Thank you, Ms. Sgro, and thank you to the committee for inviting me here today.
I'll start with a few caveats, and then I'll give my major points. To begin, there are a few things we need to be cautious about in the discussion of trafficking. First, it's important to remember that the concept of trafficking is still difficult and very much debated. Generally, it is seen as the use of force or deceit to transport and/or recruit people for exploitative work or service. That's the generic definition. What constitutes force and what constitutes exploitation still remains problematic.
Second, we need to be aware that our knowledge of trafficking is very limited, particularly how large or small the problem is, given that it is a largely hidden and underground phenomenon and that the definition is so loose. If you look through various documents, the numbers range incredibly widely. The International Labour Organization has put out a number of papers questioning the methodologies used here.
Third, we tend to focus on women in the sex trade, but trafficking can occur in many sectors that depend on migrant labour, such as agriculture, the garment sector, and domestic work. So there's a much larger group.
Finally, we must be aware that anti-trafficking measures, which have been in place for some time now, have had a tendency to become anti-migration measures, particularly anti-female migration measures, rather than instruments of human rights. Therefore, I would like to look at how we can take a different approach that addresses the issues raised in the discussion of trafficking by strengthening people's rights as migrants and as workers.
First, I would like to emphasize that trafficking is part of a much larger phenomenon of global labour migration. This labour migration is increasingly populated by women who are seeking better paid work to support both themselves and their families.
At the same time, however, this migration is becoming increasingly difficult to arrange independently, safely, and easily. It is important to remember that the vast majority of migrant workers, including sex workers, have sought to migrate for work--they are looking for work--but may have been taken advantage of by those who assisted that migration process. They may find themselves in an exploitative work situation that they cannot easily leave.
So the first part of the problem lies in barriers to migration for work, again, particularly for women. Trafficking and smuggling thrive on this disconnect between the demand for workers in richer countries and the ability of workers in poorer countries to get to those jobs. The demand for these workers and the need for these workers to get to these better jobs is much, much greater than the availability of actual legal channels of migration. Assisted or irregular migration through the use of various helpers has become the norm for migrant workers seeking work abroad. These helpers can be family members or employment agencies or indeed organized crime.
For example, given her options for supporting herself and her family, if a woman decides that sex work in a rich country is her best option, there is often no way for her to arrange that work independently. Therefore, migrant sex workers may face problems such as debt bondage. Debt such as $30,000 to $40,000 can be incurred through agents who arrange travel and documents. These debts can then be passed on to bar owners or bosses who take it out in wages from the women without negotiating a contract.
Women may also find themselves with irregular immigration status, in Canada, for example, which means they always have to fear arrest and deportation. The owners can use this threat of exposing their illegal status to extract even more labour for free or for cheap.
When women are able to migrate legally and independently, trafficking decreases. Analysts from the European Union have pointed out that while women from Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia were frequently victims of trafficking rings several years ago, since these countries have become accession states to the EU, those trafficking numbers have dropped dramatically. Women are now able to use their easy access to the EU countries to take up informal work, whatever work that might be, and leave if things become difficult, without fear that they won't be able to get back into the country and make more money.
So there's a migration barrier problem, and the second part of the problem is the poor conditions of work in many of the sectors in which exploitation occurs. Again this can be in the garment trade, which is notorious; agricultural labour; domestic work; and the sex trade.
Because trafficking depends on poor or illegal conditions of work, it happens in those types of work that are informal or unregulated. This is where traffickers can extract the greatest profit without fear of sanction--there are no unions to hold them to any kind of work conditions, for example. Because women traditionally have fewer opportunities for work and most of their work opportunities fall into these unregulated or informal sectors like domestic work and sex work, women are more vulnerable to having their labour exploited.
Many migrant sex workers in Canada, for example, end up working in the criminalized but tolerated indoor trade. There they face a number of problems such as breach of contract, long hours, and unsafe working conditions. Migrant sex workers may have informal agreements about their work. They may have signed contracts that they didn't understand, and they have no way to enforce these contracts, complain, or seek redress if violence occurs, they're not paid, or they're enslaved. There's no one to go to.
