A measure of the new federal government border security The plan to expand the sharing of police data on sex offenders appears to respond to a U.S. demand to combat cross-border sex trafficking.
But advocates say there still needs to be greater collaboration and data sharing between Canadian police forces to sex trafficking investigations within the country, where the majority of victims are Canadian women and girls.
“The Canadian justice system fails to serve survivors of human trafficking and especially sex trafficking,” said Julia Drydyk, 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 first mentioned in the government’s fall economic statement to amend the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to “enhance” the RCMP’s ability to share information on “high-risk travelers” with domestic and international partners, officials announced Tuesday.
“In addition, we will improve and expand the sharing of information and intelligence between federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous authorities,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters.
“Throughout this period, the focus will be on fentanyl, human trafficking and transnational organized crime at our borders.”
Canadian law currently states that information contained in the National Sex Offender Registry is only accessible to police for limited investigative purposes in Canada. In contrast, data on U.S. sex offenders across the country is freely available to the public and is easily shared among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.
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In an interview on The West Block earlier this month, David Cohen, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, told Global News that “the heightened privacy rules and regulations that exist in Canada” regarding sex offenders were “one of the real obstacles to full cooperation” with the U.S. government in combating sex trafficking, which he called a “significant problem.”
Asked if the United States believes these laws protect sex traffickers, Cohen replied: “Correct.”
Cohen said at the time that legislation was being considered in Canada after conversations with the United States that would give convicted sex offenders “a lesser level of privacy protection.”
Canada and the United States also began negotiations in 2022 to reach a bilateral agreement under the U.S. Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, which would improve cross-border data sharing between enforcement agencies of the law.
The proposed legislative amendment is not expected to be presented before Parliament resumes at the end of January. The fall economic statement itself faces an uncertain fate after Chrystia Freeland resigned as finance minister on Monday.raising new questions about the political future of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Holes in our social safety net,” says advocate
The CCEHT has advocated for greater collaboration and data sharing between national police forces to end human smuggling into Canada, including sex trafficking, Drydyk said.
Although she said there is evidence of sex trafficking between the United States and Canada, “the dominant trend is that it occurs primarily domestically, affecting Canadian women and girls, but beyond provincial and municipal jurisdictions, and not necessarily state boundaries.”
She said police forces across Canada often work in isolation and don’t share data with each other, making it harder to track victims and perpetrators moving between provinces and territories.
Intra-territorial policing units in Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia, she added, have proven that changes can be made with enough resources dedicated to solving the problem.
“This is not a legal issue in terms of laws that need to be overcome or changed,” Drydyk said. “It’s about law enforcement changing the way they operate.”
CCEHT’s Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline identified around 1,500 cases of human trafficking of more than 12,000 calls received between 2019 and 2022. Of these cases, 69% were sex trafficking cases.
So far, most victims and survivors helped through the hotline have sought help finding shelter, navigating the social service system, and accessing counseling and support. mental health, Drydyk said.
The latest US report on human trafficking said that while Canada meets minimum standards to combat human trafficking, there are gaps in police data collection and victim services and protections, with the latter deemed “inadequate.”
Drydyk said traffickers are “filling the gaps in our social safety net” by preying on people facing homelessness, poverty, drug addiction and other vulnerabilities. These victims then find it just as difficult to access support as before.
She said if the government is serious about combating human trafficking, it must consult with victims rather than prioritizing issues raised by U.S. officials.
“I think it’s a lot more complicated,” she said.
“We need to take an evidence-based, but also survivor-informed, perspective. We need to talk to survivors to find out where the solutions lie.
Sex trafficking survivors seeking help can contact The Canadian Human Trafficking Helpline 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 1-833-900-1010.
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