Wikileaks - MCCXC
194486 2/27/2009 21:52 09OTTAWA151 Embassy Ottawa UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 09STATE132759|09VANCOUVER2010 VZCZCXRO5486 OO RUEHGA RUEHHA RUEHMT RUEHQU RUEHVC DE RUEHOT #0151/01 0582152 ZNR UUUUU ZZH O 272152Z FEB 09 FM AMEMBASSY OTTAWA TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 9123 INFO RUCNCAN/ALL CANADIAN POSTS COLLECTIVE RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASH DC RUEHC/DEPT OF LABOR WASHDC RUEAHLC/DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY WASHDC RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC RUEHBK/AMEMBASSY BANGKOK 1777 RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 2286 RUEHBM/AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST 0524 RUEHCH/AMEMBASSY CHISINAU 0010 RUEHHI/AMEMBASSY HANOI 0330 RUEHKL/AMEMBASSY KUALA LUMPUR 0355 RUEHML/AMEMBASSY MANILA 0056 RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW 2248 RUEHPF/AMEMBASSY PHNOM PENH 0102 UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 25 OTTAWA 000151
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
STATE FOR G/TIP (B. FLECK), G (A.C. BLANK), INL, DRL, PRM, WHA/PPC
E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PHUM, SMIG, ASEC, PREF, ELAB, KCRM, KWMN, KFRD, KTIP, CA SUBJECT: CANADA?S TIP REPORT SUBMISSION
REF: STATE 132759
1. (SBU) OVERVIEW OF CANADA'S TIP SITUATION
A. The Government of Canada collects trafficking in persons (TIP) information through a number of sources, including police and court-reported data and reported case law. The 2008 Annual Criminal Intelligence Service Canada Report on Organized Crime is available on-line and provides a general assessment of trafficking in persons. The Department of Citizenship and Immigration (CIC) collects data on the issuance of temporary resident permits to foreign nationals who are suspected of trafficking. The government is currently studying the feasibility of a national data collection framework. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) National Missing Children Services has begun a national probe to determine the scope of domestic trafficking as it relates to children and youth. In addition, the RCMP?s Human Trafficking National Coordination Center has begun working on a national threat assessment focusing on international trends to assess the extent of trafficking into Canada. In 2006, Canada and the USG jointly prepared a U.S.- Canada Bi-National Assessment of Trafficking in Persons.
B. Canada is principally a transit and destination country for trafficking in persons, but is also a source country for domestic victims of trafficking. NGOs estimate that approximately 2,000 people are subject to trafficking into Canada each year. In 2004, the RCMP had estimated that approximately 600- 800 persons were trafficked into Canada annually and that an additional 1,500 to 2,200 persons were trafficked through Canada into the United States.
According to the government, the majority of trafficking cases encountered within Canada involve Canadian nationals who are trafficked wholly within Canada. Most organized crime groups have the capacity to move multiple victims simultaneously, typically inter-provincially.
According to the government, victims of trafficking to or through Canada come primarily from Asia -- in particular China, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam -- as well as parts of Africa, Eastern Europe, and Russia. Victims trafficked to Canada end up mostly to Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. (A member of South Korea's national police force is posted to the South Korean consulate in Vancouver in part to assist with trafficking matters.) Canadian intelligence indicated, and Canadian law enforcement findings supported, that trafficked persons in Canada are predominantly forced to work in the sex trade. A study by the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC) confirmed that a link exists between organized crime networks and trafficking for sexual exploitation in Canada. Canada is also to a lesser extent a labor trafficking destination, with ongoing investigations into several cases of labor exploitation.
C. Reported case law confirmed that victims face sexually exploitation within Canada in various venues. Trafficking victims often receive promises Qvenues. Trafficking victims often receive promises of well paying jobs as caregivers, waitresses, models, or other legal occupations. The use of threats or other forms of coercion sometimes compels
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victims to perform services. According to NGOs and victim assistance organizations, labor trafficking victims often enter Canada legally with a valid work permit. In many cases, the victims, especially from Asia, paid "recruiting agencies" in their home countries to arrange agricultural jobs in Canada. Once in Canada, "agents" then inform them they are in Canada illegally and threaten to have them deported if they try to escape.
D. Reported case law also indicated that those at greatest risk of becoming victims of trafficking are likely to be those who face the greatest social, economic, and legal inequality. Although Canada is not a significant country of origin for victims, Canadian nationals are trafficked domestically. A report from the Standing Committee on the Status of Women cited testimony that aboriginal females are at the greatest risk of becoming victims of trafficking.
