U.S. Dep't of State, 2024 Trafficking in Persons Report: Canada

CANADA (Tier 1) The Government of Canada fully meets the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking. The government continued to demonstrate serious and sustained efforts during the reporting period; therefore Canada remained on Tier 1. These efforts included identifying more trafficking victims, including victims of forced labor; enacting legislation to require forced labor reporting in Canadian supply chains; and expanding prevention measures tailored for at-risk and underserved populations in Canada. Although the government meets the minimum standards, it did not maintain comprehensive data on anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts and services provided to victims with government funding nationwide.

The government’s efforts to provide protections to all victims – particularly forced labor victims – and investigate and prosecute forced labor crimes, remained inadequate. The range, quality, and timely delivery of trafficking-specific services varied nationwide, and service providers reported a shortage of victim services, including emergency shelters and longer-term housing. The government had not yet created a survivor-led advisory committee, as recommended by its National Strategy. PRIORITIZED RECOMMENDATIONS: Vigorously investigate and prosecute trafficking crimes, including forced labor, and extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse, and seek adequate penalties for convicted traffickers, which should involve significant prison terms. * Increase trauma-informed specialized services and provide shelter to all victims – including male victims, foreign national victims, and members of marginalized communities throughout the country – in partnership with civil society. * Increase training for criminal justice officials emphasizing the importance of ordering restitution to survivors upon trafficking convictions. * Amend the criminal code and Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to include definitions of trafficking that are consistent with the international law definition. * Enact a policy to ensure victims are not inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked. * Establish a survivor-led advocacy council within the National Strategy governing framework to assist in policy development, and ensure members are duly compensated for their work. * Increase information sharing, cooperation with, and resources for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Indigenous communities and NGOs to address the disproportionate impact of trafficking on those communities. * Improve nationwide trafficking data collection, including timely consolidation of data on investigations, prosecutions, and convictions disaggregated by type of exploitation, numbers of identified victims, and assistance provided. * Strengthen laws and policies, and their enforcement, to prevent the importation of goods made with forced labor.

PROSECUTION

The government maintained law enforcement efforts. Federal criminal code sections 279.01 and 279.011 criminalized sex trafficking and labor trafficking, prescribing penalties of four to 14 years’ imprisonment for trafficking adults and five to 14 years’ imprisonment for trafficking children; these penalties were sufficiently stringent and, with respect to sex trafficking, commensurate with those for other grave crimes, such as rape. Inconsistent with the definition of trafficking under international law, the law did not establish the use of force, fraud, or coercion as an essential element of the crime. Section 279.02 also criminalized receiving financial or any other material benefit from trafficking and prescribed a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment for offenses involving adult victims and a mandatory minimum of two years to a maximum of 14 years’ imprisonment for offenses involving child victims.

Section 279.03 criminalized withholding or destroying documents to facilitate trafficking and prescribed a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment in cases involving adult victims and a mandatory minimum of one year to a maximum of 10 years’ imprisonment in cases involving child victims. Section 286.1 criminalized purchasing commercial sex acts from an individual younger than 18 years of age and prescribed a minimum penalty of six months and a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) established a separate crime of “human smuggling and trafficking” to mean “no person shall knowingly organize the coming into Canada of one or more persons by means of abduction, fraud, deception or use or threat of force or coercion.” Inconsistent with the definition of trafficking under international law, this provision did not include exploitation as an essential element of the crime. Government officials at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels investigated and prosecuted trafficking crimes, including criminal code offences committed in their respective jurisdictions, but the federal government did not report comprehensive law enforcement data at each of these levels.

Government officials prosecuted suspects charged under the IRPA. The federal government did not maintain a national database. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system included provincial and municipal police data, but did not disaggregate between sex and labor trafficking. UCR data was available in July 2023 for the 2022 calendar year, but the government did not report complete investigation data from police forces nationwide for the current reporting period.

