One measure in the federal government’s new border security plan to expand the sharing of police data on sex offenders appears to respond to a U.S. request for help combating cross-border sex trafficking.
But advocates say more cooperation and data-sharing is still needed between Canadian police forces for investigations into sex trafficking within the country, where the majority of victims are Canadian women and girls.
“There is a profound failure of the Canadian justice system to serve survivors of human trafficking and especially sex trafficking,” said Julia Dradek, executive director of the Canadian Center to End Human Trafficking (CCEHT), in an interview with Global News.
The $1.3 billion border security plan includes a proposal It was first mentioned in the government’s autumn economic statement Officials announced Tuesday that the Sex Offender Information Registration Act will be amended to “strengthen” the RCMP’s ability to share information about “vulnerable travellers” with local and international partners.
“We will also work to strengthen and expand information and intelligence sharing between federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous authorities,” Public Safety Minister Dominique LeBlanc told reporters.
“All the while, there will be a sharp focus on fentanyl, human smuggling and transnational organized crime at our borders,” he added.
Canadian law currently stipulates that information in the National Sex Offender Registry is available to police only for limited investigative purposes within Canada. In contrast, U.S. sex offender data from across the country is openly available to the public and can be easily shared between federal, state, and local police forces.
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In an interview on Western bloc Earlier this month, David Cohen, the US ambassador to Canada, told Global News that Canada’s “tight privacy rules and regulations” regarding sex offenders were “one of the real barriers to full cooperation” with the US government in combating sex offenders. Sex trafficking. Which he described as an “important issue.”
Asked whether the United States feels these laws protect sex traffickers, Cohen replied: “Correct.”
Cohen said at the time that legislation under consideration in Canada after talks with the United States would give convicted sex offenders “a lower level of privacy protections.”
Canada and the United States also entered into negotiations in 2022 to reach a bilateral agreement under the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, which would promote cross-border data sharing between law enforcement agencies.
The proposed legislative amendment is not expected to be presented before Parliament resumes work in late January. The fall economic statement itself faces an uncertain fate after Chrystia Freeland resigned as finance minister on Monday, raising new questions about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s political future.
“The holes in our social safety net,” says the advocate.
The CCEHT called for greater cooperation and data-sharing between local police forces to stop human smuggling within Canada, including sex trafficking, Dradek said.
Although she said there is evidence of sex trafficking between the United States and Canada, “the trend is that this is largely happening domestically to Canadian women and girls, but across provincial and municipal jurisdictions, not necessarily state borders.”
Police forces across Canada often operate in silos and don’t share data with each other, making it difficult to track victims and offenders who move between provinces and territories, she said.
She added that police units within jurisdictions in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia have proven that change can be made by devoting sufficient resources to address the issue.
“This is not a legal issue in terms of laws that have to be overcome or changed,” Dradek said. “It’s about law enforcement changing the way they work.”
CCEHT’s Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline Nearly 1,500 cases of human trafficking were identified Out of more than 12,000 calls it received between 2019 and 2022. Of those cases, 69 percent were sex trafficking cases.
Most of the victims and survivors helped through the hotline so far have asked for help finding shelter, navigating the social service system and getting mental health counseling and support, Dradek said.
Latest report on trafficking in persons in the United States He said that while Canada meets minimum anti-human trafficking standards, there are gaps in police data collection and victim services and protection, with the latter considered “inadequate.”
Traffickers are “working to fill those holes in our social safety net” by exploiting people dealing with homelessness, poverty, drug use and other vulnerabilities, Dradek said. These victims then find it difficult to access support as before.
She said that if the government is serious about combating human trafficking, it needs to consult with victims rather than prioritize issues raised by US officials.
“I think it’s a lot more complicated,” she said.
“We need to take an evidence-based perspective, but also survivor-informed. We need to talk to survivors about where the solutions lie.”
Sex trafficking survivors looking for help can call Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline 24-7 at 1-833-900-1010.
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