Thank you.
Good morning. My name is Timea Nagy. I am a founder of the Walk With Me organization and a survivor of human trafficking. Mr. Hooper is the chairperson of the board of directors of Walk With Me.
Walk With Me Canada Victim Services, or Walk With Me, is a front-line and secondary service provider to victims of all forms of human trafficking. We have been asked to appear before the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights concerning Bill C-310, which suggests amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada concerning human trafficking.
Let me tell you who we are. Walk With Me is a Canada-wide organization with a mandate to provide services to persons rescued from modern-day slavery, also known as human trafficking. Walk With Me has been involved in the rescue of trafficked human victims in the labour and sex trades.
The mission statement of Walk With Me is as follows:
Walk With Me Canada Victim Services is a survivor-led organization dedicated to raising awareness and providing education on issues of slavery, delivering and coordinating services supporting “victims to become survivors” and advocating action for change.
The vision of Walk With Me is as follows:
Transforming the lives of victims of human trafficking while eradicating slavery.
Bill C-310 purports to make two amendments to the Criminal Code of Canada. They include: making the offence of trafficking in persons an extraterritorial offence for Canadian citizens and permanent residents, and adding a subsection to give evidentiary assistance to courts on factors to be considered in defining exploitation.
On extraterritorial trafficking in persons, the proposed amendment to section 7 of the Criminal Code is to add proposed subsection 7(4.11), which states:
Notwithstanding anything in this Act or any other Act, every one who, outside Canada, commits an act or omission that if committed in Canada would be an offence against section 279.01 or 279.011 shall be deemed to commit that act or omission in Canada if the person who commits the act or omission is a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident within the meaning of subsection 2(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.
Walk With Me’s position is that this is a necessary and desperately needed amendment to the Criminal Code of Canada.
Walk With Me has had significant involvement with Project OPAPA, which is about the Hungarian labour trafficking ring in southwestern Ontario. Conceivably, as the Criminal Code presently stands, a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident could set up an office in eastern Europe and traffic in human persons to Canadian soil without the threat or worry of prosecution when they return to Canada.
It is our anticipation that Project OPAPA will force the parties involved in modern-day slavery to move to a more sophisticated cultivation of trafficking in human persons. It is our view that it will include having Canadian citizens and/or permanent residents set up shop outside of Canada and deliver the potential trafficked persons to Canada via a foreign country.
Given the mandate of our work inside of Canada, we have not seen a significant amount of involvement of extraterritorial shipments of trafficked persons; however, it is clear that the Roma people involved in Project OPAPA specifically had agents in Hungary shipping people to Canada. Some of those people who were the conduits in Hungary eventually came to Canada, requested status after sending the shipment of trafficked human beings, and became permanent residents.
It is our anticipation that this crackdown and the prosecution of this group of organized criminals will lead to parties attempting to set up a shop extraterritorially.
I'm going to pass this on to my team member.