Additionally, the Integrated Criminal Court Survey (ICCS) administered by Statistics Canada collected provincial and territorial prosecution data, but did not include superior court data from Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan; municipal court data from Quebec; or data on charges that are considered trafficking offences under the international law definition, such as Section 286.1 of the Criminal Code. The government provided ICSS prosecution data from April 1, 2021 to March 31, 2023, but did not report complete prosecution data from courts nationwide for the current reporting period. In 2023, from UCR data police estimated investigating 512 incidents of trafficking offences. In 2022, police reported investigating 528 incidents that led to charging 212 individuals with human trafficking crimes the same year.

The government provided updated figures for 2021, with police investigating 555 incidents and charging 269 individuals. Federal officials from the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) opened investigations into 133 new cases between April 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024, compared with 72 reported cases from April to November 2022; both agencies reported 25 ongoing cases from the previous reporting period. Between April and December 2023, Employment and Social Development Canada identified 168 suspected forced labor cases within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, an increase from 150 suspected cases referred between April and November 2022. Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada, which conducted administrative investigations of potential human trafficking cases among immigration and refugee cases, conducted 21 new large-scale investigations involving allegations of human trafficking in 2023, noting no change from 2022.

The government reported partial data on prosecutions and convictions for at least the second consecutive year. Between April 1, 2023 and September 30, 2023, authorities estimated prosecuting 129 cases and convicting 24 traffickers; six prosecutions were ongoing from the prior reporting period. For comparison, between April 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022, federal, provincial, and municipal authorities prosecuted at least 184 alleged trafficking cases and reached guilty convictions for at least 37 cases. The government did not report sentencing data for convicted traffickers.

The government reported courts may have acquitted some defendants of trafficking charges but convicted them under other sections of the criminal code. The government reported authorities prosecuted the majority of trafficking cases at the provincial level, although it did not provide complete data on provincial-level prosecutions and convictions. Some provinces and municipalities, including Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver, maintained specialized anti-trafficking law enforcement units and prosecutors. Some provincial law enforcement collaboration existed along the Montreal-Toronto-Windsor corridor or along northern Ontario and Quebec, where traffickers often transfer victims.

However, NGOs noted a continued imbalance in the government’s anti-trafficking efforts, with limited attention to and understanding of forced labor. Data collection, information sharing, and coordination challenges among federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal authorities continued to limit anti-trafficking law enforcement effectiveness. The Canadian Police College provided a human trafficking investigators’ course that trained police on understanding the scope of trafficking crimes, fostering trust between law enforcement and victims, and overcoming challenges in investigating and prosecuting trafficking cases. The RCMP provided an online introduction to a human trafficking course completed by law enforcement officials and is in the process of replacing it with a new survivor-led online course on human trafficking detection for frontline workers and all Canadian law enforcement personnel.

The RCMP’s operational manual provided guidelines and procedures for investigating human trafficking cases. The CBSA provided an online training course on human trafficking to new recruits. The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada regularly made presentations during the human trafficking investigator courses at the provincial and federal levels to educate law enforcement officials on using financial intelligence in human trafficking investigations. Police cooperated with foreign law enforcement officials on several open investigations.

For example, RCMP and the National Child Exploitation Centre collaborated with the Philippine National Police on investigations against extraterritorial child sexual exploitation and abuse. The government did not report any investigations, prosecutions, or convictions of government employees complicit in trafficking crimes. In May 2022 an RCMP officer was charged with trafficking for allegedly recruiting a victim from Mexico under false pretenses and subsequently exploited in domestic servitude in Canada; the case was undergoing trial in 2024.

PROTECTION

The government increased protection efforts. The government did not report data on the number of victims identified by provincial and municipal police in 2023. Federal government officials identified 84 victims of unspecified forms of trafficking in 2023, compared with 58 victims in 2022. Identified victims included 59 women, five men, and 20 girls.

The government provided UCR data from 2022, showing federal, provincial, and municipal police identified a total of 439 victims, compared with 418 victims identified in 2021. Government-funded NGOs identified an estimated 1,545 trafficking victims (1,135 for sex trafficking and 410 for unspecified forms of trafficking) in 2023. In January 2024, the government updated its handbook for criminal justice practitioners and front-line officials – including police, justice practitioners, and border officials – to enable them to proactively screen for trafficking indicators and appropriately assist potential victims through best practices in trauma-informed response. RCMP officers followed a procedure to refer trafficking victims to services, while referral procedures for other front-line institutions varied by jurisdiction.

