Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Honourable senators, I am rising as the friendly critic of Bill S-235, which was sponsored by my colleague, Senator Salma Ataullahjan. This bill has to do with the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking.

Human trafficking is a serious problem. It is also a crime that is hard to detect because it often takes place behind closed doors and because every effort is made to hide these schemes to sexually exploit young women and girls and to exploit illegal workers who are recruited abroad and underpaid under the table by companies in the industrial, service and agricultural sectors. It is often difficult to prove that human trafficking is taking place.

In the case of sex trafficking, traffickers recruit their victims by showering them with gifts or affection, making them promises and then using violent behaviour to control them. This is the most common form of trafficking in Canada, and the number of trafficking cases reported to the police has been growing over the past 10 years.

In January, the government appointed its first Chief Advisor to Combat Human Trafficking, Jennifer Richardson, who is a survivor herself and who worked very closely with Indigenous communities.

Unfortunately, Ms. Richardson stepped down in December, less than a year after she was appointed, which worries me. What happened? Why hasn’t a replacement been appointed? Is the government serious about combatting human trafficking?

I look forward to reading Ms. Richardson’s as yet unpublished final report and her recommendations.

It is very difficult to ascertain the actual results of this federal strategy, so it is clear that pressure must be brought to bear on the system. As co-chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, I was one of those who met with Chief Advisor Richardson.

She faced a huge challenge: making her voice heard within the government.

This strong woman was only just beginning to get the hang of the difficult task of motivating and bringing together all of the many stakeholders in the fight against human trafficking, including Public Safety Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, Public Services and Procurement Canada, and Women and Gender Equality Canada. With six departments involved, it is quite a challenge.

She had recently completed a tour of the provinces and the non-governmental organizations that are doing the fieldwork.

To prevent all this from ending up in a bureaucratic quagmire, Bill S-235 proposes that the national strategy prioritize the victims of trafficking, for example, by following through on a long-standing commitment to create a survivor advisory committee.

I’ve met with survivors. They have been vocal in calling for the creation of a committee for years, because they believe that their voices are not being heard or adequately recognized and that other people are making decisions without consulting them meaningfully.

This bill contains another important item: It requires that the minister responsible review the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking every five years and table a report in the House. The review has to include public consultations with stakeholders — especially individuals with lived experience of human trafficking, as Senator Ataullahjan mentioned — and with provincial governments, which have developed their own human trafficking initiatives.

Without a serious evaluation of the efforts that are being made, it is not possible to critique them and make progress. The bill also lists about 10 paramount principles that the minister must follow when conducting the review, such as ensuring there is adequate financial support for victims, promoting efforts to address the root causes of human trafficking and adopting a trauma-informed approach.

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Human trafficking is one of the most devastating and persistent forms of violence committed against Indigenous people. In fact, half of all trafficking victims are Indigenous women, even though they represent only 5% of the population. A recent report highlights the possible links between the high rates of disappearance and murder of Indigenous women and girls and advertisements for sexual services. This is an important angle, but there’s a lack of resources and databases to further this investigation.

The Missing and Stolen report published in June 2025 refers to the disappearance in October 2024 of Juanita “Winnie” Migwans while she was walking along a road in M’Chigeeng, Ontario. Despite national efforts to find her, she’s still missing.

Drug gangs in Toronto are suspected of increasingly exploiting Indigenous women in rural communities. Indigenous women and girls are clearly overrepresented among victims, as are migrant worker women and girls, who may have a harder time accessing social and medical services due to their unregulated status.

If we are serious about ending human trafficking, we must confront the systems that generate profits from sexual exploitation. That means shifting the blame away from those who are exploited and towards those — generally men — who purchase, facilitate, normalize and benefit from that exploitation. To put an end to human trafficking, we must tackle the demand for sexual services. Recent government efforts to end human trafficking have embraced this logic by prioritizing measures aimed at offenders rather than survivors. However, a closer look at the federal action plan’s budgetary allocation reveals a more complex and troubling picture.

According to an analysis by a coalition of organizations aiming to end human trafficking in Quebec, over 70% of the federal budget allocated to the government’s action plan to end human trafficking was used for repression. Enforcement is absolutely necessary, but it cannot be at the expense of the protection and care of victims. When repression absorbs the overwhelming share of resources, survivor protections, long-term housing, trauma-informed care and economic reintegration risk becoming secondary priorities, according to this Quebec report.

In conclusion, the intentions behind this bill are praiseworthy, but we must not underestimate the difficulties of reaching consensus between survivors and authorities to move forward. The strategy outlined in the bill is broad — perhaps too broad — given the measures the federal government must take to address this issue. Would it be beneficial to prioritize a few of them?

I invite senators to send this bill to committee for further study. The stakes are high, and lives are being forever shattered by trafficking.

Thank you.