Evidence of meeting #99 for Justice and Human Rights in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was work.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
If that's true, some would say,“Well, that's great because we're going to catch more traffickers in Canada rather than having to meet the higher standard of the UN protocol.” Simply put, what would you say to that?
Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society
The issue that I see with that is this. As this committee is likely aware, traffickers often recruit their own victims to recruit further victims. You may have a case where somebody is involved in simply transporting a person from one location to the other, but isn't actually coercing that person to be in the sex trade because it's that person's pimp who is actually doing the coercing. That victim herself may find herself criminalized under human trafficking provisions.
The other issue is that people frequently work with third parties—drivers, managers, and so on—and those people may also be criminalized under the human trafficking provisions simply because they're providing a service to somebody else.
NDP
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
All right. I commend you for the work that you've been doing at Pivot on seeking the repeal of criminal laws for adult prostitution; and your case for repeal is a document that I am familiar with. You yourself represent, as you said initially, a lot of sex workers. Some folks seem to conflate the issue of sex work and human trafficking. As someone who represents sex workers, what percentage of sex workers, would you say, are trafficked or held against their will?
Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society
That would be difficult for me to put a number on. I would say the vast majority of people I work with are adults who have been in the trade for a long time and who are working without any coercion whatsoever. That said, it's not always so clear-cut. I certainly also worked with people in the trade who were experiencing exploitation day to day whether at the hands of clients or somebody else. It's not always clear where that line falls, and I appreciate the difficulty that this committee has in addressing that nuance. It's a bit difficult for me to give you clear numbers, but I would say that in my own legal practice, not Pivot's work with the community, I work with about 75% who I would put clearly in the category of adult consensual sex trade workers, and about 25% who are victims of exploitation of one form or another.
NDP
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
We heard from Senator McPhedran before you came, in line with Shelagh Day whose work I know you know, who used the expression, “Prostitution is not the oldest profession, it is the oldest oppression”, and draws the conclusion that normalizing sex work, normalizing prostitution, is a bad thing and we ought not walk down that slippery slope if we're trying to deal with human trafficking. I wonder if you could react to that, given Pivot's position on the case for repeal, and so on.
Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society
Certainly. I have to say that I do work with many individuals who are autonomous, they're adults, they have been working in the industry for a long time, and I would be very hard put to consider those people as victims. They are in control of their own life and their own economic situation. They're able to provide for their family members and enjoy quite good quality of life.
I don't like to remove other people's autonomy by telling them whether they're victims. I prefer to let people tell me for themselves what their experiences are. I do appreciate that there's a perspective that people may not know whether they have been truly victimized, but when there are circumstances of real exploitation happening, it's usually pretty apparent to me what's going on. Although it's difficult for me to draw the line between adults, consensual sex workers, and people who are victims of exploitation, as I said, it's usually quite apparent when there are exploitative circumstances.
NDP
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
Ms. Rupnarain, I appreciated your remarks very much. In the material that you provided and summarized, I was struck by a quote that I believe appears, where it says, “Approximately 50% of victims have not had previous experience dancing in adult entertainment establishments and/or prostitution.”
In your experience, about what percentage of trafficking victims have previously been involved in sex work? Can you answer that based on your experience to date?
Director of Client Services, Peel Institute on Violence Prevention, Family Services of Peel
One of the things we've seen that has grown recently is the age. It happens at a very young age: for example, from high school. One of the cases we work with is where kids go to high school, but they never go into school because they're picked up by their pimps, and then they're dropped off or taken home after school. Their parents never know after years of actually being in it. Those are the numbers we draw from—they've never been in any of that industry before—getting caught in that industry.
In the work that we do, we see more folks who are in sex trafficking than in prostitution. Most of the folks who we work with, who we conduct business with, even the survivors, have never been caught up in that field before. They just went right into human trafficking.
NDP
Murray Rankin NDP Victoria, BC
You would probably agree with what was said earlier, that there's a danger in conflating sex work and human trafficking.
Director of Client Services, Peel Institute on Violence Prevention, Family Services of Peel
Yes, there is a danger.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Chair; and thank you to all the witnesses.
I will be focusing on Mr. Warrack.
You gave us a huge amount of information about financial tools, financial intelligence, and using that to identify instances of trafficking. There's so much information and I need to drill down a little on it.
Is FINTRAC the major tool that banks and other agencies use to identify trafficking circumstances?
Bitfinex, As an Individual
FINTRAC is the government's collection agency for mandated reporting from banks and other institutions. Banks, for example, are required to identify and report suspicious transactions related to money-laundering, and that includes money from human trafficking. The banks and other institutions feed FINTRAC, which is an intelligence agency. They enhance that material and then share that material with law enforcement as appropriate.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Are these cases identified before they put the information into FINTRAC, or is it when they put the information into FINTRAC that they identify these circumstances?
Bitfinex, As an Individual
Banks, for example, and not just banks, independently identify patterns in customer behaviour that are strongly indicative to the bank of human trafficking and they share that information with FINTRAC. I must say, there's a fine line also between consensual sex workers, adult sex workers who may have similar patterns of activity....and the banks are very careful to report what they truly believe to be human trafficking.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
What is the nature of the financial operations that would identify people as potential traffickers? Is there any commonality there that you can talk about?
Bitfinex, As an Individual
I will keep it at a high level, Mr. McKinnon, for obvious reasons. A trafficker will often use a victim's account as their own account, so if we look at a victim of human trafficking's account, they don't get to keep any of the money. It goes in and out and the trafficker keeps it all. The trafficker needs to move his victims around the country, so there are a lot of transportation charges, a lot of accommodation charges, a lot of fast food charges, purchases of products at pharmacies, and things like that. When you add it all together and also look at their advertising, where they advertise, what the advertisements look like, and the language in the advertisements, it gives you a pretty strong clue or indication that this looks like a potential trafficking case.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Travel and fast food across the country, that sounds like my bank account.
Can you suggest any way to augment FINTRAC that would help this, any suggestions that we could recommend to change that system to help this identification in the law?
Bitfinex, As an Individual
I think the system is working extremely well. I think where it breaks down is at the law enforcement level—with the greatest respect to law enforcement—where not all law enforcement is equal. Some are more proactive than others. Some take the information, the intelligence from FINTRAC, and run with it and use it. Others don't.
Regarding the police, generally, I would like to see them certainly consider more the financial evidence that can be obtained from the bank about the trafficker, which can be used as evidence of that person's trafficking.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
Speaking of police officers, are they typically given financial training so they know how to use this information and know what to look for?
Bitfinex, As an Individual
Certainly police officers, depending upon their role, are given financial training but broadly, not specific to human trafficking. A human trafficking case is different from fraud, for instance. As I say, banks and people like that can provide valuable education to the police through the colleges of what it actually looks like.
Liberal
Ron McKinnon Liberal Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC
You also mentioned international versus domestic. I forget what numbers. I think you said 90% of cases are domestic. Are you able to identify that in a significant way through a financial analysis? How do you tell whether an international transaction relates to human trafficking?
Bitfinex, As an Individual
A good example is a trafficker paying for persons—usually women's—visas, for instance, to come in from abroad. That would be an indicator, not on its own strong enough, but with other indicators it would point to that international dimension.
