http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=2469a66d-3ca1-4780-8a0d-ff311fac071e
China tops human trafficking offenders' list in Canada
Suzanne Fournier , Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, October 28, 2008
VANCOUVER - China, Romania, the Philippines and Moldova are the top four worst offenders in international human trafficking to Canada, according to the first national statistics on the extent of the crime in Canada.
And the figure of 31 foreign nationals - four of them minor children - who came to the attention of Canadian immigration officials between May 2006 and May 2008 represents just a small fraction of the total victims.
"This is the tip of the trafficking iceberg," said University of B.C. law Prof. Benjamin Perrin, who served as senior policy adviser to the minister of citizenship and immigration and is a leading expert on human trafficking.
China contributed the most victims to Canada with a total of 11 confirmed trafficking cases, while four came from Romania, three from the Philippines and three from Moldova, an Eastern Bloc country known for organized crime.
In accordance with U.S. research into trafficking, most of the 31 cases recognized in Canada, although not formally identified by gender, are women and children trafficked into the sex trade or forced labour, noted Perrin.
Perrin got the statistics under the Access to Information Act and will present his findings at a national conference on human trafficking that begins Wednesday in Vancouver, hosted by the B.C. Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons.
Perrin notes that another alarming dimension of the problem is that while the RCMP identified a much greater number of potential human trafficking victims, Canada Immigration officials acknowledged far fewer cases.
"One case among those from China was a minor under 18, a young boy, whom the RCMP identified as a trafficking case, yet he was refused (permission to stay in Canada) by Canada Immigration, and the whereabouts of that child is now unknown to us," said Perrin.
"It's very troubling."