Governmental efforts to enhance border integrity and security have helped limit the number of irregular migrants entering Canada. The number of improperly documented arrivals (IDAs) at Canada's airports was at its lowest since the collection of these statistics began in 1989.
E. As the 2006 U.S.-Canada Bi-National Threat Assessment highlighted, traffickers tended to be members of larger criminal organizations, members of small criminal groups, or individual criminals. Organized crime groups are involved in transnational trafficking to varying degrees. This can range from involvement in a specific phase of the TIP cycle (e.g. transport) to the facilitation of entire operations, including coordinating exploitation in the commercial sex trade.
Trafficking victims enter Canada through both legal and illegal means. Some enter with genuine passports, entry documents, and/or work visas. Others use falsified or altered entry documents, such as photo substitutions, or gain entry as impostors. Fraudulent offers of employment sometimes support applications to obtain visas and convince border and consular officials that victims intend to return to their countries of origin. Traffickers sometimes also bring victims into Canada utilizing established smuggling routes and methods.
According to the 2008 Annual Criminal Intelligence Service Canada Report on Organized Crime, a small number of organized crime groups, mostly based in British Columbia and Quebec, are involved in the facilitation of international human trafficking. Several gangs are active in domestic trafficking for sexual exploitation by facilitating the recruitment, control, movement, and exploitation of Canadian-born females in the domestic sex trade, primarily in strip bars in several cities across the country.
2. (SBU) THE GOVERNMENT?S ANTI-TIP EFFORTS
A. The Canadian government recognizes the serious nature of human trafficking, and is committed to combating human trafficking at home and abroad, working with domestic and international partners.
B. The Interdepartmental Working Group on QB. The Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons (IWGTIP) coordinates all federal anti-trafficking efforts, bringing together
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seventeen federal departments and agencies. Working group chairs rotate, with senior officials from the Departments of Justice and of Public Safety as the current co-chairs. The IWGTIP also includes the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC), the Department of Citizenship and Immigration (CIC), the Department of National Defence (DND), the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), the Department of Health, the Department of Human Resources and Social Development, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, the Passport Agency, the Public Prosecution Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the Statistics Bureau, and the Status of Women agency.
C. There are no systemic limitations on the Canadian government's ability to address TIP, apart from jurisdictional issues between the federal and provincial/territorial levels. There is no evidence of corruption by Canadian authorities in trafficking matters. The Canadian government would investigate and prosecute any allegations of corruption in accordance with Canadian law. Canada ratified the UN Convention against Corruption in October 2007. IWGTIP coordinates Canada's federal anti-trafficking efforts.
Due to Canada's immigration laws, many labor trafficking victims enter Canada legally, making it difficult to identify and investigate these cases. NGOs have called for the government to commit additional resources to fight labor trafficking and investigate employers suspected of exploitation.
D. The IWGTIP coordinates and monitors federal anti- trafficking efforts. The Minister of Citizenship, Immigration, and Multiculturalism?s annual report to Parliament on immigration policy includes data on the number of temporary resident permits issued to victims of human trafficking. Canada shares its best practices and makes available its assessments in a range of international fora, including the OAS, OSCE, UN, G8, the Bali Process, and the Regional Conference on Migration (RCM). As an RCM member, Canada participates in its Liaison Officer Network to Combat Trafficking In Persons and Migrant Smuggling, which meets twice a year. Canada made several presentations related to trafficking at RCM meetings in 2007 and 2008, and provides an annual update to the RCM?s ?Comparative Matrix of Legislation Against Trafficking In Persons and Smuggling of Migrants in RCM Member Countries.?
Canada played an active role at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime held in Vienna October 8-17, 2008. Canada participated in a technical meeting on a resolution to establish an open-ended interim working group to advise and assist the Conference in implementing its mandate with regards to the Trafficking In Persons protocol. Canada also shared best practices in identifying fraudulent Qshared best practices in identifying fraudulent documents.
The Department of Public Safety has funded a study by the Statistics Bureau on the feasibility of establishing a national TIP statistics data collection framework, including consultations with key stakeholders. The study is ongoing, so the
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outcome is not yet available.
3. (SBU) INVESTIGATION AND PROSECUTION OF TRAFFICKERS
A. Canada's criminal laws prohibit trafficking in persons regardless of whether the trafficking occurs wholly within Canada or whether it involves bringing victims into Canada for the purpose of exploitation. Criminal laws apply across Canada and provide a uniform approach to addressing trafficking in persons and related conduct.
