- Mar 6, 2022
- 11 min read

TRAFFICKING

There have been a bunch of human trafficking cases in the news here in Canada in recent weeks and months. As ever, reading all these articles provided little information or insight, so I had to go looking elsewhere to answer my many questions. As it turns out human trafficking is both a lot more prevalent and, like most things, far more complicated than I understood.

How common is human trafficking here in Canada? Statistics Canada data shows that a decade ago human trafficking cases hovered around the 30-50 range. To my surprise there has been a huge jump in cases recently, with roughly 300-350 incidents of human trafficking reported to police annually over the last few years. And in 2019 the number jumped up again, to 500 cases.

(Of course, it’s hard to tell if this trend is unsettling, representing a dramatic increase in trafficking, or a positive consequence of far better or just more aggressive detection and reporting. Trying to sort that out I found recent information campaigns implemented in hot-spots in Ontario and Nova Scotia in recent years, so public awareness is very likely higher than ever and this may have resulted in greater public reporting. Still, I’m not sure if we’re closer to eliminating human trafficking in this country or if this scourge is growing into a full-blown catastrophe.)

Regardless, yes, it’s true that the vilest stereotypes of trafficking happen and are pretty obvious. People are recruited, transported, held, and concealed for what is effectively modern-day slavery. Globally, folks are exploited for labour, forced marriage, sex, organ harvesting, to become child soldiers, and more. Barf! But most of what we hear about are these extreme examples and often an oversimplified and dramaticized version of things. What’s complicated and less obvious are all the far more common, banal, and pernicious ways human trafficking unfolds. Less intuitive still, for me at least, are the typical experiences and the responses of victims to their own exploitation.

To start, the one doing the trafficking is rarely a strange fellow skulking in the shadows, twirling his mustache, preparing to pounce on you; though, surely, that happens too. Instead, trafficking more often involves the people closest to you. Perhaps that’s not so surprising given that those are the same folks most likely to do you harm of every other sort. From children being taken as soldiers in war to adults working jobs on vegetable farms, there are countless ways a parent, sibling, friend, co-worker, fellow student, or boss can more gently persuade or manipulate you into some form of forced labour. This coercion is often so passive that, to my surprise, only a minority of people rescued from trafficking report experiencing physical abuse. It’s also pretty typical for victims to be unaware they were ever trafficked at all.

Further still, you’re more likely to voluntarily enter into some kind of human trafficking situation, some kind of ‘coerced labour,’ convinced that doing so will improve your own lot. Though I understand how that happens, this also makes the whole concept muddy: when there’s a merger of ‘voluntary’ and ‘coercion’ in such a way. And, of course, in this way, both the trafficked and trafficker may be convinced this exploitation is not that at all but entirely reasonable, essential to some cause or ultimately of substantial benefit to themselves, and therefore positive or merely benign. Much of this then seems to me little different from sharecropping and other forms of peonage or indentured labour outlawed in most places over the centuries. And, except for the extraordinarily blurry line which is ‘coercion,’ it can be challenging to see the difference between a trafficking situation and many forms of employment on offer on your favourite job website. (More on that in a moment.)

So, what does some of this most pervasive trafficking actually look like on the ground? Well, for instance, your mom might take on a job someplace to pay off a loan, say. In doing so, her employer may provide and expect to be reimbursed for transportation, housing, meals, training, uniform, equipment, and/or essential materials. She may only later learn that she’s unable to cover these costs with her earnings. Now she’s taken on more debt and is thoroughly stuck. As a way out, she may ask you to help her by getting involved yourself, maybe to quit school – you know, just for the semester – and come work with her. And then, what are you going to do? Not help out mom?

Alternatively, you may come across an ad about a cool job or education opportunity that sounds like it will help you better your situation. These could arrive in the form of a housekeeping gig in some exotic locale or fruit-picking just across the border; or it could be computer training or language study in the next town over. And aren’t your brother and those folks at church always telling you that you need to help yourself? Haven’t they been reciting for years things like “Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity” and “The biggest risk is not taking any risk.” Right? And you may call or apply online and be offered this fantastic opportunity; but, only once fully committed, the situation reveals itself as something other than advertised.

