Mr. Speaker, the bill proposes changes to the Criminal Code provisions dealing with human trafficking. It creates a new offence for trafficking persons under the age of 18 and calls for a minimum sentence of five years for those convicted and life sentences for cases where death results. As the section is presently worded, there is no mandatory minimum sentence for the offence and no specific reference to age. Essentially, this bill says that if a victim is under the age of 18, there should be a minimum sentence of five years.
This bill is problematic for several reasons.
First, I will consider the use of mandatory minimums. Mandatory minimums mean that if a person is convicted of a crime there is a minimum sentence that must be served. Mandatory minimums are based on a deterrence theory of punishment for which there is no evidence.
Anthony Doob and Cheryl Webster, in their article, “Sentence Severity and crime: Accepting the Null Hypothesis”, conclude that 25 years' worth of research, sometimes even in ideal conditions, has shown that there is no support for the idea that harsher sentences reduce crime. They also point out:
Deterrence-based sentencing makes false promises to the community. As long as the public believes that crime can be deterred by legislatures or judges through harsh sentences, there is no need to consider other approaches to crime reduction.
In other words, adding a harsher sentence is pretending to do something instead of actually doing something.
Next, the proposed changes to the Criminal Code are in keeping with the ad hoc approach that the government has to justice issues. When we make ad hoc changes, we are very likely to get changes that are entirely inconsistent with one another.
In the last comprehensive review of the sentencing provisions by Parliament specifically aimed at reducing the use of jail, section 718.2(e), states:
all available sanctions other than imprisonment that are reasonable in the circumstances should be considered for all offenders...
The bill flies in the face of that, preventing the use of anything but imprisonment.
Let us consider other sentences in the Criminal Code.
Why are we proposing a minimum sentence for this offence when, for example, manslaughter does not have a minimum sentence? Aggravated sexual assault has no minimum sentence. Abduction of a child under 14 has no minimum sentence. Abandoning a child under 10 so his or her life is likely to be endangered has no minimum sentence. Perhaps most tellingly, taking a person under the age of 18 out of the country for the purpose of committing a sexual offence has no minimum sentence. Abduction of a person under the age of 16 or 14 has no minimum sentences.
What we have is a bill that attempts to divert our attention from the real issue of child trafficking and that makes it look like we are tough on crime, without actually dealing with the issues of crime and with child trafficking.
The Conservative government has clearly failed to deal with the issues of human trafficking. Despite the need for clear and effective policies and legislation, it has been content to leave this matter to a private member's bill.
This bill is in response to two cases of human trafficking in which the accused were tried and convicted, but then received what were considered by most to be very minimal sentences. In one of the cases, the offender was credited with time served and got no additional jail time.
The NDP categorically opposes human trafficking and would welcome any legislation that assists in actually realizing this outcome. However, in my opinion, the bill, in all likelihood, will have very little impact on curbing human trafficking and child exploitation.
In preparation for this speech, I took a look at statistics from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime February 2009 report. For all forms of human trafficking in Canada, here are the statistics on convictions: from March 2004 to February 2005, there were 19 convictions; from March 2005 to February 2006, there were 6 convictions; from March 2006 to February 2007, there were 5 convictions. We have 19, 6 and 5 convictions over three years. These are convictions for, in fact, all forms of human trafficking. On the flip side of this, we have the RCMP that estimates that 800 people are trafficked into Canada each year.
We have a situation here in which five people have been convicted. Let us remember that the bill deals only with people who have been convicted, and we have 800 people who are being trafficked. They are not addressed by the bill at all, not one bit. Five versus 800: I wonder why we are even wasting our time talking about this when what we really need is action on child trafficking.
After making this speech, I fully expect some mail-outs and accusations saying that I support pedophiles, but I am speaking the truth. The truth is that we need to get tough on child trafficking, and we know how to do it, but the bill is not the answer. If the government were serious about child trafficking, it would introduce a bill and it would introduce a bill that has an effective anti-child-trafficking approach.
What would a bill like this look like? Our colleague, an international human rights expert, the hon. member for Mount Royal, has talked loudly and often about the need for prevention, the prevention of trafficking by raising awareness of a new global slave trade and the urgency of acting against it. I agree absolutely with this approach.
An effective anti-trafficking approach would also include a strategy for enforcement. Many studies on mandatory minimums have concluded that predicted length of sentences has very little, if any, impact on crime, but getting caught does. It has a huge impact on crime. Not only would an enforcement strategy actually arrest traffickers and prevent them from continuing to do their work, but it has also been shown that crime decreases when there is a perception that getting caught is likely. So, I am left to ask why the bill does not attempt to channel funds into a special enforcement team, an investigative team that would actually track and arrest child traffickers, a special enforcement team with the expertise to navigate the complex underground system that trafficked children are trapped within.
I am also left asking why there is not more in the bill for the victims of trafficking who face innumerable challenges including overcoming traumas they have faced and attempting to reintegrate themselves. The key with reintegration is reintegration with the help of support networks, and I am not sure that support networks really exist for these children. This is another issue that is widely acknowledged regarding all forms of human trafficking, not just that involving children. The support networks do not exist and the victims are very reluctant to come forward to authorities. This makes it very hard to prosecute traffickers, because to get to the traffickers we have to get to the victims.
In the journal First Peoples Child and Family Review there is an article by a woman named Anupriya Sethi entitled “Domestic Sex Trafficking of Aboriginal Girls in Canada: Issues and Implications”. In this article Ms. Sethi argues that the current discourses on human trafficking in Canada do not take into account domestic trafficking, which includes trafficking within Canada, especially of aboriginal girls. Notwithstanding the alarmingly high number of missing, murdered, or sexually exploited women and aboriginal girls, Sethi states that as long as this issue continues to be portrayed as an issue of prostitution or sexual exploitation, we are not getting at the real issue which is domestic trafficking.
Through her interviews with key informants across Canada, Sethi identifies the root causes of trafficking of aboriginal girls. These root causes include the legacy of colonization and residential schools, isolation and the need for a sense of belonging, as well as violence, racism, substance abuse and poverty. Poverty is a major cause of sexual exploitation and as we all know, poverty in aboriginal families is at an all-time high. But the bill neglects to look at preventing trafficking and neglects to consider the root causes of child trafficking.
The bill claims to help children but it in fact abandons them. The only expected outcome is to change the sentencing of those convicted, not to prevent children from being trafficked. Mandatory minimums continually fail to result in lower crime rates, so with the bill, we find ourselves in the situation of having to explain to victims of child trafficking that the proposed legislation fails to provide assistance to children and their families and worse, that it will likely fail to prevent trafficking, because the bill is about scoring political points and not about a strategy for tackling the issue of child trafficking.
