Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on May 4th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Good afternoon, everyone.

I'm going to call to order this meeting of the Subcommittee on International Human Rights. This will be our first session on our new study, which is going to be on human trafficking in India.

I want to acknowledge MP Khalid. This is a study that she has brought to our subcommittee, and we're pleased to be moving forward on it.

I'd also like to welcome MP Duvall, who will be sitting in today for MP Hardcastle. Thank you for joining us.

This study will focus on human trafficking for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation in India. We'll focus on trafficking flows, the conditions facing victims of trafficking, and what Canada and the international community are doing about it.

Our first witnesses today, from Global Affairs Canada, are going to be Robert McDougall, acting executive director of the South Asia bureau of Global Affairs Canada; and also his colleague, David Drake, director general for counter-terrorism, crime and intelligence.

Gentlemen, welcome, and thank you for being with us today to initiate this study.

Mr. McDougall, I understand that you'll be presenting an opening statement. If we can get you to proceed for around 10 to 12 minutes, that would be great. Then, of course, we'll open it up to questions from the rest of the members.

Please proceed.

[Robert McDougall, Acting Executive Director, South Asia Division, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you have indicated, my name is Robert McDougall. I am currently in charge of the South Asia division in Global Affairs Canada, and I'll be providing remarks on behalf of the department.

My colleague David Drake, the director general for counter-terrorism, crime and intelligence, is also present. He can answer your questions on Canada's multilateral engagement and on the international normative framework around trafficking in persons.

Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today regarding the committee's plans to undertake a new study on human trafficking in India, with a focus on sex trafficking.

An issue of global importance, human trafficking is a crime and a serious violation of human rights that disproportionately affects women and girls. Global estimates of victims of human trafficking range from 21 million, according to the International Labour Organization, to 45 million, according to the Global Slavery Index. The real numbers are hard to identify accurately given that the crime is often poorly understood by the general public, law enforcement, prosecutors, and judges.

This can lead to victims being seen as criminals and prosecuted for crimes rather than being provided with the assistance needed. Victim identification is also a serious challenge. Human trafficking is a largely hidden crime and victims are often fearful or unable to self-identify to authorities or other first responders.

This global finding is reinforced in the case of India by conservative social norms in many parts of the country, inter alia, concerning the treatment of women and girls.

In 2016, the Indian Ministry of Women & Child Development reported that almost 20,000 women and children were victims of human trafficking in India, an increase of 25% from 2015, with the highest number of victims recorded in the eastern state of West Bengal. Outside experts estimate that the number of women and children victims in India is in fact in the millions. India is a source destination and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking. Forced labour constitutes India's largest trafficking problem.

The majority of India's trafficking problem is internal. Those from the most disadvantaged social strata such as low caste Dalits, members of tribal communities, religious minorities, and women and girls from excluded groups are most vulnerable.

India is also a destination country; victims are also reported from several neighbouring countries. For example, Bangladeshi migrants have been subjected to forced labour in India through recruitment fraud and debt bondage. Nepal, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan also provide women and girls who are subject to both labour and sex trafficking in major Indian cities.

Finally, India is also a transiting country. According to open sources, following the April 2015 Nepal earthquakes, Nepali women transited through India and became increasingly subjected to trafficking to the Middle East and to Africa.

India's ministry of home affairs has revised its strategy on guiding anti-human trafficking units (AHTUs) to ensure more effective identification and investigation of trafficking cases and coordination with other agencies in referring victims to rehabilitation services. Several state governments have created or reactivated their own AHTUs, although the majority of districts remained without AHTUs.

Moreover, in recent years, India has improved efforts at collecting data on trafficking investigations, persecutions, and convictions. On the other hand, while the government has investigated and prosecuted some cases of official complicity, independent analysis indicates that it remains widespread.

The Indian government continues to fund shelter and rehabilitation services for women and children throughout India, and has issued additional directives to states to find and rescue missing children, some of whom may be trafficking victims.

In order to address human trafficking globally, the Government of Canada was an early adopter of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and its supplementary protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, ratifying both the convention and the protocol in May 2002. India, I would note, ratified both in May 2011.

Under the protocol, states parties are encouraged to implement a 3P approach: prevention, prosecution, and protection. Canada has added a fourth P to its work: partnership. Human trafficking is a global problem that must be addressed through collaborative partnerships in all regions.

Presently, through Global Affairs Canada's anti-crime capacity building program, Canada is supporting the work of international organizations to combat trafficking in persons through three projects in the Caribbean and Latin America. Investment in those projects totals $2.1 million.