And then the freedom with which you’re able to walk away from this work or the debt you may accrue there tells us how coerced you are and whether or not this falls into a trafficking situation. Obviously, a locked door or a man with a gun or death threats to your family make the circumstances crystal clear. However, of course, coercion comes in many forms. Unsurprisingly, if you drop human psychology into the mix the whole thing becomes still more wicked. Even someone in a terrible situation will convince themselves they meant to put themselves there, they didn’t make a tragic error and weren’t so manipulated, that they’re better off or the situation will pan-out in the end. Of course. In this way, even on the outside once ‘rescued’ from human trafficking, victims may reflect on the situation and see a trafficker as a caretaker, as someone better for them in a whole variety of ways than any of their friends or family. And, depending on the situation, that may not be entirely fictional.

And then, as I learned, it’s common for folks being exploited to not just be unaware that they were the victim of human trafficking but they may not wish to leave. People will also seek to get back into it or even recruit others on their own volition once ‘freed.’ With this nuance context it becomes hard for me to make sense of all this. Here the abuse and coercion becomes deeply subjective. Only, the reference is not the subjective experience of the individual, very likely a consenting adult, but a distant third party looking in on the situation – one who may be living a very different life, with a very different set of beliefs and values, and with wildly different expectations.

I mean, I’ve spent time in several places where the strongest signifier of social status is whether or not your housing has a dirt floor, a concrete floor, or a tiled floor; elsewhere, whether you sleep on a grass-filled futon on the ground, on a braided rope bed, or in a wooden bed with a spring mattress. These are how the classes break down and where the disposable income and consumption are most conspicuous. So then, regardless of other circumstances or one’s level of agency, who wouldn’t be up for a marginal decline in one’s freedom, so called, if it means instantaneously leaping entire social tiers and suddenly having a new quality-of-life baseline that feels whole orders of magnitude above what your friends and family even aspire to? Wouldn’t this land on you like winning the lottery? And who, then, wouldn’t volunteer for that?

Thinking about all of this, I’m reminded that I had a friend who wanted to leave where he was, among family and friends in his native land – a place considered one of the most impoverished on the planet in terms of liberty, civic infrastructure, and material wealth – to take a housekeeping job in Singapore. Acknowledging all the potential benefits, I tried to spell out all the ways I could see this going wrong. (My specialty.) He, a Catholic, was keen to dispel all my concerns for his well-being and the many horror stories I was gleefully unloading on him. (“Look, nannies and housekeepers are throwing themselves out of windows in Singapore and Hong Kong! How horrific would your boss have to be? How terribly stuck would you have to feel? How unable to get help, to call a friend or neighbour or notify your embassy and for how long before you would hurl yourself from a 24th storey window!?”) He reiterated at every turn that all of that was moot: his God, he assured me, was taking care of business and he’d also get to hang with his friends and family for all of eternity in the afterlife, so how did his potential and temporary torture or enslavement really matter when there was the potential for a windfall or, worst-case, the embrace of angels?

So, needless to say, I think it’s messy.

Beyond all of the above, there are many legal forms of employment here in Canada today that look to me to be identical to what is elsewhere labelled exploitation. Yes, none of these are slavery or taking child soldiers or stealing people’s kidneys, but those are not the types of human trafficking typically taking place in Canada. And, if only to me, having done these jobs, it feels meaningless/ridiculous to differentiate between one form of abuse and another.

For example, I tree-planted with a teacher who was working in the clear-cuts of BC during her ‘Summer Break.’ She was physically unable to plant enough trees over the entire season for her earnings to exceed the cost of gear, accommodation, food, and transportation to and from this province. In fact, by the end of the Summer, she owed the company money, despite having laboured for them nearly every day for months. And all of this is legal. And pretending this is meaningfully different from indentured labour seems pretty wacky. The forestry and reforestation industries have successfully lobbied government to exempt themselves from numerous hard-fought, long-standing, and universal labour laws. You will be asked to work crazy hours, endless and unpredictable shifts, do so not for an hourly or daily sum but for pennies per tree, and much more. So, there are no eight-hour days, minimum wages, or safe working conditions... Is that where you think you live? Is that where you want to live? And yet we tell ourselves that all is well because workers take the job 'voluntarily' and are 'free' to leave.

