A Tragedy Confined to Distant Lands

Sex Trafficking

“A tragedy confined to distant lands”

Not so much. This seems to be the typical Canadian mindset regarding many things such as sex trafficking, racial violence and major illegal activity. Nothing like that happens here, it’s Canada, the most accepting and tolerant multicultural nation there is. But it does. The mindset that it doesn’t occur means that people aren’t looking for it, which means perpetrators have a safe haven.

This oversight of the exploitation of women is a perception that is convenient for the general population. If it isn’t seen as a problem, it isn’t a problem. In fact, it wasn’t even a recognized problem until 2005, when Canada made human trafficking a criminal offence. The current definition of Canadian “justice” for traffickers is a joke. Between April 2007 and April 2009, about 30 people were charged with human trafficking in Canada. Five were convicted. Compare that to Belgium, where there have been 1200 reported trafficking cases between 2007 and 2010 and more than 200 convictions. It has five thousand police officers specifically trained to handle trafficking. What does Canada have? A law and five people who went to jail for less than five years. It’s a start, I suppose.

And now, the other side of the argument. Canada already has laws regarding forcible confinement, prostitution and extortion. What point is there in creating more laws that serve the same purpose? Perhaps exploitation is overlooked, perhaps not. From the brief summary of Invisible Chains, the author focuses on a lack of legislation rather than actual evidence of a trafficking epidemic. While the efforts of lawmakers may be inadequate, this does not necessarily constitute a problem.

Let’s say there’s a restaurant with two mouse traps in the basement. Saying that the lack of dead mice is the sole result of too few traps is illogical. You could spend the money and blanket the entire floor with traps, but if there are no mice, it won’t matter. The argument for more traps needs to be made based on evidence of mice. Similarly, the argument that human trafficking is an unseen problem because not many people have been caught doesn’t stand up. There must be evidence that it is occurring, instead of evidence that it isn’t being reported.

Now what does this mean for subcultures? To me, trafficking in Canada is akin to the few members of a subculture that give the other members a bad reputation. Those individuals are largely trivialized and ignored in the same way trafficking is in Canada. No-one wants to be in the same category as particular individuals, which leads to those individuals being shunned from the spotlight.