There have been no legislative changes to Canada?s laws against trafficking during the reporting period. The Criminal Code of Canada contains three specific indictable offenses to combat trafficking in persons:
Section 279.01 - (1) Every person who recruits, transports, transfers, receives, holds, conceals or harbors a person, or exercises control, direction or influence over the movements of a person, for the purpose of exploiting them or facilitating their exploitation is guilty of an indictable offense and liable (a) to imprisonment for life if they kidnap, commit an aggravated assault or aggravated sexual assault against, or cause death to, the victim during the commission of the offense; or (b) to imprisonment for a term of not more than fourteen years in any other case. (2) No consent to the activity that forms the subject-matter of a charge under subsection (1) is valid.
Section 279.02 - Every person who receives a financial or other material benefit, knowing that it results from the commission of an offense under subsection 279.01(1), is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than ten years.
Section 279.03 - Every person who, for the purpose of committing or facilitating an offense under subsection 279.01(1), conceals, removes, withholds or destroys any travel document that belongs to another person or any document that establishes or purports to establish another person's identity or immigration status is guilty of an indictable offense and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than five years, whether or not the document is of Canadian origin or is authentic.
Section 279.04 clarifies that for the purposes of sections 279.01 to 279.03, a person exploits another person if they (a) cause them to provide, or offer to provide, labor or a service by engaging in conduct that, in all the circumstances, could reasonably be expected to cause the other person to believe that their safety or the safety of a person known to them would be threatened if they failed to provide, or offer to provide, the labor or service; or (b) cause them, by means of deception of the use of threat of force or of any other form of coercion, to have an organ or tissue removed.
These specific TIP offenses were enacted in 2005 through Bill C-49, ?An Act to Amend the Criminal Code, (trafficking in persons),? and supplemented previously existing Criminal Code offenses that are applicable to trafficking in persons cases, including kidnapping, forcible confinement, uttering Qincluding kidnapping, forcible confinement, uttering threats, extortion, sexual assault, prostitution-
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related offenses, and criminal organization offenses.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA), which came into force in June 2002, also included a human trafficking offense (Section 118) that applies to cases involving trans-border trafficking, as well as offenses that are applicable to trafficking. The trafficking-related IRPA citations read:
Section 117 - (1) No person shall knowingly organize, induce, aid or abet the coming into Canada of one or more persons who are not in possession of a visa, passport, or other document required by this Act. (2) A person who contravenes subsection (1) with respect to fewer than 10 persons is guilty of an offense and liable (a) on conviction on indictment (i) for a first offense, to a fine of not more than C$500,000 (approximately US$471,698) or to a term of imprisonment of not more than 10 years, or to both, or (ii) for a subsequent offense, to a fine of not more than C$1,000,000 (US$943,396) or to a term of imprisonment of not more than 14 years, or to both; and (b) on summary conviction, to a fine of not more than C$100,000 (US$94,340) or to a term of imprisonment of not more than two years, or to both. (3) A person who contravenes subsection (1) with respect to a group of 10 persons or more is guilty of an offense and liable on conviction by way of indictment to a fine of not more than C$1,000,000 (US$943,396) or to life imprisonment, or to both. (4) No proceedings for an offense under this section may be instituted except by or with the consent of the Attorney General of Canada.
Section 118 - (1) No person shall knowingly organize the coming into Canada of one or more persons by means of abduction, fraud, deception or use of threat of force or coercion. (2) For the purpose of subsection (1), "organize", with respect to persons, includes their recruitment of transportation and, after their entry into Canada, the receipt or harboring of those persons.
Section 119 - A person shall not disembark a person or group of persons at sea for the purpose of inducing, aiding or abetting them to come into Canada in contravention of this Act.
Section 120 - A person who contravenes section 118 or 119 is guilty of an offense and liable on conviction by way of indictment to a fine of not more than C$1,000,000 (US$943,396) or to life imprisonment, or to both.
Section 121 - (1) The court, in determining the penalty to be imposed under subsection 117(2) or (3) or section 120, shall take into account whether (a) bodily harm or death occurred during the commission of the offense; (b) the commission of the offense was for the benefit of, at the direction of or in association with a criminal organization; (c) the commission of the offense was for profit, whether of not any profit was realized; and (d) a person was subjected to humiliating or degrading treatment, including with respect to work or health conditions or sexual exploitation as a result of the commission of the offense. (2) For the purposes of paragraph Qof the offense. (2) For the purposes of paragraph (1)(b), "criminal organization" means an organization that is believed on reasonable grounds to be or to have been engaged in activity that is part of a pattern of criminal activity planned and
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organized by a number of persons acting in concert in furtherance of the commission of an offense punishable under an Act of Parliament by way of indictment or in furtherance of the commission of an offense outside Canada that, if committed in Canada, would constitute such an offense.