The complexity of this crime requires a multi-disciplinary approach and a collaborative response encompassing legislative, programming, and policy measures.

This crime of human trafficking disproportionately affects women and girls. For young girls, sex trafficking can have particularly far-reaching impacts, including impeding their education, increasing their risks of early and forced marriage, early pregnancy, and putting them at a higher risk for contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

At the heart of Canada's international assistance is the promotion of gender equality and rights, as well as the empowerment of women and girls. Canada is committed to working with global partners to ensure that these principles guide us in our efforts to combat trafficking in persons.

Canada does not have a bilateral development assistance program in India. It ended in 2009 at the request of the Indian government. Canada does, however, provide development assistance through partnerships between Indian and Canadian non-government organizations and through multilateral programs.

Through the partnerships for development innovation branch, Canada invested $2.1 million in 2015-16 to support 15 projects in India.

The main programming sectors include innovative food security research, improving the health of children, integrating community development, and advancing governance and human rights with a focus on gender equality.

Partnership programs in India have a number of aims.

First, they aim to reduce violence against women. Oxfam Canada's creating spaces program addresses violence against women in both informal and formal settings with interventions that aim to counteract domestic violence, and early and forced marriage, as well as strengthen support services for women and girl survivors.

Second, they aim to find innovative solutions to nutrition and food preservation problems.

Third, they aim to test innovative solutions to health issues, including developing tools for earlier diagnostics, advancing affordable health care solutions, and promoting mental health care.

Fourth, they aim to support community health education and economic growth, such as providing free ophthalmic examinations to children.

Fifth, they aim to create self-sufficient communities with satisfactory standards in education, health, sanitation, food security, income generation, women's rights, environmental sustainability, and political stability.

Canada continues to contribute indirectly to the achievement of development results in India through its core funding to multilateral and global organizations, such as the World Bank, the United Nations and its agencies, and the Asian Development Bank. In fiscal year 2015-16, Global Affairs Canada contributed approximately $32 million to India through long-term institutional support to such international organizations.

Canada's International Development Research Centre, or IDRC, also has an active presence in India, supporting a number of research projects focused on reducing violence against women and promoting gender equality.

Projects have explored issues such as violence and sexual harassment in the workplace, police procedures when dealing with victims of rape and sexual violence, and child sexual abuse.

Others have focused on the interaction between economic growth and its impact on women's economic opportunities, and the unpaid care economy and its impact on women's economic empowerment.

This research fills knowledge gaps, informs discussions, and assesses programs and policies to effect policy change.

By the way, I understand in this context that the IDRC has indicated it would be happy to appear before your committee if called.

The Canadian High Commission in Delhi also supports local projects and advocacy initiatives to advance women's economic and political empowerment; the elimination of violence against women and girls; and ending child, early, and forced marriage.

For example, in 2015-16, through the Canada fund for local initiatives, the high commission supported a local organization with $15,000 to increase coordination and capacity among stakeholders to address human trafficking in the state of Maharashtra. Canada fund projects aimed at addressing child, early, and forced marriage have also raised awareness of trafficking issues.

In conclusion, all that said, more needs to be done. The fight against human trafficking will remain a priority for Canada globally. In that context, we will continue to be alert to opportunities to advance this cause in India, in collaboration with other foreign governments and with civil society partners in both countries.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much for those remarks, Mr. McDougall.

We're going to move right into questions, and we're going to start with MP Sweet, please.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

For the record, I'm very grateful to Ms. Khalid for this motion and this investigation on human trafficking. From the numbers we were just given by our officials, 21 million to 45 million, it's easy to see why many people say that slavery today is greater than it's ever been.

Down the street from where I live in Ancaster, Canada's largest human trafficking arrest to date took place, which was a forced labour arrest. A gang of organized criminals was bringing people in from Hungary and threatening them, causing them not only to work 14 or 16 hours a day and turn over all their income but also to do illegal things, such as apply for welfare, etc., and break into post office boxes. Generally speaking, the people who do this kind of crime will do any other kind of crime as well.

The reason I lay this groundwork is how much human trafficking in a country such as India is organized crime versus individual gangsters taking advantage of a culture that has the caste system endemic within it?

[Robert McDougall]

The first answer to that question is I don't know. If you wish me to speculate, having spent some time in India, it's probably a combination.

It is a very traditional society. Among other things, they still have arranged marriages and other social phenomena that involve young children. They also have forced labour, which as I said in my remarks, is a bigger problem. Within India, it seems to be a bigger problem than sexual trafficking specifically. But it certainly involves indentured labour and other things.

