Good morning, everyone.
Let me start by thanking the members of the committee for the invitation to present the most recent statistics on human trafficking in Canada.
Essentially, Statistics Canada has two main sources of data on human trafficking: the data provided by the police services, and the data provided by the courts. Today, I will give you an overview of the main indicators form these different sources.
Let's go now to the next slide.
Allow me to point out that, although we can provide the most recent human trafficking statistics, we acknowledge that collecting data on this type of offence presents some challenges for several reasons.
So far, research has shown that many victims of human trafficking are reluctant to report the offence to the authorities. It has also been recognized over time that some authorities have experienced difficulties in identifying trafficking offences. Because of these limitations, we believe there is some underreporting of human trafficking incidents in Canada.
That being said, as you will see later in this presentation, there has been a significant increase in the number of human trafficking cases reported to the police. What is unclear is whether it is a real increase or a mere indication that police services and authorities are better equipped to detect and report such incidents.
Let's move on to the third slide.
Let me first explain what we collected from our sources.
The offences that fall under the category of human trafficking under the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey include four elements: trafficking in persons, as described in section 279.01 of the Criminal Code of Canada; trafficking in persons under the age of 18; material benefit from trafficking in persons; and withholding or destroying documents to facilitate human trafficking.
I will begin by summarizing the main findings from our presentation this morning.
The number of police-reported incidents of human trafficking is on the rise. This rise in recent years has been driven by increases in trafficking across international borders, as well as increases in sex trafficking or forced labour.
This increase could be attributed to improved methods of reporting, detecting and investigating these crimes.
Overall, this offence is most often related to some form of sexual exploitation, such as prostitution, and most often reported in urban areas.
Now, if you turn to the next chart, chart number 4 highlights the increase in human trafficking rates. As you can see, in 2010 the rate of human trafficking per 100,000 people was only 0.08, while in 2016 the rate rose to 0.94.
Rates of human trafficking in 2016 are more than 11 times higher than in 2010, and the largest increases occurred between 2013 and 2015.
In comparison, during the same period, the overall crime rate decreased by 19%. It is also worth noting that, at close to one incident per 100,000 people, this offence represents rates of prevalence similar to certain other prostitution offences.
As I mentioned at the outset, we cannot be certain whether or not the increase observed here is the result of improved methods of reporting, detecting, and investigating incidents of human trafficking or of an actual increase in incidents. What we do know from our interactions with police services across the country is that there has been an increase in understanding of this offence type by the authorities.
For the past four years, each year, about 30% of incidents are related to cross-border trafficking, and the remaining 70% are related to sexual or labour trafficking. The manner in which we capture the data does not permit us to differentiate between labour or sexual trafficking. However, when we look at the characteristics around these incidents, we understand that they are predominantly sex trafficking.
On your next slide you can see this graph here shows the same trend but depicts them in numbers of incidents. You can see here, in terms of numbers of incidents, that human trafficking has gone from 41 offences in 2009 to 340 offences in 2016. What it's not showing on this chart, though, is that it is in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and in Halifax that we observed the highest increases over the past years.
If you turn now to slide number 6, turning to the most recent data we have from police services, we know that in 2016 there were 340 criminal incidents where violation of human trafficking was the most serious offence. This represented 0.02% of all police reported incidents. It is important to note that any criminal incident that is brought to the attention of the police may encompass a number of other offences that are related to the same incident. That is, that other violations occur alongside incidents of human trafficking.
Between 2009-16 there were 1,099 police reported incidents that involved a violation of human trafficking; of these incidents more than half, or 555 if you wish, involved at least one other violation. In looking at the data further, among those incidents where there were more than one violation, we noted that in incidents where human trafficking was the most serious offence in the incident, almost 6 in 10 of these incidents also involved a prostitution offence. Further to that, we also noted that in instances where there was a human trafficking offence but it was not the most serious offence, one-quarter of these involved kidnapping, and just over 1 in 5 involved the physical assault, and just over one in ten involved sexual assault.
On slide 7 this time, in looking at the data from a provincial perspective, we know that two-thirds of the incidents occurred in the province of Ontario, while just over 1 in 10 was in Quebec. Additionally, it is also clear that human trafficking shows to be a big-city crime: almost 9 in 10 of the human trafficking incidents occurred in the city. This should not be a surprise, as research to date acknowledges that victims are placed in cities where clients are located. In looking at the police reported data again, we can see that almost half of human trafficking incidents in the country occurred in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal.
On the next slide, you see a graph here that shows the distribution of human trafficking victims by age group. First, let's note that over the eight years of data that we analyzed it was found that the vast majority of victims were women, 95%, and most often very young women. Close to half of human trafficking victims were between the ages of 18 and 24. Additionally, just over one-quarter of victims were under the age of 18. Also, the majority of victims knew the person accused of the crime. The most common relationships between the victim and the accused were casual acquaintance; intimate partner, which is non-spousal; business relationship; or criminal relationship.
On slide 9, this time you have a graph here that shows the distribution by age of the persons who are accused. I would now like to draw your attention to the fact that the vast majority of persons accused in human trafficking incidents are men, and that more than 4 in 10 incidents involve a young man between the ages of 18 and 24, while more than one-third are males between the ages of 15 and 24.
On this last slide here, slide 10, Statistics Canada collects information on court cases involving human trafficking through another survey, the other source that I was talking about at the beginning, which is the Integrated Criminal Court Survey. According to this survey, between 2005-06 and 2015-16 there were 84 completed adult criminal court cases where a human trafficking offence was the most serious offence.
Of these completed adult human trafficking cases, the majority, 60%, resulted in a finding of stayed or withdrawn, while close to one third, or 30%, resulted in a guilty finding. Over the same time period, 222 adult adult criminal court cases involved a human trafficking offence that was not the most serious criminal offence in the incident. These most often involved cases related to prostitution offences and deprivation of freedom offences. Of the 306 adult criminal court cases that have at least one charge related to human trafficking, two-thirds have more than one charge of human trafficking within the case.
In conclusion, we have mentioned during this presentation that many human trafficking victims are reluctant to report to authorities and that some authorities have encountered difficulties in identifying human trafficking crimes. As a result, there could be a degree of under-reporting of incidents of human trafficking in Canada.
Keeping in mind that the issue of human trafficking is critical to our partners, we strive to find ways to enhance our understanding of this offence. As such, we find ways to collect additional data to help inform policy. One such example is that enhanced questions that were recently added to one of our surveys on residential facilities for victims of abuse. The survey will be in the field in the spring of 2018 and will collect information from shelters. It will ask shelter managers to report on the number of residents who were seeking shelter for reasons of human trafficking, either labour exploitation or sexual exploitation. Results from this data collection activity will be released in the spring of 2019.
That concludes our presentation. Thank you.