|
Editorial/Opinion - Canada Offers Ray of Hope
Calgary Sun
May 16, 2006, Page 15 (Editorial/Opinion)
By Shuvaloy
Majumdar
The UN estimates 700,000 people, mostly women and children, are trafficked through porous borders around the
world each year.
These victims
from Asia, the Middle
East, Africa and Latin America are shackled and shuttled through the modern-day sex-slave trade,
valued globally at billions of dollars, distilled down to haunting stories of torture, rape and systemic abuse in every individual
case.
In Canada, international organized crime has been operating with impunity,
profiting from a system unable -- even unwilling -- to do anything to rescue these victims. The RCMP report the tip of the
iceberg for the trade in Canada at 800 people being smuggled into the country, while a further 2,200 are trafficked through
Canada into the U.S.
Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Monte Solberg has done more in two months to
curb the human-trafficking trade than the former government was able to do in two years. Solberg has kept his promise to the
victims of human trafficking by making Citizenship and Immigration Canada more responsive to their needs.
Two months
ago, The Future Group released a report entitled Falling Short of the Mark, which singled out Canada for failing to meet its international obligations. Canada received a failing grade
for deporting victims instead of prosecuting criminals; leaving the brutally abused to fend for themselves instead of providing
temporary residence where they could recover from their
ordeals, receive basic medical services and have the opportunity
to participate in criminal prosecutions against their keepers.
The new measures announced by Solberg last Thursday, effective immediately, will go a long way to begin addressing
Canada's treatment of victims of
human trafficking, as well as provide an additional tool for law enforcement to offer assistance and collect evidence. Research
shows countries which protect victims of human trafficking are more successful in prosecuting
traffickers, who are often
involved in all kinds of organized crime -- drugs, weapons, black-market goods and even organ harvesting.
Human beings
are trafficked as faceless products with a special value: They are resalable, unlike drugs or bullets that are destroyed upon
first use. Canada's poor record had likely put its standing in the annual U.S. State
Department Trafficking in Persons report in jeopardy, set to be released in June this year. Solberg's new measures help put
Canada back on track with Australia, the EU and the U.S.
The worldwide abolitionist movement against sex slavery has
had a major victory, and Canadian leadership is once again proving to be decisive, bold and clear.
Solberg's swift
action indicates this government, this prime minister, is signalling to the world a new era of global leadership. It has been
said dictators, traffickers and terrorists converge in international black markets and deal in a common currency of blood.
Through
the promotion of democracy and the defence of freedom in Afghanistan, choking off the Tamil Tigers and ending aid to Hamas,
and now by standing with trafficking victims against organized crime – these elements conspiring against freedom and
democracy have been put on notice.
And the victims left in their wake have a noble ally and friend. Joy Smith, MP for
Kildonan-St. Paul, couldn't have said it better in her report to the House of Commons last Thursday, "the freedom of these
victims is our cause." Canadians ought to be proud.
|
