Thank you for having me here today.
I'm a professor of international relations and politics, and I work on human rights, gender, and trafficking in women.
What I'd like to say today is that this bill will not address the problem of trafficking. It will in fact contribute to it. It's an example of the kind of anti-trafficking measures now being strongly criticized by a variety of groups around the world, including the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights office, and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. This bill limits women's rights, rather than enhancing them, and therefore creates the conditions for increased trafficking.
Because trafficking differs from smuggling in that traffickers maintain control over migrant workers in the new country in order to exploit their labour, trafficking thrives in conditions where there are, one, barriers to workers' migration, and two, poor working conditions. This bill both increases the barriers and fails to address exploitative work conditions and becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
There are several possible impacts of this bill. One is discriminatory gender impacts. The great danger is that migrant women, particularly poor migrant women, are going to be directly targeted by this law, which will reduce their opportunities for safe and legal migration and circumscribe their right to migrate and seek work abroad. This is because of the general bias against women as independent migrants, the general assumptions about women's vulnerability, and the view of exotic dance as inherently exploitative. Therefore, immigration officers are very likely to target women through this law.
Second, there is an increased risk of trafficking. By targeting women “for their own good”, the bill will drive poor female migrants seeking work in Canada, including work in exotic dance, to find other, more precarious and more dangerous ways to enter the country. This may include turning to migration agents who can then charge higher fees and take advantage of them in the workplace.
Third is the failure to address working conditions. It is very problematic that Canada would choose to address the issue of potential exploitation of migrant labourers by attempting to stop their legal migration rather than addressing the conditions of work. Trafficking most often occurs in precarious forms of labour that are unprotected by labour laws, government oversight, and union organization. In exotic dance, for example, exploitation that occurs is a product of the failure to enforce labour, health, and safety laws that we already have, the contract status of dancers, and the lack of knowledge among employers and dancers of the rights and responsibilities of the workplace. Migrant workers in particular have very little information about Canada's laws and practices around exotic dance, and this leaves them open to exploitation.
Fourth, this bill potentially ignores other forms of forced labour and trafficking. The bill's rationale, and therefore very likely the minister's instructions, reflect a problematic focus on the exotic dance industry alone while ignoring the very similar issues in other industries that can and must be addressed. The United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, has received many complaints on the treatment of migrant workers in Canada and has in fact asked, I believe, for an official visit to Canada. This bill ignores this wider context of migrant labour exploitation in Canada and does nothing to address it.
Finally, there are more effective responses to trafficking available that do not involve circumscribing the human rights of migrants and therefore meet our international legal requirements as laid out by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights concerning anti-trafficking measures, that they must not adversely impact the rights and dignity of migrants, and the human rights committee that oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which we are party, that says these measures must be proportionate and the least intrusive.
The measures the government could undertake are, first, to give temporary foreign workers the ability to change employers so they can leave exploitative employers without having to leave Canada.
Second, require employers to meet certain labour standards, not just demonstrate a need for workers, in order to be given the ability to hire migrant workers. These employers should then be monitored, again, as required by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, their contracts legally inspected, and labour laws enforced.
Third, ensure that there is support for worker organizations that can monitor workplaces for exploitation of migrant workers, inform migrant workers of their rights, and offer methods of redress to exploited workers. This includes, importantly, in the exotic dance industry, support for peer organizations, which is particularly important in highly stigmatized industries.
Fourth, ensure that migrant workers, including exotic dancers, have access to and information about laws, bylaws, legal and social services in their own language so they know how to proceed if their rights are violated or threatened.
Finally, make Canada a party to the United Nations International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which lays out measures to protect migrant workers from exploitation within a human rights framework, as called for by the current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour.
Thank you.