CANADA: Tier 1 
Canada is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Canadian girls, boys, and women are exploited in sex trafficking across the country; women and girls from Aboriginal communities and girls in the child welfare system are especially vulnerable. Foreign women, primarily from Asia and Eastern Europe, are subjected to sex trafficking in Canada. Law enforcement officials report some local street gangs and transnational criminal organizations are involved in sex trafficking. Labor trafficking victims include foreign workers from Eastern Europe,Asia, Latin America, and Africa who enter Canada legally, but are subsequently subjected to forced labor in a variety of sectors, including agriculture, construction, food processing plants, restaurants, the hospitality sector, or as domestic servants, including in diplomatic households. Canada is a source country for tourists who travel abroad to engage in sex acts with children. Canadian trafficking victims have been exploited in the United States.
The Government of Canada fully complies with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. Canadian authorities maintained law enforcement and prosecution efforts against sex traffickers and increased protections for domestic workers employed in diplomatic households. Awareness and resources against sex trafficking were considerably greater than those against labor trafficking. Government funding for specialized services to trafficking victims was insufficient to meet victims’ needs. Interagency coordination was uneven across the provinces and territories, as was national data collection on anti-trafficking efforts.

RECOMMENDATIONS  FOR CANADA:
Significantly increase specialized care and reintegration services available to trafficking victims, in partnership with civil society and through dedicated funding from federal and provincial governments;

provide funding for specialized care for child victims, ensuring their access to appropriate shelter; continue to intensify efforts to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses and convict and issue dissuasive sentences for traffickers using anti-trafficking laws; increase use of proactive law enforcement techniques to investigate human trafficking, particularly forced labor; strengthen training for officials working in law enforcement, immigration, the justice sector, health care, and social work on the identification and provision of assistance to trafficking victims, as well as the subtle forms of coercion employed by traffickers; improve coordination between law enforcement officials and service providers, possibly through specialized case managers or attorneys, to ensure victim needs are met; continue increased communication between federal, provincial, and territorial actors and strengthen provincial interagency efforts; vigorously investigate and prosecute Canadian child sex tourists; and improve trafficking data collection, including to document service provision to victims.

PROSECUTION
The government maintained efforts to hold traffickers criminally accountable, though most efforts focused on sex trafficking. Criminal code Section 279.01 prohibits all forms of human trafficking, prescribing penalties of up to 14 years’ imprisonment, or life imprisonment in the case of certain aggravating factors, such as kidnapping or sexual assault. There is a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for trafficking of children under the age of 18 years. Such penalties are sufficiently stringent and commensurate with those for other serious crimes. Section 118 of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act prohibits transnational human trafficking, prescribing a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and fines. Legislation enacted in December 2014 establishes mandatory minimum penalties of four or five years’ imprisonment for offenses under Section 279.01 and sets minimum penalties and increases maximum penalties for benefiting from child trafficking or withholding or destroying documents to facilitate  child trafficking.
In 2014, police charged 121 individuals in 77 trafficking cases under trafficking statutes; only four of the 77 cases involved labor trafficking. Authorities brought criminal charges against a foreign diplomat and her spouse allegedly engaged in domestic servitude in Canada; the accused traffickers departed Canada before they were charged with trafficking.The government convicted 22 sex traffickers and no labor traffickers in 2014. Of these 22 convictions, eight were achieved under trafficking-specific laws, compared with 25 convictions of which 10 were under trafficking statutes in 2013. Sentences ranged from fines or community service and probation to 6.5 years’ imprisonment; some of these sentences were suspended and credit was given for pre-trial custody. Some police, judges, and prosecutors demonstrated a limited understanding of human trafficking, leading them to categorize trafficking cases as other crimes, bring civil instead of criminal charges, or acquit traffickers. Police and prosecutors used prostitution-related statutes for sex trafficking cases, sometimes due to a perception that proving exploitation to judges is exceedingly difficult. Federal and provincial authorities conducted training sessions for some officials and maintained online training courses.The federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) included trafficking in the national academy training for all new recruits; trained 55 police officers in an in-depth human trafficking investigator’s course; and maintained a national anti-trafficking enforcement unit in Quebec. A police sergeant who led a pilot anti-trafficking investigative

unit in Hamilton, Ontario pled guilty to charges related to sexual misconduct involving witnesses in human trafficking cases. As he resigned from the police force prior to sentencing, the prosecution under the Police Services Act was halted. Authorities did not report any other investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government officials complicit in human trafficking. Coordination between the federal, provincial, and territorial governments on anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts continued to be uneven.