Understanding labour trafficking in Canada

Labour trafficking in Canada is understudied in criminology. There is an overrepresentation of sexual exploitation research within human trafficking research and not much is known about labour trafficking. Even less is known about labour trafficking in Canada as labour trafficking is a complex crime with a few different theories explaining it. For my Honours research project, I used an annotated bibliography method to represent the current research available. I searched for articles related to labour trafficking in Canada and I also borrowed some search strategies and terms from the research librarians. I looked for a variety of sources including CanLII and newspaper cases, governmental and NGO reports, and academic research articles to understand labour trafficking. There has been some research calling for legal reform and policy recommendations on labour trafficking (Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, 2022). There have been a few labour trafficking cases in Canada which were prosecuted by the judicial system and reported to the police. There were some cases in the news about labour trafficking but not found in legal decisions from CanLII. Current Legislation includes the Criminal Code R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act S.C. 2001, c. 27. This legislation is included because it outlines human trafficking and the punishments for it and the legislation acknowledges this crime and makes direct references to it. There has been some advocacy work done by non-profit organizations and some suggestions about government intervention, but the data is complex. This study is exploratory, so limitations include low generalizability and more generic descriptions of labour trafficking. More research is needed to understand the specifics of labour trafficking in Canada.