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THURSDAY, AUGUST 18, 2016
Vol. 4 Edition 33
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Wet fun, laughs at WAMBO
Jim Blake/The Chatham Voice
Ken “Crazy Legs” Murphy was only a few feet away from finishing his lap at the WAMBO cardboard boat races Saturday when his “Crazy Legs Special” began taking on water and capsized. After wading ashore, his only comment was “I should have named it ‘The Titanic.’” See story on page 3.
Canada’s hotbed for human trafficking
By Mary Beth Corcoran mary@chathamvoice.com
Editor’s note: This is the second part of what is now a three-part series on human trafficking in Ontario. “Human trafficking – the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons by improper means (such as force, abduction, fraud, coercion, deception, repeated provision of a controlled substance) for an illegal purpose, including sexual exploitation or forced labour.” – Ontario Women’s Directorate,
June 30, 2016 The very definition of human trafficking is enough to make parents hug their teens just a little closer, but to know that the Ontario government acknowledges Ontario as a major centre for human trafficking in Canada – accounting for roughly 65 per cent of police-reported cases nationally – is a huge wake-up call. On June 30, the Ontario Women’s Directorate (OWD) announced a strategy to end human trafficking, with a promise to invest $72 million
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for increasing awareness, co-ordination, investigation, prosecution and supports for victims. “Human trafficking is a complex and often hidden crime that results in serious and long-term trauma for survivors. Human traffickers prey on the most vulnerable in our society and use different tactics to control, abuse, exploit and profit from victims,” the announcement read. According to a spokesman for OWD, Deborah Lamb, Senior Communications Advisor, the strat-
egy is a four-year plan. “Drawing on feedback from stakeholders, expert analysis, research, successful initiatives from across the province and from other Canadian jurisdictions, the strategy rests on four pillars of action: provincial co-ordination and leadership, prevention and community supports, enhanced justice sector initiatives and Indigenous-led approaches to support new and existing culturally relevant services,” Lamb said. “Work is getting underway on all the pil-
lars and I look forward to sharing next steps ... in the coming months.” For Laurie Scott, MPP for Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock and Ontario PC Critic for Women’s Issues, what the Ontario government has promised since February is not enough. Scott introduced a private members’ bill, Saving the Girl Next Door Act, 2016 to allow the courts to issue a protective order for victims over the age of 15 to protect against a trafficker for a minimum of three years, allow survivors to
sue a trafficker as a form of restitution, and expand the provincial sex offender registry to include human trafficking as a sex offence. Canada, as a whole, and Ontario in particular given the prevalence of the crime here, have been called out by the United Nations, several anti-human trafficking non-profit groups such as Voice Found, and the U.S. State Department for not doing enough to combat the crime and provide support for victims.
Continued on page 2
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