Mr. Chair, we have dedicated the past 25 years exposing organized crime, family-based, non-state torture and human trafficking in Canada and internationally. We are published authors. Our latest co-authored chapter is titled “How Non-State Torture is Gendered and Invisibilized: Canada’s Non-Compliance with the Committee Against Torture's Recommendations”. It is in the book titled Gender Perspectives on Torture: Law and Practice, which was launched at the UN Commission on the Status of Women in March of this year.
The human trafficking victimized population we specifically refer to are girls, daughters, and spouses who were born into family-based, non-state torturers who trafficked them, and adults who were tortured and trafficked within the context of intimate relationships. They were harboured, held, controlled, and transported for exploitation to like-minded individuals, rings, or groups whose pleasures were sadistic, sexualized torture, which is never consented to. This specific group must be identified as existing in Canada, contributing to organized crime.
Human trafficking descriptions must be understood as involving organized, family-based typologies that can include in-home torture gatherings coded as parties, transportation to like-minded others within their communities or further afield, exploitation into pornographic and prostitution victimization, and now, online trafficking.
The age of human trafficking exploitation can begin with newborn infants, recognizing the pleasures of some perpetrators or buyers who harm them. This truth-telling is evidence collected by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection and reported to the Minister of Public Safety.
Our first recommendation is naming and making visible non-state torture, terrorization, and horrification inflicted by family-based, organized, criminal, human traffickers or buyers. For example, in a web research questionnaire we conducted in 2009 in which 128 people responded, 57, or 37%, said that guns, pornography, and snuff images were used to terrorize and horrify them. For decades women speaking about snuff films were disbelieved. This denial must end.
Torture and its accompanying terrorization must be named and codified to uphold a trafficked person's ability to invoke the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, or CAT, in Canadian courts, and be included in their victim impact statement versus being redacted.
The ability to denounce criminal, family-based, non-state torturers and traffickers is necessary to educate society; to develop investigative and preventive interventions; and to ensure the tortured person's telling, which can help uphold the credibility and reliability of persons so tortured and trafficked and contribute to their victimization-traumatization recovery.
Safe, immediate access to housing is necessary for exploited women and girls to heal and it is required that police concentrate on arresting the traffickers and buyers.
There needs to be a shift in social attitude about human trafficking. It is not sex. It is not solely about poverty. It is the intentional and purposeful criminal abuse of vulnerabilities and positions of power, and violence perpetrated by traffickers and buyers against another human being.
The sustainable development goals that Canada has committed to achieving have the imperative of leaving no one behind. It is a human right not to be subjected to torture by human traffickers, buyers, or any person regardless of their status. Target 16.2 is to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children. Target 5.1 is to end all forms of discrimination against women and girls everywhere. Target 5.2 is to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in public and private spheres. Target 10 is to eliminate discriminatory laws, policies, and practices by promoting appropriate legislation, policies, and actions in this regard.