Some of these things will be handled, I'm sure, by organized crime. Others will be family by family. I don't know of any actual statistics on that, but it's not something I deal with on a day-to-day basis, to be honest.

David, do you have anything to add?

[David Drake, Director General, Counter-Terrorism, Crime and Intelligence Bureau, Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development]

With regard to the definition of organized crime, the UN treaty on organized crime defines organized crime as anything involving three or more people. In this particular case, there's a lot of what we might consider to be organized crime on a large scale, but it's hard to differentiate that from others. I think I would agree with Mr. McDougall that there's a wide variety of different types of human trafficking, and those will depend on region and area. There are instances of children, for example, being forced to work in mines. You also have sexual slavery. These things differ from place to place.

Your point is a good one, but our inability to respond to you is also undermined by the fact that, as Mr. McDougall said in his initial comments, much of this is essentially a series of issues related to crime, and it's only recently that people have been prepared to come out and actually deal with the authorities and self-identify. It's hard to track, particularly in India, where it's a relatively new thing, what the phenomenon actually is. Measuring it is a real difficulty, and I think that will be an essential part of your work.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

It's hard to track everywhere.

According to your preparatory or other research, where does India sit, as far as the severity of the problem goes, with respect to other countries in the region or even globally? Do you have an idea in that regard?

[Robert McDougall]

We don't have independent statistics on that. There is a recent assessment available, which was put out by the U.S. authorities and which I don't have with me, but we don't have an independent Canadian evaluation of that. The overall impression I get, and it's only an impression, is that there is a lot of it happening in India, because India has a billion people, and therefore a comparatively small proportion of that is still going to be a lot of people. In terms of the general intensity of the problem, the reading we have from the sources we've seen is that it has a problem, but it's not the worst in the region.

Let me get back to you on that specifically.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

Thank you.

On another matter, in the recent past, we did a study in regard to the psychological damage caused to people who are victims and offspring of rape. Obviously human trafficking is much worse than that. It's a continuous situation in which people are forced to do what they don't want to do and in the worst kinds of ways in many cases.

Because of the conservative nature of the culture you mentioned, after these people are victimized, is there also another subsequent ostracization from the culture because they've been raped and used in this fashion?

[Robert McDougall]

I would say that's probably likely in almost any country, India as much as any other.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook, ON]

You mentioned that the caste system—I can't remember if it was in the researcher's notes or your comments—is primarily within the Hindu community. Has that now spread to most of the population or do we see a diminishment of that now as India becomes more and more an economic force and moves more and more into the first world?

[Robert McDougall]

India is certainly changing a great deal. The middle class in India, particularly the urban middle class, is becoming much more important at a much larger percentage of the economy and the society. But it is still a predominantly rural country, so I think conservative social norms are still prevalent and important—as I said, particularly outside the large cities, but even within the large cities.

As to the religious or caste structures, caste specifically is originally, as you said, a Hindu phenomenon, but it is also an important part of the whole society and in fact, part of the government structures. For example, in a large number of government programs there are reserved places, quotas for certain castes—they're not called castes anymore—or certain scheduled peoples. The Dalits are assured places in universities and things like that, so it also still exists.

The society is largely Hindu, but there is still, for example, a very large Muslim community in India. I think 150 million people are Muslim. And that's still, although not the same kind of social conservatism, a significantly conservative society as well. The problem you're looking at here is a problem of the whole country and the whole society, not just certain aspects of it or certain castes.

Mr. Chairman, if I might, I've been asked by your people to make a couple of corrections, which I believe have to be read into the record to be corrected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Okay.

[Robert McDougall]

They are just numbers. In the section where I talked about Global Affairs Canada's anti-crime capacity building program, I believe I gave a number of $2 million. It should have been $5.1 million. I can give you the notes on where they come from.

In the section where I talked about the partnership for development innovation branch, I apparently said that there was $2 million donated to 15 projects in India. It's actually $3.1 million.

I apologize if I made those errors in my oral presentation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you. We'll update the record.

We're now going to move to MP Khalid.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much Mr. McDougall and Mr. Drake for your testimony today.

Sex trafficking is part of human trafficking. It's a very important issue, and in my opinion, it's a symptom of the vulnerabilities and difficulties women face, especially in terms of economic and social challenges in regions like Southeast Asia.

You mentioned in your testimony two different types of sex trafficking, one being internal and one being transiting. I know there is a lack of data, but can we say roughly how much of it is internal within India and how much of it involves the surrounding regions?

