Organized Crime and Human Trafficking in Canada: Tracing Perceptions and Discourses
Executive Summary
In the 1990s the trafficking and smuggling of persons emerged as a subject of debate in Canada and internationally. In particular the locus of concern, embodied in the image of the ‘sex slave’, was women trafficked by crime syndicates to work in the commercial sex trade. The lack of definitional consensus, theoretical frameworks or solid empirical research in support of underlying assumptions notwithstanding, the United Nations and countries around the world including Canada adopted a particular discourse that informed policies to address the issue. In this report the findings from a three part study that offers a preliminary analysis into the intersection and interaction between official legislatively-enshrined discourses, judicial rulings, and the understanding and knowledge of criminal justice professionals and sex trade worker advocates, are presented.
The first section briefly sketches the official discourse as reflected in United Nations and Canadian state documents. Here the trafficking and smuggling of humans is situated within the broader context of social and economic inequity, however strategies to address the problems are principally framed in terms of a criminal justice tactics - greater criminalization and crossnational collaboration by police and other authorities. By contrast, the counter-discourse embodied in the documents produced by national and international rights organizations speak to the need to address the root causes of trafficking and smuggling and the implementation of strategies to meet the needs of victims.
