For migrant women in the sex industry, Canada’s anti-human-trafficking strategies are a pipeline to harm
The Canadian federal government’s five-year strategy to combat human trafficking expires this year, and Ontario’s strategy will expire in 2025. Both the federal Liberals and Ontario Conservatives claim that their governments have made progress in addressing human trafficking. But we are advocates who have worked with migrants in the sex industry for two decades, and the stories they continue to tell us are not of being rescued from human traffickers by the police. Instead, they recount the terror of being targeted by anti-trafficking “rescue raids” – being surveilled, interrogated and strip-searched; having their wages, phones and passports seized by the police; and being placed in jail cells or immigration detention centres before being deported.