Public Safety Canada’s (PSC) National Office of Victims served as a resource to victims of any type of crime, including by providing information over email and maintaining an online directory of services. Provinces and territories were primarily responsible for the delivery of victim services, with the federal government providing funding to service providers. The government did not report complete data on victims receiving government-funded services. The federal government allocated 1,900,972 Canadian dollars ($1,433,610) to Justice Canada’s Victims Fund to support trafficking victims and groups at high risk of exploitation, a significant increase compared with 1.16 million Canadian dollars ($877,950) in 2022.

Through this fund, the government provided funding to organizations implementing 16 projects to improve services for trafficking victims and develop and deliver training for law enforcement officers and service providers in the provinces and territories. Projects varied in duration and in range of objectives and types of victims served. Some projects aimed to improve victim identification; others served women and girls at risk of trafficking. As a result, data may be incomplete, not comparable, or unsynchronized with reporting cycles, hampering the government’s ability to analyze trends and strengthen protection efforts.

Implementing organizations reported providing services to approximately 1,135 victims and vulnerable individuals through government-funded projects between January and November 2023, compared with approximately 894 victims and vulnerable individuals assisted during the same period in 2022. Under the national strategy, the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality Canada continued implementing a nearly 14 million Canadian dollars ($10.56 million) initiative funding 42 projects working to prevent and address trafficking and support victims and at-risk or underserved populations. Service provision models varied across the country depending on provincial demographics, priorities, and budgets. In some provinces, victims accessed government services through police or the courts, while other provinces offered victims more comprehensive individual support.

Victims could typically access emergency housing, medical services, psychological care, safety planning, and court preparation and accompaniment. Some jurisdictions offered additional legal services to victims of sexual offences, including sex trafficking; and many provinces and territories provided counseling services beyond the duration of a trial. Assistance was available for Canadian and foreign victims, as well as male and female victims, but service providers reported they primarily served Canadian women and girls. Several provincial governments funded or implemented trafficking-specific programming.

The Government of Alberta continued funding ACT Alberta, a multisectoral coalition of NGOs, government bodies, faith-based groups, and survivors, to provide services to victims and coordinate a provincial response to trafficking. Alberta also continued implementing its 22.8 million Canadian dollar ($17.2 million) action plan to combat trafficking. The plan continued funding for specialized victim support coordinators embedded within law enforcement teams to facilitate community and law enforcement collaboration; these roles reportedly played a critical role in improving victims’ safety and wellbeing from initial identification throughout the entirety of an investigation. Alberta’s government also established the Alberta Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons with three NGO partners in July 2023 to improve victim services coordination.

Alberta also trained staff in a provincial office assisting temporary foreign workers to recognize labor trafficking indicators and refer potential victims to services. The Government of Ontario continued implementing its five-year, 307 million Canadian dollar ($231.5 million) strategy to combat trafficking that included clinical, therapeutic, and culturally responsive services to child sex trafficking victims, including Indigenous children; survivor-led programming and services for sex trafficking victims and vulnerable communities; free legal services for trafficking survivors of all ages. Ontario also funded three pilot programs that paired child protection workers with police officers to collaborate on the front lines of victim identification, assistance and referral, and investigations. The Government of Québec continued implementing its 2021-2026 action plan against sexual exploitation, including sex trafficking, allocating 150 million Canadian dollars ($113.12 million) to 37 measures over five years.

In Manitoba, police and NGOs continued to assist victims through a collaborative response team and to implement prevention strategies. For example, PSC funded a Manitoban NGO through the Contribution Program to Combat Serious and Organized Crime to provide counseling, housing, and pre-employment training services to at-risk Indigenous females, including trafficking victims. The Government of British Columbia continued a grant program using civil forfeiture proceeds to support community-led projects on crime prevention and victim assistance, including organizations working on trafficking. The Government of British Columbia amended its Crime Victims Assistance Act in December 2023 to expand support and services to victims (including trafficking victims), immediate family members and witnesses.

