Pursuant to notice of February 18, 2020, moved:

That, given the unanimous declaration of the House of Commons on February 22, 2007, to condemn all forms of human trafficking and slavery, the Senate:

(a)encourage Canadians to raise awareness of the magnitude of modern day slavery in Canada and abroad and to take steps to combat human trafficking; and

(b)recognize the 22nd day of February as National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

She said: Honourable senators, I rise today in favour of designating February 22 National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. This idea isn’t new. The House of Commons and the Senate have been working on this for eight years. I join my voice to this effort as the acting co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

February 22 was not chosen at random. Thirteen years ago, on February 22, 2007, the House of Commons unanimously adopted a motion to condemn the trafficking of women and children across international borders for the purposes of sexual exploitation. This issue transcends partisanship. The motion was moved by Conservative MP Joy Smith and seconded by Bloc MP Maria Mourani. This is what Joy Smith said at the time:

. . . parliamentarians . . . must become more educated and aware that in communities all across our nation innocent victims are being threatened and held against their will. They continue to be violated and remain unnoticed as unknowing Canadians live their daily lives.

A lot of progress has been made since then. Eight months ago, a 24-hour multilingual emergency hotline was made available to victims, at 1-833-900-1010. Furthermore, federal agency FINTRAC has been working with banks to identify suspicious deposits and payments made at night, between midnight at 6 a.m., which can help identify pimps. This initiative is the first of its kind in the world.

There are also more reports than ever before. Between 2009 and 2016, 340 serious human trafficking violations were reported in Canada, which is 10 times more than before. Of these reports, 95% of the victims were woman, and 72% of them were under 25. It is nevertheless very difficult to understand the real scope of trafficking, due to its hidden nature.

In a shocking report by CBC this week, a police officer from Durham spoke about the horrific and degrading treatment often inflicted on these women. He said that some are tortured or raped, and some are forced to eat their own feces. Durham has managed to draw the community’s attention to this crime and has encouraged them to report, largely thanks to a former trafficking victim who is working with police and doing school outreach.

But elsewhere in the country, much awareness-raising work still needs to be done to change attitudes about trafficking in persons, particularly for the purposes of forced labour or, more often in this country, sexual exploitation. It is difficult for the average person to imagine that trafficking in women actually exists in Canada. Moreover, it disproportionately affects Indigenous people and Indigenous women.

Public opinion is moved when underage girls fall under the control of street gangs that desensitize them through repeated rapes, lock them up and, above all, transport them away from their environment to isolate them. But adult women can just as easily find themselves trafficked, manipulated, controlled and exploited by traffickers to such an extent that they do not believe they can free themselves from this yoke. For them, prostitution is not a choice.

Last October, York Regional Police dismantled a vast sex trafficking ring and arrested 31 people. The 12 victims — and about 30 more were being sought — mostly young women from Quebec, had been brought to Ontario and Western Canada. A police officer said that these women could smile at the clients but they were not consenting participants. They were in the grips of a network, which was also involved in producing false identification documents and drug trafficking.

In Canada, forced labour is not well known. Victims and offenders are often foreign nationals. Sometimes they are domestic servants who work seven days a week without compensation or have their passports confiscated by the family employing them.

A year ago, 43 enslaved Mexicans were freed by police in the Barrie region of Ontario. These men were forced to clean houses under the thumb of their traffickers for $50 a month.

Internationally, what we call modern slavery includes forced labour, sex trafficking and forced marriages. These phenomena mainly affect girls and women, who are still victims of inequality and discrimination around the world. An estimated 4.8 million people, almost exclusively girls and women, are victims of forced sexual exploitation, and 15 million people, again mostly girls, have been forced to marry. A vast majority of these forms of exploitation occur far away from here in countries where young girls are married or sold to much older men. They experience early pregnancies that result in horrible complications such as fistulas.

Ontario, where two-thirds of human trafficking cases are reported, and Alberta have already designated February 22 as Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Many organizations that fight against these forms of exploitation want this to become a national designation so that efforts can be coordinated at a specific time of the year in order to have a maximum impact on the population. Awareness campaigns encourage people to pay more attention to what is happening around them, to suspicious behaviour, and to cries for help, whether it be from a young woman who is trapped in a forced marriage, another who is in the clutches of a pimp boyfriend or a newcomer who is being exploited by her employer.

I hope you will support this motion.

Thank you.