[Robert McDougall]

As I said, India seems to be a source and transit country as well as a destination in some cases. The short answer to your question is no, I don't have the numbers, but I'll see whether we can find them for you.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you for providing the information as to what Canada has contributed in terms of the epidemic of trafficking in general across the world. You mentioned that the way we support women who have been trafficked is through institutions and organizations from the Canadian embassy funding local projects. When we look at the lack of data, which I'm sure the government is trying to fill the gap on, how possible is it? How effective are we in getting to the grassroots, that very poverty-stricken mother who has a couple of children she gave birth to through being trafficked in a red light district, etc.? How much help is actually getting to that population, as opposed to those who are actively going out and seeking that help?

[David Drake]

Perhaps I can clarify that a bit. The Canadian assistance that goes to India is relatively constrained. It focuses largely on big-picture issues, working through the multilateral organizations to help India and perhaps states, and so forth, to build capacity to be able to deal with the issue themselves. The Indian authorities and many of the states are very much seized with the issue. Our focus, to the extent that we haven't...because this is not a major priority for Canada. Among other things, we had not had a formal aid program in India since 2009, as mentioned, so it tends to be at the more institutional level where it's really required. The Indians have a very significant process in place. They are parties to the protocol and convention and want to address this issue, and of course they have a free press that is very much seized with this issue.

The points that were made about the Canada fund—which is actually quite a small amount of money that is just run out of the Canadian high commission—are quite specific. If I understand what you're getting at, namely, whether we are dealing with grassroots problems, I think the proper answer is actually no. We're trying to focus on capacity and in a much smaller way to focus on individual areas where we might be able to do something. But as I'm sure your secretariat will be informing you, there is an enormous effort by non-governmental organizations, both Indian and non-Indian, at the grassroots level, but that's not really where we concentrate our focus.

I hope that helps clarify it.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you.

You'd mentioned the bilateral development agreement with India, which ended in 2009. Can you please outline what that agreement involved and why it ended?

[Robert McDougall]

I'm not a development specialist, but my understanding is that it was ended at the request of the Indian government, not because India had anything against Canada or Canadian aid, but simply because it changed its policy on accepting bilateral aid programs from across the world. It wasn't that we decided that India wasn't an important country for development assistance; the Indian government decided it wasn't going to accept bilateral development assistance from anybody.

We still contribute indirectly. We contribute through multilateral agencies, through the UN, the World Bank, and other bodies. We contribute money to them and a lot of their money goes to India with our approval. We also have the partnership branch, which basically gives money to Canadian NGOs to establish partnerships with Indian NGOs to carry out projects there. Strictly bilateral aid in which Canada as a country supplies money to India as a country was phased out at the request of the Indian government as a general policy decision.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

We understand, and you'd mentioned as well in your testimony, that information gathering and really understanding the problem in terms of numbers is not what it should be. Is there any role that Canada can play in helping the Indian government? I know they've taken some measures. Is there a role that Canada can play in assisting them with information gathering, maybe through the country or through the funding, not NGOs, etc.?

[David Drake]

Perhaps there is, but to give you a bit of a context here, let me say that the protocol on trafficking in persons defines four tiers of countries in terms of how they are addressing the problem. From one to four, in descending order of how much effort they're putting in, Canada is a tier one country, but so is India.

The Indians are putting a lot of effort into this, it's quite clear. Much of the statistical problem comes from the fact that this is essentially crime of an organized fashion, whether it's formally organized crime or not, and is very difficult to detect. One thing the Indians are trying to do in their own plan of action under the protocol is to get a better sense of it.

My sense, and I stand to be corrected on this, is that funding for it is not actually a problem. The Indians are focused on it. They have access to money, funds coming from international organizations and elsewhere. I think, as you were pointing out earlier, much of the issue comes at the grassroots level, and that's where there's a very vibrant NGO focus.

It's not a perfect response to your question, but this gives a little context.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

We talked a little about trafficking in other countries that are also involved. Is there a role they're playing with respect to reducing sex trafficking or human trafficking generally within the region, as distinct from specifically within India?

[David Drake]

The Indians are party, as we are, to a whole series of international obligations, including for human smuggling, which is about the smuggling of people across borders. The Indians are certainly very much involved in trying to prevent it, for a whole series of reasons, including just trying to control their borders, which are porous and very large. They are trying to address these issues, but it's part of the indefinable question about whether there is something illegal in the movement of the person who's been coming across the border. I note that there have been a couple of reports, notably by the U.S., which indicate that the Indians are having more success in stopping people at borders. That is due to better organization both at the federal and at the state level.