In 2022-2023, the Crime Victim’s Assistance Program received more than 4,700 applications from victims, immediate family members and witnesses and distributed nearly 17 million Canadian dollars ($12.82 million) in benefits. In November 2023, Saskatchewan passed legislation relieving victims and survivors of negative credit factors incurred during their victimization; lenders were prohibited from penalizing victims for coerced debts when evaluating loan applications. In December 2023, after successful completion of a one-year pilot program, the provincial government announced 1.2 million Canadian dollars ($904,980) in additional funding over the next four years for an NGO to continue providing shelter and support services for women and youth survivors of sex trafficking. Prince Edward Island Victim Services provided court preparation and psychological services for trafficking victims, and its Provincial Human Trafficking Committee created a website to consolidate available resources for victims.

NGOs operated shelters nationwide for victims of violence, mostly women and their accompanying children; the government funded some shelters, but only a few provided accommodations specifically for trafficking victims. Service providers reported there was an insufficient supply of emergency shelters, medium- to long-term housing, and specialized medical and psychological services to meet the needs of trafficking victims; they also reported some available shelter options were not adequate for victims to receive appropriate, trauma-informed care. As part of the national strategy, PSC initiated a process to develop guidelines on providing traumainformed care to sex and labor trafficking victims. Canadians who were victims of trafficking crimes that occurred outside Canada were eligible to receive financial assistance for travel, psychological services, and other expenses through the Victims Fund, as well as assistance from Canadian consular officials abroad, although the government did not report providing this assistance to any victims.

Global Affairs Canada (GAC) officials had procedures to proactively identify potential trafficking victims working in diplomatic households in Canada, including through verifying payroll records and conducting random and systematic interviews with domestic workers in diplomatic households, and did not report identifying any victims during the year. The government provided alternatives to removal for foreign trafficking victims who faced retribution or hardship in their home countries. Immigration officials could issue foreign trafficking victims and their dependents a temporary resident permit (TRP) allowing them to remain in Canada under regularized immigration status, receive access to healthcare, including psychological services, and in some cases apply for a work permit. Officials issued short-term TRPs for up to 180 days or long-term TRPs for three years.

Authorities did not require victims to participate in an investigation or prosecution to be eligible for a TRP, and victims could apply directly without a referral from law enforcement or service providers, and immigration authorities reviewed trafficking related TRP applications on a priority basis. Between January and October 2023, the government issued 98 TRPs to foreign trafficking victims and their dependents; by comparison, the government issued 138 TRPs to foreign trafficking victims and their dependents between January and October 2022. During the same period in 2023, the government issued 96 work permits to foreign trafficking victims and their dependents, a significant decrease from 263 such permits issued in 2022; foreign victims were from Mexico, Guatemala, Philippines, Republic of Korea, The Bahamas, United States, Barbados, and Bangladesh. Canadian federal law provided victims and other witnesses participating in trials various protections, many of which were mandatory for children or people with disabilities, at a judge’s discretion.

These protections included video testimony, the presence of a support person during testimony, a ban on publishing names of or releasing identifying information about witnesses, and the closing of courtrooms to the public. Authorities did not report how frequently courts afforded these protections to trafficking victims during trials. The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights guaranteed access to a complaint mechanism for victims whose rights may have been denied by a federal institution. Through the Victims Fund, the government funded organizations providing training on trauma-informed practices for criminal justice officials and other victim service providers.

NGOs reported the lack of victim-centered methods retraumatized some victims during court proceedings. Courts could order traffickers to pay restitution to victims under Canadian criminal law, and the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario had laws allowing trafficking victims to seek civil redress. Some provinces had compensation or financial benefits programs for crime victims. The government did not report whether any victims received restitution, sought civil redress, or were awarded compensation through provincial programs in 2023.

The government did not have a law or policy protecting all victims from being inappropriately penalized solely for unlawful acts committed as a direct result of being trafficked. Authorities reported making such charging decisions on a case-by-case basis considering the severity of the alleged crime, as well as possible harm to the provision of victim support; trust between victim and authorities; or efforts to hold traffickers accountable. Justice Canada’s updated handbook outlined these considerations in cases where trafficking victims commit unlawful acts in the context of being trafficked. Canada’s 2014 Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act – which criminalized the purchase of commercial sex acts, profiting from sex acts provided by another person, and other related crimes – gave immunity from criminal liability to individuals who provided commercial sex acts.

