Report urges task force on human trafficking

Action urged to protect girls from ‘very fast-growing crime’ throughout Ontario

Ontario needs a police task force to fight human trafficking of girls as young as 13 with the same energy that guns and gangs were targeted after the Jane Creba shooting on Boxing Day 10 years ago.

That’s one of 67 recommendations from an all-party committee of MPPs who spent a year investigating sexual violence and harassment across the province.

“They really are the girls next door,” Progressive Conservative MPP Laurie Scott said Thursday, noting the vast majority forced into the sex trade by human traffickers, often drug dealers who get them hooked, are local.

“What will it take for our province to take this issue seriously? Does this need to happen to a girl from Rosedale or the Bridle Path?” Scott (Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock) said, calling human trafficking an “underground and very fast-growing crime.”

The minister shepherding a new sexual violence and harassment law through the legislature said the recommendations will be studied and could be used to strengthen the bill.

“I’m open to all good ideas on this,” Tracy MacCharles, minister of children and youth services, told reporters, brushing off criticism that the legislation was introduced before the committee’s report.

“The premier and I didn’t want to wait. It was important we kept moving.”

That bill, part of a $41-million action plan that includes edgy TV ads against sexual harassment and violence, would force employers to take complaints more seriously and clear obstacles for victims taking legal action.

The committee also called for measures to smooth the passage of sexual violence and harassment cases through the court system, with better sensitivity training for police and court workers, including judges, along with better supports for survivors and expanded public education.

MPPs did not put a price tag on their recommendations, which will require increased financial support, said committee chair Daiene Vernile, a Liberal who represents Kitchener Centre.

“Now it is up to the government to decide,” she said, insisting that only “greater sensitivity” will encourage more victims of sexual violence and harassment to come forward without fear of the legal process and feeling further shamed.

The 47-page report found that one in three women experience sexual assault in their lifetimes but few contact police.

“The journey these people face is terrible,” said Liberal MPP Eleanor McMahon (Burlington). “We need to change that.”

The committee heard from 147 witnesses, including First Nations women who attended residential schools, as it travelled from Toronto to Sudbury, Thunder Bay, Sioux Lookout, Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo, Kingston and Ottawa over three months last spring.

“It was gut-wrenching, some of the stories,” New Democrat MPP Peggy Sattler (London West) said. “We watched survivors struggling to hold back tears.”