Sure.
Any time you put an objective standard into a criminal offence like that, you need some kind of a benchmark against which to measure “reasonableness”. Generally speaking, in the modern context, I think we recognize that it is inappropriate for the reasonableness of a victim's fear to be judged by third parties.
In the context of trafficking specifically, you have the reality that these convictions are very hard to obtain. Sometimes the coercive behaviour, the fear, isn't explicit and it's not overt. There's so much manipulation going on behind the scenes—or sometimes quite overtly, as you've seen from Ms. Wood—that it's difficult then to say, well, a reasonable person would fear for their safety under those conditions.
We know that. We know the history of that, because we used to have that in sexual assault law. It used to be that if you submitted to sexual activity out of fear, the courts would judge whether your fear was reasonable, right? It was an invitation to myth and stereotype, and in particular to judges to say, “Well, you could have done this or that,” or, “You had other alternatives,” or, “The door wasn't locked,” or, “You could have gone back to your family.”
In the context of human trafficking, the same thing happens: “You didn't take your cellphone.” “You were still in contact with your mom, so how can it be said that you reasonably feared for your safety?”
It's an inappropriate requirement. It's inappropriate in criminal harassment, where it remains as well. We have a lot of evidence of that in connection with other offences, and we have evidence of that in the human trafficking offence. It's part of the reason that convictions are so difficult to obtain.