Elene Lam is the executive director of Butterfly, a support network for Asian and migrant sex workers, and a sessional assistant professor at York University. Chanelle Gallant is an organizer and co-author, with Ms. Lam, ofwill expire in 2025. Both the federal Liberals and Ontario Conservatives claim that their governments have made progress in addressing human trafficking.
Stories about human trafficking are everywhere, but what do we actually know about human trafficking and how to prevent it? Having worked with people who have experienced violence and exploitative working conditions in the sex industry, what we find from the stories they tell us is that they share many of the same experiences as migrant workers who have faced sexual assault and wage theft from unscrupulous bosses across other industries in Canada.
In spite of this, we have watched as more and more sectors of society feel obligated to be involved in combatting human trafficking, including corporations, non-profits and governments. Governments are a major player: They allocate the funding and pass policies and laws that criminalize sex workers in the name of combatting the trafficking problem.
We have worked with agencies in Canada that genuinely care about human-trafficking victims and don’t realize that trafficking laws criminalize sex workers. But there are also anti-trafficking agencies that want to prohibit the sex industry at any cost, even if it endangers the rights and safety of sex workers.