Statistics Canada Article on Human Trafficking

The Statistics Canada publication Juristat published an article last week on Trafficking in persons in Canada, 2020 that offers an an overview of trends in human trafficking incidents, prior police contact among accused persons and the outcomes of cases that go through the court system.

Among the highlights:

• Police services in Canada reported 2,977 incidents of human trafficking—that is, recruiting, transporting, transferring, holding, concealing and exercising control over a person for the purposes of exploitation—between 2010 and 2020.
• More than half (57%) of the incidents involved human trafficking offences alone while 43% involved at least one other type of violation, most often related to the sex trade.
• The vast majority (96%) of detected victims of human trafficking were women and girls. In all, one in four (25%) victims were under the age of 18. 
• Just over half (52%) of all human trafficking incidents had no accused person identified in connection with the incident.
• The large majority (81%) of persons accused of human trafficking were men and boys. Most commonly, accused persons were aged 18 to 24 (41%), followed by those aged 25 to 34 (36%).
• Three-quarters (75%) of these accused had previously been implicated in other criminal activity. 
• Between 2009/2010 and 2019/2020, there were 834 cases completed in adult criminal courts that involved at least one charge of human trafficking.
• Human trafficking cases took almost twice as long to complete than violent adult criminal court cases. 
• As the most serious decision in adult criminal court, a finding of guilt was less common for cases involving human trafficking (12%) than for those involving sex trade charges (33%) or violent charges (48%).