PREVENTION

The government increased prevention efforts. PSC continued to lead the government’s federal interagency task force to combat trafficking, which oversaw implementation of federal anti-trafficking measures under the strategic framework of the government’s National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking 2019-2024. The National Strategy included 57.22 million Canadian dollars ($43.15 million) in funding over five years and 10.28 million Canadian dollars ($7.75 million) annually after 2024. The Human Trafficking Taskforce and the Directors-General Steering Committee, two of the three National Strategy governing bodies, convened to discuss the plan’s challenges, successes, effectiveness, and future; the Assistant Deputy Ministers Roundtable, the plan’s third governing body, did not convene.

The Federal, Provincial, and Territorial Trafficking in Persons Working Group also convened to facilitate coordination and intragovernmental collaboration. Although the National Strategy called for the establishment of a survivor-led advisory committee, the government did not create it during the reporting year. The government continued researching systemic inequalities to inform the design, delivery, and implementation of various initiatives funded under the National Strategy. Through the Migrant Worker Support Program, the government provided 16.6 million Canadian dollars ($12.52 million) to 11 community organizations to help foreign workers learn and exercise their rights while living and working in Canada.

Through this funding, the government supported activities tailored to the needs and experiences of this vulnerable population, including provision of services and information in workers’ first language; events and services during hours workers were likely to be available; free transportation or virtual or phone-based options; outreach visits to workers in isolated locations; and legal services. The government permitted temporary foreign workers – on valid employer-specific work permits and who experienced abuse or were at risk of abuse in the context of their employment in Canada – to apply for an open work permit; such permits allowed a worker to leave an abusive situation and change employers without losing status to work in Canada. The government reported immigration officials had guidelines for processing potential trafficking victims who sought open work permits. The government provided funding to an NGO to operate a national human trafficking hotline, available through telephone and online formats nationwide 365 days per year in more than 200 languages.

Hotline staff maintained a national referral directory to connect victims to more than 1,000 local service providers for emergency, transition, or long-term support services. In 2023, the hotline received thousands of contacts and provided service referrals to at least 296 trafficking victims. The hotline connected some callers to law enforcement, but the government did not report the number of investigations initiated from calls to the hotline. The government continued funding support services for young adults aging out of the child welfare system, a population highly vulnerable to trafficking, through the First Nations Child and Family Services Program.

These services included activities to provide access to financial support, education, safe and stable housing, and physical and mental wellness. Ontario’s provincial government continued funding nine “youth in transition” personnel who offer specialized support for trafficking survivors and at-risk persons between 16 and 24 years old, who are in or leaving care facilities. Under the National Strategy, PSC invested more than 2.3 million Canadian dollars ($1.73 million) in 17 different organizations providing trauma-informed, culturally relevant support services for at-risk youth and survivors, compared with 2.4 million Canadian dollars ($1.81 million) invested in 19 organizations the prior year. In January 2024 after several years of research and stakeholder engagement on forced labor in supply chains, the government adopted the Fighting Against Forced Labor and Child Labor in Supply Chains Act, which required government agencies and certain businesses to report annually on measures taken to prevent forced labor in supply chains.

Reporting requirements included an overview of an agency or business’s structure and supply chains, existing policies in relation to forced labor, measures taken to remediate any forced labor infractions, relevant trainings, and risk assessments. Responsible entities were required to submit their annual reports to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness through a publicly- accessible electronic registry. Entities or persons failing to comply faced fines up to 250,000 Canadian dollars ($188,540). In summer 2023, Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) published a report based on research gathered from engaging industry, academia, government, and civil society on ethical procurement and supply chain risks.

