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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 316

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 23, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 316 - May/23/24
Mr. Vance Badawey (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, Lib.)
Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity today to speak about Bill S-224, an act to amend the Criminal Code (trafficking in persons). This is a bill that presents the opportunity to consider Canada's criminal justice response to human trafficking. Human trafficking is a devastating crime that involves recruiting, moving or holding victims in order to exploit these individuals for profit, usually for sexual exploitation or forced labour. Traffickers can control and pressure victims through force or through threats, including mental and emotional abuse and manipulation. Human traffickers prey on individuals who may be in challenging situations. This could be someone who is not in contact with their family, struggling with their identity, a survivor of abuse or someone in desperate need to work for money. Whatever the reason, victims are often unaware that they are being groomed, as traffickers are often expert manipulators. Human trafficking can involve crossing borders and, according to the UN, is becoming more difficult to detect. In 2022, for the first time, the UN reported a decrease in the number of victims detected globally. The “Global Report on Trafficking in Persons” posits that this decrease may be due to a lower institutional capacity to detect victims, fewer opportunities to traffic resulting from COVID-19 preventive restrictions and a proliferation of clandestine trafficking locations. The UN also highlighted that climate change is multiplying trafficking risks. Climate migrants are vulnerable to trafficking, and in 2021, 23.7 million people were displaced by weather-induced natural disasters, while many others crossed borders to escape climate-induced poverty. Importantly, human trafficking is not just a problem that occurs internationally; it is happening right now in communities across Canada. Most trafficking convictions in Canada involve Canadian citizens. In some cases, however, they involve permanent residents or foreign nationals who are trafficked into Canada. These individuals may enter the country willingly, only to later find themselves in exploitative situations. For both internationally and domestically trafficked persons, vulnerability to being trafficked is heightened by economic deprivation, lack of opportunity or social isolation. In Canada, this includes population groups such as indigenous women and girls, migrants and new immigrants, members of the LGBTQ2 community, persons with disabilities, children in care and other at-risk youth. I would also like to underscore the particular impact of human trafficking on indigenous women and girls. The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls emphasizes the disproportionate impact of human trafficking and sexual exploitation on indigenous women and girls due to intersecting factors that increase the likelihood of being targeted by a trafficker. These include systemic racism, violence against indigenous women and girls, intergenerational trauma from colonization, lack of access to social and economic resources, and colonial assimilation policies. That is why Canada has continued to demonstrate leadership in combatting human trafficking. Back in 2005, Canada enacted human trafficking offences in the Criminal Code. Those offences have been amended several times—including by our government in 2019 through former Bill C-75, which Conservatives are fond of maligning—to ensure a robust response. For example, Bill C-75 brought into force a provision that allows prosecutors to prove one of the elements of the human trafficking offence, that the accused exercised control, direction or influence over the movements of a victim, by establishing that the accused lived with or was habitually in the company of the victim. We have heard the Conservatives say they would repeal Bill C-75, so I am curious as to whether they also plan to repeal this provision. Moreover, in 2019, the Government of Canada launched the national strategy to combat human trafficking. This strategy is led by Public Safety Canada and is a five-year, whole-of-government approach to address human trafficking. It frames federal activities under the internationally recognized pillars of prevention, protection, prosecution, and partnerships. It also includes a fifth pillar of empowerment, which aims to enhance supports and services for victims and survivors of human trafficking. Additionally, the Department of Justice's victims fund helps to ensure that victims and survivors of crime have improved access to justice and to give them a more effective voice in the criminal justice system. Since 2012, the Department of Justice has undertaken policy and program development through the federal victims strategy to support non-governmental organizations and other stakeholders to provide services and supports for victims and survivors of human trafficking. Since 2018, the victims fund has had an allocation of $1 million annually to support victims and survivors of human trafficking. In terms of our legislative approach, the Criminal Code's main trafficking offence prohibits recruiting, transporting or harbouring victims to exploit them or to facilitate their exploitation by someone else under section 279.01. Separate offences criminalize materially benefiting from human trafficking under subsection 279.02(1) and withholding or destroying identity documents, whether authentic or forged, to facilitate human trafficking under subsection 279.03(1). In addition to these adult-trafficking offences, the Criminal Code also contains child-specific human trafficking offences. I stress that all of these offences have extraterritorial application, meaning that a Canadian or a permanent resident who engages in this conduct abroad can be prosecuted in Canada under subsection 7(4.2). Importantly, convictions have been secured under these offences, including where traffickers have exploited their victims' vulnerabilities without using physical violence. Both the Ontario and the Quebec courts of appeal have found that under the existing human trafficking offences, prosecutors do not need to prove that the victim was actually afraid, that the accused used or threatened the use of physical violence or even that exploitation actually occurred. Prosecutors need only prove that a reasonable person in the victim's circumstances would believe their physical or psychological safety would be threatened if they failed to provide the labour or services required of them. We look forward to proceeding with this discussion this evening, and I will end my comments here.
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Context: House Hansard - 316 - May/23/24
Hon. Arif Virani (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.)
  • May/23/24 9:50:33 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, what I appreciate from the member's comments is that he obviously delves into his experience as a past minister of finance in Ontario. He understands, as law enforcement has continuously explained to me, that gone are the days of a teenager off on a joyride, stealing a car from someone's home. This is an organized effort that is very profitable for international crime ranks. That is what we are dealing with here. In order to address auto theft, we need to address the path of the money. How are we doing that? There are six measures, and some of them were touched upon by my colleague. We are addressing challenges with prosecuting third party money launderers by amending the money-laundering offence. That is in the fall economic statement that, unfortunately, the members opposite have been obstructing. Second, we are responding to the rapidly evolving nature of financial crime by adapting the production order for financial data so that it more effectively applies to accounts associated with digital assets. We know what that party thinks about digital assets, because at one point the Conservative leader opined that crypto was the way out of inflation. Thankfully, the Bank of Canada was not listening. Third, we also know that modernizing provisions related to the search, seizure and restraint of proceeds of crime is critical, which is also in the fall economic statement. Fourth, there is a provision in the current budget implementation bill that deals with issuing an order to require a financial institution to keep an account open to assist in the investigation of a suspected criminal offence. Fifth, there is a provision that would allow for issuing a repeat production order to authorize law enforcement to obtain ongoing specified information on activity in an account or multiple accounts. The members opposite love to listen to law enforcement. I would urge them to do this, at least on this one occasion, because law enforcement is asking for these tools that they are actively voting against. The last piece is an offence that would explicitly criminalize operating a money service business that is not registered with FINTRAC. That is really critical because that is something that again helps us to track the money. With the learned knowledge of my friend, in terms of his background in finance, he has applied a critical lens to what we are doing on auto theft. If members think that we can tackle this one at a time, by targeting adolescents who have been deployed by an organized crime ring, and solve the auto theft crisis, the members are sorely mistaken. In order to do this, we need to operate on multiple fronts, including tracking the money. That is what these auto theft provisions would do. That is why we are behind them and are proceeding with them with pace. We just wish the Conservatives would get on board.
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