But the deep exploitation comes from reforestation being required by law and all while logging companies and their reforestation companions (often the same folks) are turning millions in profits on what is often publicly owned land. That calculus is beyond wild. As far as I’m concerned, all of this sits firmly on a continuum of exploitation and not nearly far enough away from human trafficking or indentured servitude. Yes, labourers are technically “allowed to leave” any time they like; but with what can be huge sunken costs and within the context of these labourers being almost exclusively young people with combinations of tuition, rent, and personal debt to cover, it all feels extra gross. How is this not identical to all the other voluntary indenturements and those subtle, non-physical coercions? I’d love to hear how this is nothing like what generations fought to eliminate. It’s worse still when companies have rigged the game such that they always get paid, no matter what, even if that means forcing an “under-performing” third-grade teacher from, say, Guelph (and, as such, Ontario taxpayers) to make up for any "losses" (or just less than maximal profits). Make no mistake, this is our provincial equivalent of the Walmart employee on food stamps. However, this is just one anecdote and, though the foundation of this province, just one industry.

Other such employment scenarios undergirding our economy and many others include the infamous and seemingly inextinguishable unpaid and underpaid internships. It’s not just that these jobs are posted for the world to see while spelling out employment conditions illegal in this country. That’s bad enough. But then, of course, these jobs are always performed by people with skills and who occupy critical gaps within a business that the employer would otherwise need to fill with paid labour. These “jobs” are so common to find during any job search that I have an email template I send out citing and linking to provincial law governing internships, and warning companies that what they’re advertising is illegal.

And, along with this, could the world even turn without the all-pervasive, unpaid, “for exposure” creative work that seemingly every industry (and, famously, even billionaire social activists like Oprah) survives on? I don’t think so. Of course, those being exploited here are typically the same 18-24 cohort that are taking internships and who are also the most common victims of human trafficking. We really need to quit it with this bullshit.

But then we also know that in every city there are employers taking unfair, often illegal, advantage of new immigrants or folks seeking permanent residency. Given their status, they may be suspicious of the legal system, not know local employment laws, or, for any number of other reasons, be strongly disinclined to raise a fuss even if they’re certain what is happening is wrong. I’ve seen this just about everywhere I’ve lived. I’ve even pleaded with people to take their case, or to allow me to take their case, to an immigration lawyer after spelling out all the ways that what was happening was against the law. The employee was convinced that it was not to their advantage and adamant that we not take any action. So, there are laws against this stuff, the individual was technically “free to leave”, and there was no overt coercion, and yet this clear exploitation doesn’t merely persist but is rampant.

I think it’s fair to say there’s just a sick business and work culture out there. We tell people, particularly young people, that, for instance, they’re expected to invest everything they have in the success and well-being of their employer. But we don’t also demand that investment be reciprocated by an employer. Worse than that, we make this whole operation sound sexy: we might frame this as “hustle” or “ambition” and as a society determine your lack of willingness to ruin your body, take on huge debt, or waste all your precious time as an exceptionally vulgar form of anti-social personal failure.

And that folds nicely into the many sentiments enthusiastically foisted upon you from a young age telling you that if you work hard you will be rewarded and that the harder you work and the more you sacrifice the greater the rewards are likely to be. That, my friend, I am here to tell you, is one of the largest steaming piles of bullshit, among so very many very large and steaming piles, you are likely to encounter.

The trouble is, and why you get sucked in, is that it’s plainly true that you will likely have to work very hard and sacrifice a great deal to get anywhere at all. Indeed. But without the experience of having been exploited yourself (or people looking out for you who understand all of the above, which doesn’t really exist for almost anyone) you are unlikely to see exploitation for what it is. And there are so many flavours for you to try, with new ones arriving daily. Most troublingly, you are very likely to tell yourself that your voluntary self-immiseration or that which you fabricate for others is actually of benefit to everyone involved.

I don’t know. Good luck out there.

+ + +

RESOURCES

United Nations Human Trafficking Portal

https://sherloc.unodc.org/cld/v3/htms/

Statistics Canada - Human Trafficking

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-005-x/2021001/article/00001-eng.htm

"Human Trafficking" - You're Wrong About Podcast

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/human-trafficking/id1380008439?i=1000465289965

NEWS

"Edmonton couple faces human trafficking charges after teen comes forward" - Bourne

https://globalnews.ca/news/8652193/edmonton-couple-human-trafficking-charges-teenager/