In addition, the Criminal Code contains numerous provisions targeting those who sexually exploit children or who seek to profit from such exploitation. Section 212(2) prohibits living on the avails of the prostitution of a person under the age of 18, carrying a maximum punishment of 14 years and a mandatory minimum of 2 years. Section 212(2.1) is an aggravated offence prohibiting the procuring of a young person into prostitution for profit and the use of threats or violence, incurring a maximum punishment of 14 years and a mandatory minimum of 5 years. Section 212(4) makes it an offense to obtain, or communicate for the purpose of obtaining, for consideration, the sexual services of a person who is under 18 years of age, with a maximum punishment of 5 years and a mandatory minimum of 6 months.
B. Criminal Code Section 279.01 states that the maximum penalty for a person convicted of a trafficking in persons offense, including trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, is life imprisonment where it involves kidnapping, aggravated assault, or sexual assault, or death and a maximum penalty of 14 years in all other cases. The maximum penalty for a trafficking in persons conviction under IRPA is life imprisonment and/or a fine not exceeding C$1,000,000 (US$943,396). For information on penalties imposed during the reporting period, see Section 3 (E).
C. The provisions outlined above apply equally to trafficking for the purposes of forced labor, with the same penalties. Canada's criminal laws can also apply to offenses that have taken place, in part, in another country, provided that a significant portion of the activities constituting the offense took place in Canada. For information on penalties imposed during the reporting period, see Section 3 (E).
Provinces and territories have primary responsibility for enforcement of labor standards, which apply equally to temporary foreign workers and Canadian workers. Some provinces have, or are developing, measures to regulate the activities of third party recruiters. See Section 5 (A) for examples of recent provincial and territorial initiatives.
D. The penalties for sexual assault offenses are: a maximum of 10 years for sexual assault; a maximum of 14 years imprisonment with a mandatory minimum penalty of four years where a firearm is used for sexual assault with a weapon; and, a maximum of life imprisonment with a mandatory minimum penalty of four years where a firearm is used for aggravated sexual assault.
The 2008 "Tackling Violent Crime Act" strengthened the Criminal Code?s Dangerous Offender provisions by giving the police, Crown prosecutors, and courts increased ability to manage the threat posed to the Qincreased ability to manage the threat posed to the general public by individuals at very high risk to re-offend sexually and violently. These reforms
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included providing more effective sentencing and monitoring to prevent dangerous, high-risk offenders from offending again and increasing the mandatory minimum penalties for serious offences involving the use of a firearm such as sexual and aggravated sexual assault as well as kidnapping.
E. There were investigations, prosecutions, convictions, and sentences for human trafficking offenses during the reporting period. The RCMP was involved in numerous trafficking in persons investigations during the reporting period, including in partnership with municipal police forces across Canada and, in some cases, with U.S. state or federal law enforcement agencies. The Statistics Bureau?s Canadian Center for Justice Statistics (CCJS) collects annual police-reported crime statistics through the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR2), as well as cases processed through -- RHEHAAA/NSC WASHDC PRIORITY RHHJJPI/PACOM IDHS HONOLULU HI PRIORITY RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC PRIORITY RUEKJCS/CJCS WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY RHEFDIA/DIA WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC PRIORITY RUEATRS/TREASURY DEPT WASHDC PRIORITY C O N F I D E N T I A L TOKYO 000460
SIPDIS
FOR EAP/J, EAP/C, EEB/ESC/TFS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/26/2019 TAGS: EFIN, ETRD, ETTC, KTFN, JA, CH SUBJECT: TERRORISM FINANCE: GOJ RESPONSE TO PROPOSAL TO LIST CHINESE NATIONAL ABDUL HAQ WITH UNSC 1267 COMMITTEE
REF: STATE 15118
Classified By: Political Minister-Counselor W. Michael Meserve for reas ons 1.4 (b) and (d)
(C) Embassy Tokyo delivered reftel points to MOFA International Counterterrorism Cooperation Division Deputy Director Miyako Ishimura and Ministry of Finance International Bureau Legal Research Office Deputy Director Wataru Kikuchi. Embassy Tokyo noted that a designation of Abdul Haq as a terrorist sponsor under UNSC Resolution 1267 would prohibit UN member states from engaging in any transactions with the individual. Ishimura stated that Japan shares U.S. concerns and appreciated our efforts to tell her government of the proposed designation. ZUMWALT