So migrant sex workers share an interest with domestic sex workers in having the ability to enforce contracts, demand fair payment, control the pace of their work, choose the clients they wish to see, and demand protection from violence, which as you know is an enormous problem in the sex trade. The criminalized nature of sex work in Canada, however, makes this next to impossible, and only increases the risk of violence that is already endemic in sex work in Canada.
We already have criminal and border security measures, and many countries have or are party to the new transnational convention on trafficking. But this may actually make the problems worse, and this is what we've started to see. Trafficking has mostly been viewed as a criminal or a security problem rather than a human rights issue, so measures have been directed at apprehending and punishing traffickers and stopping the movement of people who may be trafficked.
However, such measures themselves may contribute to the problem because they create even higher barriers to migration, and therefore a greater need for assistance and increased potential for being taken advantage of. So tighter visa restrictions, more security checks on migrants, and increased use of detention and deportation, which have all become common, have meant that migrants without the legal means to migrate independently have to pay higher fees and look harder for assistance. They end up in higher indebtedness and can therefore be more easily taken advantage of.
Police or immigration officials' attempts to find and rescue trafficking victims may have had negative results as well. Raids on sex work establishments, for example, often result in women being deported, even though they do not want to leave the country. Some often want to continue working, just in much better conditions, and they want to be paid.
Outreach workers have reported in several countries that they have lost contact with those who may indeed be trafficked, because raids have caused establishments to move further underground, and exploited sex workers become harder to reach. Raids can actually disrupt the good work being done by outreach organizations in health promotion, violence prevention, and building those communicative links with migrant sex workers, trafficked or not.
Even as we have introduced stricter criminal measures over the past decade, there continue to be reports of higher numbers of people being trafficked. Very few people have ever been tried for trafficking, including in the United States, so clearly these criminal measures have not been having the impact we had hoped.
There are alternative solutions. We already have a number of criminal measures in place; there's no need for any more. What we might want to do is address the problems identified in discussions on trafficking by increasing the opportunities and choices for migrant workers and undercutting organized crime, rather than focusing on criminal or punitive measures.
First, we should increase women's ability to migrate independently and safely by providing increased access to and information about safe migration channels. Most trafficking occurs where women have little idea about how to get to Canada to work in whatever job, safely and legally.
With the growing demand, I suspect, for migrant labour in Canada, particularly with the economic booms out west, there will be more migrant workers seeking to access these jobs, so it is important that they be provided with the ability to access these jobs independently and safely.
A gender audit of migration policy might be a timely intervention in order to see whether and how Canadian immigration policy limits women's ability to migrate as independent workers in whatever field. Measures that aim at preventing trafficking--and these are common--by frightening women away from migrating only act as unfair barriers to women's ability to gain economic equality.
Further, Canada should definitely address the status of irregular migrants through the measures put forward in the United Nations convention on the protection of migrant workers, which we have not acceded to.
Secondly, we should address the poor conditions of work in sex work and other informal kinds of work in Canada--the garment trade, domestic work--and make women doing this kind of work less easily exploitable. For example, the criminalized and underground nature of the sex trade in Canada makes it potentially very dangerous and makes workers easily exploited by managers and owners in brothels and bars.
This committee should perhaps consult the work being done by the solicitation law review committee, and the reports being produced by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, by the Pivot society from British Columbia, by the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, and by all the sex trade organizations in Canada. Stella, in Quebec, for example, has done excellent work on this. They have reports on how to make the trade safer and less exploitative and on how to give sex workers themselves--migrants included--the right and the ability to fight for and enforce safe and fair working conditions.
In this vein, we need to support the work being done by sex worker outreach organizations that have made contact with migrant women and trafficked women, and support that work so they can continue to do it. Certainly, no anti-trafficking measures should be taken without sex workers and migrant rights groups at the table.
In conclusion, we must remember that the concerns being raised in the discussion of trafficking are all about the other people controlling and exploiting women. Therefore, we need to find solutions that enhance women's--including sex workers'--and migrant women's control over their own lives. We need to empower women rather than disempower them.
Two Dutch researchers have said it best, I think: “Only rights can stop wrongs”. Thank you.