Madam Speaker, it is an honour today to speak on this particular bill, which addresses an often under-reported plight, a virus and a cancer that has spread across the world, affecting some of the most underprivileged and vulnerable souls in some of the poorest countries of the world.
The bill is actually one of international leadership, because in addressing the challenge of trying to help prevent trafficking of these people, often into conditions of sexual exploitation, we find that most of the countries involved in it do not have the legislative framework upon which to address the problem. Our government has put together this particular bill in a legislative form that can be used by other countries so they can adopt similar legislation in their countries to address this plight.
In a nutshell, the bill, which I hope will be passed forthwith by all members of the House and all parties, has three primary components.
First, it deals with the aspect of introducing three new indictable offences. The main offence is the trafficking in persons. The bill would prohibit anyone from engaging in specific acts involved in this type of activity. In fact, the penalties would be hardened and increased so that the maximum penalty would be life imprisonment.
The second aspect is a second offence that would prohibit anyone from receiving financial benefits from the trafficking of people. In this case, the maximum penalty is raised to 10 years.
The third offence relations to prohibiting the withholding or destroying of documents, which is an integral part in trapping people in this sad situation.
I want to talk for a moment about the scope of the problem to begin with. The U.S. government estimates that between 600,000 and 800,000 men, women and children are trafficked every single year across borders. This does not take into consideration the large numbers of individuals trafficked within borders. We could add at least another million people in regard to that.
These areas and people involve some of the poorest countries in the world. The economic benefit is about $10 billion. The benefits accrue to those individuals who are often involved in drug trafficking and money laundering and to individuals who are involved in the sex trade, essentially as pimps. They abuse these individuals in a heinous way, with women comprising 80% of the people trapped into this. The bulk of them are under the age of 25. We can see that we are dealing primarily with youth and that 80% of them are females.
The countries involved are some of the poorest countries in the world. I will get to a list of them in a moment. There is something that I wish to say above all else about the trafficking of human beings. It is not the same as migrants. Trafficking in migrants brings people to a country, but then they are free to go.
In this case, in the trafficking of human beings, people are lured to another country, usually with the offer of employment, often to work as au pairs or to work in manufacturing jobs, to work simply so they can provide money for themselves and their families. A lot of them have families in their home countries. They wind up going to a country with the hope of work, arranged beforehand, and meet people who promise them work, but then they are taken and often forced to engage in sexual acts. Often what they get in return is abuse and sometimes even death.
Sadly, as I said before, many of the countries in which this happens do not have the legislative framework to deal with these people, or they have the legislative framework but are not willing to actually implement legislation. This is a profoundly sad and tragic thing.
The most vulnerable people are the young and those who come from poor countries. They are often used as cheap labour. I received from an international database information about the countries that are most affected. They are as follows: Moldova, Romania, Mali, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Uzbekistan, Colombia and Kyrgyzstan. We can see that what ties together all those countries is the fact that they are extremely poor.
Essentially, those exploiting these individuals are exploiting people who are simply trying to find a place where they can work and provide for themselves. Instead, they often are met with circumstances that can be truly horrific. In fact, today's trafficking of people is really another form of slavery.
A risk factor we see primarily is poverty at home. Children are often affected, but it is often an under-reported and under-documented group. The traffickers often know the families, at least at arm's length. They find a vulnerable group. They convince the families to give up their loved ones, who are often children, saying that the children will work for the financial benefit of the families. The families may not see their children perhaps ever again, because those children were drawn into the sex trade and were forced to engage in sexual activity against their will.
In addressing the problem, a large number of protocols can be used. These include the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the optional protocol on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, and the Slavery Convention of 1926 to name just a few. The international framework is there. The legislative framework is there internationally, but what it lacks is teeth. As a government we have put teeth into domestic legislation that can be applied here at home in order to go after the pimps and the people attached to organized crime who often are the ones who profiteer from the vulnerabilities of the poor. I hope that we will be able to export this knowledge and this legislative framework abroad. We need more though.
We have to work together and with other countries to develop a framework of knowledge and the sharing of information. We must do a better job of assessing vulnerable groups that we are not too aware of, such as children. We also have to look at different regions. For example, in West Africa slavery and the exploitation of people are widespread. Some 200,000 children in West Africa alone are trafficked in this fashion. They largely go unreported, unrecognized and forgotten. The fate that awaits them is often truly horrific.
Some work is being done. The Organization of American States, the UN and UNICEF have all done some very good work in this area, but there is much more internationally that could be done. There are a few complementary solutions that might be helpful.
One is to have better cross-border collaboration. We as a government are working very strongly with other countries to push this. At the Organization of American States, with the U.S. south of the border and with European countries, Canadian law enforcement officials are working very hard to help coordinate this type of activity.
Model legislation has been seen in other countries. Again, using the Canadian model, this bill, as an example for other countries to adopt would be useful in trying to help other countries adopt the legislative framework.
Minimum standards of health care would also be required. When the people who have been sold as slaves are found, they need access to proper health care. Particularly if they have been involved in the sex trade, they bring back to their country of origin a host of medical problems which sometimes they pass on. An example would be HIV-AIDS. In eastern Europe and southern Africa HIV-AIDS is a terrible problem that is ripping through entire societies. It is sad that people who are trafficked into these environments, who are forced to engage in sex slavery, sadly and tragically have a death sentence because they pick up the HIV virus.
Capacity building of NGOs and law enforcement officials is also required for them to be able to identify the vulnerable groups, identify the people involved in trafficking, and apprehend the individuals involved in the trafficking, but also separate and identify those individuals who have been sold into the sex trade. Telephone hotlines would help, as would witness protection programs for those involved.
I want to close by saying that the trafficking of individuals is a human catastrophe. Our government has put forward this landmark bill. I hope it will be adopted by other countries. I hope that in addressing this profoundly tragic international humanitarian catastrophe, it will bring it to an end.