The report acknowledged challenges to combating forced labor in Canadian supply chains including information and data gaps and limited resources; it provided recommendations to strengthen the anti-trafficking framework by including survivor input in future engagement, passing industry-specific guidelines, and sharing information and resources to help companies investigate their supply chains. PSPC reported preparing additional awareness materials to promote ethical procurement best practices for suppliers of at-risk goods in 2023. The government continued implementing a five-year national awareness campaign to educate the public on misperceptions surrounding human trafficking, identifying warning signs, and how to report suspected cases to the appropriate authorities. Using advertisements on social media, search engines, news websites, radio, in cinemas, and through in-person events or television segments, the government refined its methods for targeting outreach to match the media consumption patterns of children and young adults, Indigenous women, and parents.

The government conducted outreach to new immigrants and non-English speakers through advertising on websites in Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Arabic, Urdu, Tamil, Vietnamese, and Ukrainian. The RCMP continued online nationwide training on human trafficking to school resource officers and distributed presentations for use in local communities. The government continued building awareness to prevent trafficking among IDPs in and through cooperation with the Government of Ukraine by continuing funding to organizations servicing displaced populations. GAC increased efforts to prevent sexual exploitation through the delivery of foreign assistance, including by funding an initiative to strengthen the capacity of Canadian civil society organizations to prevent and respond to abuses abroad; incorporating relevant funding clauses in financial arrangements throughout the department; and training staff on preventing sexual exploitation within the delivery of foreign assistance and responding to abuses if they arose.

Canada continued funding a UN entity to mainstream a set of principles on preventing the recruitment and use of child soldiers throughout UN peacekeeping policy, guidance, and training; the government’s advocacy helped create a new guide for UN Force Commanders on child protection during peacekeeping missions. Through its foreign assistance, Canada continued supporting numerous governments and civil society organizations in South and Central America, with projects aimed at strengthening anti-trafficking capacity among law enforcement and judiciary institutions. The government made limited efforts to extraterritorial child sexual exploitation by its citizens; some efforts included distributing publications warning Canadians traveling abroad about penalties under Canadian law for engaging in extraterritorial child sexual exploitation and directing personnel in its overseas diplomatic missions to report suspected cases to local law enforcement and INTERPOL. The government, however, did not report any data on such investigations, prosecutions, or convictions.

The government made efforts to reduce the demand for extraterritorial commercial child sexual exploitation and abuse by creating a dedicated law enforcement position to assist the Government of the Philippines in targeting transnational child sex offenders and addressing livestream child sexual exploitation and abuse material. TRAFFICKING PROFILE: As reported over the past five years, human traffickers exploit domestic and foreign victims in Canada, and traffickers exploit Canadian victims abroad. Women and children from Indigenous communities, migrants and new immigrants, LGBTQI+ persons, persons with disabilities, at-risk youth, runaway youth, and youth in the child welfare system are at high-risk for trafficking. Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately represented among trafficking victims.

Traffickers lure girls and young women, including some who are not socially or economically disadvantaged, into deceptive romantic relationships or through offers of economic opportunity, and exploit them in sex trafficking. Traffickers exploit Canadian victims within and across the country and sometimes abroad, mainly in the United States. Traffickers exploit foreign women, primarily from Asia and Eastern Europe, in sex trafficking in Canada. Sex traffickers exploit victims in hotels and short stay rentals; illicit storefronts disguised as spas, massage parlors, and strip clubs; and private residences.

Trafficking operations increasingly use online payment methods and investment tools in efforts to conceal financial transactions. The Government of Canada reported traffickers increasingly use various forms of technology to exploit victims, widen their reach, and connect with other perpetrators. Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine are vulnerable to trafficking in Canada. Traffickers exploit legal foreign workers from Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa in forced labor in a variety of sectors, including agriculture, construction, food processing, restaurants, hospitality, and domestic service.

Migrant workers in the caregiving and agricultural sectors are at the highest risk of forced labor due to language barriers, isolated worksites, and limited access to protections. Some foreign nationals are exploited by traffickers with ties to organized crime networks in victims’ home countries. Canadians travel abroad to purchase sex acts from child victims in other countries, and foreign nationals purchase sex acts from child victims in Canada. Traffickers in Canada operate individually and via familybased connections; some are affiliated with street gangs and transnational organized crime.

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