much within borders as across them, is considered to be “a form modern-day slavery and a fundamental human rights abuse” by the Canadian government.

This form of slavery entraps, often under-age, girls in the sex trade, exposes migrant workers to abusive living and working conditions and fosters a ‘culture of fear’ in order to deter its victims from speaking to the authorities. What Senator Jaffer saw in Nigeria is now not such a distant reality as, she says, the situation in which young girls are being abducted and sold by family or friends – sometimes by their own parents – is not unlike the fate awaiting numerous young Aboriginal women walking the streets of Vancouver.

Indeed, the laws in place to protect trafficked persons are not very effective in many places in the world, Canada included. Although Senator Jaffer sponsored the bill to prohibit human trafficking, she is not ashamed to say that, like many laws, Bill C-49 did not accomplish as much in reality as it intended to in design. More resources and funding are needed if this law is to be effective.

As Colleen French for the Canadian Council for Refugees asserts, “…many {victims} fall through the cracks of the system”, especially in cases of cross-border trafficking. While, in May 2006, the Canadian government issued a new emergency protection guideline making temporary residence permits more accessible to trafficked victims, this provision has, according to the Canadian Council for Refugees, proven ineffective. Discretionary and imposing a burden of proof, it has “deterred some trafficked persons from application”.

Human trafficking affects over 161 countries worldwide and 95% of victims experience physical or sexual violence during trafficking. “Human trafficking is not something you see, it’s something you hear about”, adds Helen Nowak, a McGill Law conference coordinator.

Nonetheless, human trafficking is constant right before our eyes. {w}

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