Vancouver mayor Sam Sullivan is getting heat from activists against human trafficking after a remark last week that he doesn't object to the idea of a legalized "co-op" brothel in the city.
The Committee Against Human Trafficking called on anti-human trafficking activists across the country to swamp Sullivan's office on Tuesday of this week with letters, faxes, emails, packages and phone calls.
The campaign aimed to show the link between the normalization of prostitution and increased human trafficking, and called on Sullivan to oppose legalizing brothels.
The proposal for the brothel came from a group of Vancouver prostitutes who believe legalized brothels would help protect sex-trade workers when visitors flock to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics in 2010.
Big sporting events such as the Olympics and the World Cup soccer tournament are known to generate an increase in prostitution, which in turn leads to a rise in human trafficking.
A recent report by the Calgary-based The Future Group, an anti-human trafficking NGO, said that during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, authorities implemented a wide range of actions to combat human trafficking during the event, with relative success.
The result was that, while there was an increase in prostitution, authorities did not detect a rise in human trafficking.
However, when Greece hosted the Olympics in 2004, the measures adopted were not as extensive as those in Germany, and a 95 percent increase in human trafficking was recorded for that year.
Human trafficking—the biggest money spinner for organized crime after drugs and firearms—has been steadily increasing in Canada and around the world.
Sabrina Sullivan, managing director of The Future Group, says the number of people being trafficked to or through Canada each year could be as high as 16,000.
In the international human trafficking trade, Canada serves as a destination country and a transit country. It is a source country as well, with Aboriginal women, mainly from Winnipeg or rural areas, being the most likely victims.
"Women from reserves are even being taken away and trafficked, either within the country or across borders," says Sullivan.
Globally and nationally, the majority of those trafficked are women and children, including boys, and many are forced into the sex trade. It is estimated that up to four million are sold world-wide into prostitution, slavery or marriage.
Vancouver was singled out in the U.S. State Department's 2007 Trafficking in Persons Report as being a destination city for trafficked persons from Asia. The report also stated that a "significant number" of victims, particularly South Korean females, transit Canada before being trafficked into the United States.
According to the Future Group, undercover police investigations have revealed the use of student or visitor visas to spirit young women from Asia into the sex trade in Vancouver, and then on to other cities, including Calgary.
In 2005, the federal government made human trafficking a criminal offence. Legislation was introduced to prevent work visas from being used to traffic women, and measures were adopted to provide victims with temporary residence and medical care, much of it thanks to the efforts of Conservative MP Joy Smith.
However, much more needs to be done to combat this modern form of slavery says Joy Smith, a longstanding anti-human trafficking activist.
Smith has introduced two motions in the House on human trafficking—the first of which passed unanimously—as well as a private members bill. The latter is partially focused on penalizing pedophelia which is a driver of human trafficking, says Smith.
"How the pedophiles work is they tell each other where to go to find young girls and boys, they're like a little club that support each other. I want those guys put out of work." Smith's efforts to address human trafficking in Parliament resulted in a comprehensive report which brought about a greater awareness of the issue at a national level. She's currently working on legislation to prevent Canadian sex offenders from preying on children in child sex tourist "hotspots" abroad. "We have to have laws in place and we have to talk about human trafficking so that people recognize it is a crime, not a norm," says Smith. "These perpetrators must be heavily penalized for what they do."
As for the 2010 Olympics, The Future Group report made a number of recommendations designed to lessen the possibility of a spike in human trafficking during the event.
Sullivan says B.C. Senator Mobina Jaffer supports the recommendations and is "very interested and trying to make sure that Vancouver will push the issue to have the appropriate measures in place."
Jaffer said in a news release recently that concerns that the Games will be a "flashpoint for human trafficking" are being taken seriously by the federal government.
"We can't have something like the Olympics—which is supposed to be revered as the leading sporting event—be shrouded in criminal activity," says Sullivan.
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