Honourable Senator,
re: C-268 (minimum sentences for child trafficking)
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Permit me to urge you to invite your remaining Senate colleagues, who appear to be reluctant to send the above proposed legislation to committee, to do so this week.
The reasons are compelling and include the following:
1- The sexual exploitation of girls as young as twelve by traffickers must be addressed effectively in our country; the five-year minimum sentence created by the above would fill a major gap in the provisions of the trafficking section in our Criminal Code, which came into force in 2005. In two of the first convictions obtained under the new provisions, the offenders received respectively three years (Nakpangi) and two (Mark) for appalling exploitation of teen-age victims. Mark in fact appears to have spent only a week in prison after his conviction because of time spent in pre-trial custody.
2-As Assistant Law Professor Benjamin Perrin of the UBC Law Faculty has pointed out in his law review article, C-268 is consistent with Canada's international obligations, including the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of Children, etc, which Canada has both signed and ratified. