Canada’s privacy laws are one of the “real barriers” to addressing the important issue of cross-border sex trafficking, says the outgoing US ambassador to Canada.
Sex trafficking is one of several border security concerns that have been routinely discussed between the two countries under the Biden administration, says Ambassador David Cohen, long before US President-elect Donald Trump began pressuring Canada and Mexico to address irregular migration and drug trafficking or risk. punitive tariffs.
While Cohen notes that progress has been made on those fronts, he said there is still work to be done on other border issues.
“There is no mention in the president-elect’s social media post of a problem we have with sex trafficking between Canada and the United States,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview broadcast Sunday. The west block.
“Sex trafficking between the United States and Canada, and also between Mexico and the United States, is a major problem and is one of the areas of real focus for our Customs and Border Protection personnel (in the United States).”
Cohen said the biggest issue was proper information sharing and cooperation between Canadian and U.S. law enforcement agencies, particularly privacy laws surrounding the National Sex Offender Registry.
Canadian law states that registration information is only available to police for limited investigative purposes. In contrast, data on American sex offenders from across the country is openly accessible to the public and easily shared among law enforcement agencies.
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“One of the real barriers to full cooperation, perhaps as the United States would like to see it, is the strict privacy rules and regulations that exist in Canada, unlike in the United States,” he said.
When asked if the United States felt those laws protected sex traffickers, Cohen responded: “Correct.”
Cohen said legislation is being considered in Canada after talks with the United States that would give convicted sex offenders “a lower level of privacy protection.”
Canada and the United States also entered into negotiations in 2022 for a bilateral agreement under the US Clarification of Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, which would improve cross-border data sharing between law enforcement agencies. .
The latest report on human trafficking in the United States He said that while Canada meets minimum standards to combat human trafficking, there are gaps in both police data collection and victim services and protections, with the latter considered “inadequate.”
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Agent Robert Garcia said in a social media post on X in October that agents in the Swanton sector, which covers Vermont’s border with Quebec, detained more than 19,000 people from 97 countries in the last year, more than in the last 17 years. set.
Cohen said there have also been “very important conversations” during his tenure between federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous leaders about how to address the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, “which is another form of border control that is very important.” ”.
At the same time, he noted that Canada remains concerned about the smuggling of illegal firearms from the United States, which officials say is the main source of weapons used in crimes in Canada.
The current debate over border security has focused on irregular migration and fentanyl trafficking, after Trump promised to impose 25 percent tariffs on all products from Canada and Mexico over this issue.
Cohen said those issues have also been concerns for the Biden administration, and that diplomatic and high-level talks have “moved some of the levers” toward improving security.
Although encounters of migrants seeking to enter the US through the Canadian land border saw a 306 percent year-over-year increase in June, the number has since decreased by 50 percent to 1,792 in September, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Statistics.
The agency says it seized more than 5,000 kilograms of illegal drugs at the Canadian border between October 2023 and September 2024. That included 19.5 kilograms of fentanyl, an increase of more than 200 percent from two years earlier.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told MPs last week that Canada will commit more personnel and equipment to border security before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.
Cohen said Trump’s proposed tariffs would have “significant economic impacts” on both sides of the border and could even increase inflation, which Trump has promised to “get rid of.”
But the ambassador also noted that it was too early to say definitively what the impact might be, or even whether the tariffs will be implemented.
“All we’ve seen about this policy is a one-paragraph post on Truth Social, and that’s not a complete policy,” he said. “It doesn’t necessarily reflect what the tariffs would be.
“Tariffs are not imposed through social media posts.”
Sex trafficking survivors seeking help can contact Human trafficking in Canada 24/7 hotline at 1-833-900-1010.
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