In 2005, Canada implemented its first-ever domestic human trafficking legislation under sections 279.01 through 279.04 of the Criminal Code of Canada. The first conviction under this legislation came about three years after its implementation, with a total of only five convictions having been obtained as of January of 2011. This article examines the legislation and the legislative definition of human trafficking in Canada, arguing that the vagueness of this legislation, the breadth of the legislative definition, and its similarity to other provisions within the Criminal Code make it difficult to distinguish human trafficking from other criminal offences, particularly procurement, or in lay language—pimping, which is governed under section 212 of the Code. Analyzing cases identified as human trafficking by Canadian police and legal authorities, this article demonstrates the problematic effects of Canada’s human trafficking legislation. The article points out the challenges arising from identifying non-trafficking cases as human trafficking, including undermining the severity of human trafficking and impeding efforts to combat it.

This article explores the experiences, challenges and findings of two empirical research studies examining Canada’s legal efforts to combat human trafficking. The authors outline the methodologies of their respective studies and reflect on some of the difficulties they faced in obtaining empirical data on human trafficking court cases and legal proceedings. Ultimately, the authors found that Canadian trafficking case law developments are in their early stages with very few convictions, despite a growing number of police-reported charges. The authors assert it is difficult to assess the efficacy and effects of Canadian anti-trafficking laws and policies due to the institutional and political limitations to collecting legal data in this highly politicised subject area. They conclude with five recommendations to increase the transparency of Canada’s public claims about its anti-trafficking enforcement efforts and call for more empirically-based law reform.

In Responding to Human Trafficking: Dispossession, Colonial Violence, and Resistance among Indigenous and Racialized Women, Julie Kaye offers a critical examination of how Canadian state and non-state actors understand human trafficking and implement anti-trafficking measures. Kaye examines Canada’s anti-trafficking policies and the efforts of non-government organisations (NGOs) through one-on-one interviews and focus group discussions. She demonstrates the way in which this politically charged issue has worked to conceal Canada’s violent colonial history and naturalise the inequalities and structural and material conditions in which trafficking and various forms of violence occur. Kaye argues that trafficking discourses position the colonial state as the saviour and therefore work to reinforce its power.

<p>In recent years, some Canadian provinces have followed the federal government’s intensification of anti-trafficking measures. Ontario is perhaps the most significant in this respect, especially with its introduction of the 2017 <em>Anti-Human Trafficking Act</em>. We set out to investigate debates in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario regarding the then proposed law. Our aim was to understand how politicians and others who presented at the debates mobilized knowledge, and to offer opportunities of resistance to discursive injustice for future policymaking. We engaged in a critical discourse analysis approach to examine how different types of knowledge were applied and reproduced, with a particular focus on explicit and implicit knowledge statements. Through analysis of the debate transcripts, we found a near unified front against a perceived humanitarian crisis that required an urgent punitive and securitized response, based largely in individualistic, moralistic, and colonial notions of “risk” and vulnerability. Our findings uncovered a reliance on strong beliefs and willful silences to narrate a trafficking story that displaced social conditions onto a purportedly immoral sex trade. This conceptualization was advanced through repeated invalidation of sexual labor, with invocations of childhood innocence, thereby hindering the promotion of just and inclusive societies.</p> <p> </p>

The emergence of social media and digital technologies has resulted in new protectionist laws, policies, and mandates aimed at regulating the sexual behaviour of women and girls in online spaces. These neoliberal responsiblization strategies are aimed at shaping good, young digital citizens and have become further amplified through increased concerns about domestic human trafficking and victim vulnerability. This protectionism, however, is not always reflected in courtroom proceedings, revealing a tension between the protection and responsiblization of victims of trafficking in Canada. Using R v Oliver-Machado (2013) as a case study, we examine the ways in which the defence counsel’s reliance on commonplace defence tactics used in sexual assault cases responsibilize the young complainants in an attempt to discredit their victimhood and reconstruct them as online sexual risk takers.