The author of a new book that exposes the widespread extent of human trafficking in Canada for the first time takes aim at the government of Quebec for not cracking down on a branch of criminality he compares to “modern-day slavery” concealing itself behind escort services and violent street gangs.
No help here
“Unfortunately the Quebec government has not put a system in place to help trafficking victims,” Benjamin Perrin, author of Invisible Chains: Canada’s Underworld World of Human Trafficking, said in a phone interview with the Laval News. He said failure to have a plan in place, as is the case with the Quebec government, “is having a severe impact on human traffi
cking victims.”
When Perrin, an assistant professor with the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Law, initially started researching the issue of human trafficking in Cambodia a decade ago, he didn’t expect to see the same phenomenon not only manifesting itself, but becoming widespread in this country.
Now in Canada
Perrin’s documentation of what he says are cases of human trafficking in virtually all of Canada’s major cities — including Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax and smaller localities — leads to the conclusion that human trafficking is now established in this country. In most cases, he found, traffickers were exploiting Canada’s immigration and refugee programs.
In Quebec, according to Perrin, police have identified the involvement of street gangs trafficking young girls who are lured to the Greater Toronto Area, where their sexual services are made available through strip clubs or hotels and motels advertised through the Craigslist online website. Perrin is currently demanding that Craigslist shut down its erotic services in Canada, as it has already done in the U.S.
In second place
Not unlike slavery, which flourished throughout the western world less than two centuries ago, human trafficking is the illegal trade in persons, usually for the exploitation of prostitution, or for the purposes of obtaining human labor without paying the cost. While drug trafficking remains in first place as the fastest growing criminal activity in the world today, according to the U.S. government’s National Human Trafficking Resource Center, human trafficking is tied with the illegal arms trade as the second most widespread global crime.
The Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada estimates the gross revenue of a prostitute forced to work for a trafficker at $280,000 annually. With this kind of money available, the involvement of organized crime in human trafficking may not seem surprising. However, the potential extent of the problem becomes even more alarming when one realizes that legitimate businesses in this country may also be involved. Perrin claims that some escort agencies — many of which advertise in the back pages of alternative newspapers and even in mainstream publications — are serving as “fronts” for human trafficking operations.
‘It is huge money’
“Escort agencies have been used to sell victims of sex trafficking,” he said, while cautioning that not all agencies are involved. “We know that traffickers are involved in this business, and the reason that traffickers are involved is because of the money. It is huge money … Sex trafficking victims have also been sold in massage parlors, in strip clubs, on-line. Essentially at any outlet for the commercial sex trade in Canada that you could think of we have found victims of human trafficking.”
Even though prostitution is no doubt the most lucrative form of human trafficking, Perrin’s research found an equal number of cases involving forced labor in Canada. In early October, several members of a family in Hamilton, Ont. were arraigned on charges of fraud, theft and human trafficking after an alleged human trafficking victim complained to the RCMP that he was just one of a group of people being exploited. Sixteen people, all of whom were destitute in Hungary, were allegedly lured by the family from their country to Canada with promises of a better life.
Threats and intimidation
Once in Canada, the victims obtained social assistance. The accused are charged with appropriating it for themselves. The victims typically lived in their hosts’ basements, were fed poorly, and worked daily for long hours at construction sites without pay. Without money, according to the alleged scenario, they were unable to return to their home country, were kept under constant close watch and were subjected to threats and intimidation.
“From all my research, I have concluded that there are hundreds, possibly thousands of victims of human trafficking exploited in Canada every year,” said Perrin. “Most concerning to me is that our country has failed to address this hidden national tragedy. We do not have a national action plan, and only some provinces have put in systems to help victims.”
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