Thank you for the opportunity to provide the committee with some general information on the existing criminal law addressing trafficking of persons as well as the implication of Bill C-268, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (minimum sentence for offences involving trafficking of persons under the age of eighteen years), which proposes to impose a mandatory minimum penalty of five years for the offence of trafficking in children.
By way of background, and as the sponsor has already pointed out, trafficking in persons or human trafficking is often described as a modern-day form of slavery. It involves the recruitment, transportation, and/or harbouring of persons for the purpose of exploitation—generally sexual exploitation or forced labour. Traffickers use various methods to maintain control over their victims, including force, sexual assault, and threats of violence. Victims are forced to provide their services or labour in circumstances where they believe that their safety or the safety of a person known to them would be threatened if they failed to provide that labour or service. Victims suffer physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, including threats of violence or actual harm, which is compounded by their living and working conditions. Trafficking in persons may occur across or within borders and often involves extensive organized crime networks. Women and children are particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking and are by far its primary victims.
In 2005, three trafficking-specific indictable offences were added to the Criminal Code. Section 279.01 specifically prohibits trafficking in persons and imposes a maximum penalty of life imprisonment where kidnapping, aggravated assault, aggravated sexual assault, or death to the victim is involved, and 14 years in all other cases. Section 279.02 prohibits receiving a financial or other material benefit from the commission of the trafficking offence. This offence imposes a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. Finally, section 279.03 prohibits the withholding or destroying of identity documents for the purpose of committing or facilitating the trafficking of a person. This offence imposes a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.
In addition, numerous Criminal Code offences have always applied to trafficking cases, such as extortion, assault, sexual assault, forcible confinement, kidnapping, and prostitution-related offences, depending on the facts of the case in hand.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act also prohibits trafficking of persons into Canada.
As a result, today police and crown prosecutors can choose from a wide range of offences, as they deem appropriate in each case. They may choose to charge or prosecute under the new trafficking-specific offences and/or they may choose to use other trafficking-related offences that I've already mentioned. In fact, in most of the recent cases, we are seeing charges under both trafficking-specific and trafficking-related offences.
Regarding Bill C-268, its proposed reforms would create a new offence of trafficking in children that would mirror the existing main trafficking in persons offence in the code, that is, section 279.01. There is one exception: where the victim is under the age of 18, it would impose a mandatory minimum penalty of five years for the branch of the offence that carries a maximum penalty of 14 years, but not where the maximum penalty is life. The sponsor has already dealt with that and indicated what she proposes to do about it. The bill also proposes consequential amendments to ensure that, along with the main trafficking in persons offence, the proposed offence of trafficking in children is referenced in the provisions that deal with interception of communications, exclusion of the public from the court, publication bans, DNA, the sex offender registry, and dangerous offenders.
The effect of these proposed reforms would therefore include, first, treating the trafficking of any person under 18 years distinctly from the trafficking of an adult, in that the mandatory minimum penalty would not apply to the trafficking of an adult but would apply to the trafficking of a child; second, where the trafficking of the young person is for the purpose of sexual exploitation, for example, in the sex trade, the imposition of a mandatory minimum penalty would make the penalties for child trafficking more like the existing penalties that apply to the procurement of a person under the age of 18, which currently impose mandatory minimum penalties in three different circumstances.
First, the offence of living on the avails of child prostitution imposes a mandatory minimum penalty of two years and a maximum penalty of 14 years of imprisonment under subsection 212(2) of the Criminal Code.
Second is the offence of living on the avails of child prostitution where aggravating factors are present, such as violence, intimidation, and coercion. This offence imposes a mandatory minimum penalty of five years and a maximum penalty of 14 years of imprisonment under subsection 212(2.1).
Finally, there is the offence of obtaining, for consideration, the sexual services of a child or communicating for that purpose. This offence imposes a mandatory minimum penalty of six months and a maximum penalty of five years of imprisonment under subsection 212(4).
That brings us to Bill C-268 and its imposition of the mandatory minimum penalty for the lesser offence. As has been pointed out, this differs from the Criminal Code's usual approach to mandatory minimum penalties in two ways. First we'll take section 273, which is the aggravated sexual assault provision. It imposes a four-year mandatory minimum penalty when a firearm is used, and the maximum penalty is life. In a case where a firearm is not used, the maximum penalty is life and there is no mandatory minimum penalty.
In the case I just went over of a child prostitution offence, the more serious aggravated offence imposes a mandatory minimum penalty of five years, and a less serious offence imposes a lesser mandatory minimum penalty of two years. Police and the crown will still have the discretion to proceed under the charge or charges that are most appropriate to the facts of a given case, whether it be under trafficking-specific offences, including this new child trafficking offence, or others that I've already mentioned: child prostitution, forcible confinement, extortion, etc.
Recent cases have already been raised in the previous session and this one. The Gatineau case involved a woman who was charged with a specific trafficking in persons offence, assault, procuring, and living on the avails of prostitution, because as the sponsor has indicated, she forced three victims into prostitution, one of whom was under the age of 18. She pleaded guilty and received a global sentence of seven years.
The recent Nakpamgi case has already been referred to. It involved a man charged with a specific trafficking in persons offence, as well as living on the avails of the prostitution of a person under the age of 18. He pleaded guilty and received a sentence of five years: three years for trafficking in persons and two years for child prostitution, to be served consecutively.
I would like to thank you very much for taking the time to listen and for allowing me the opportunity to provide my comments.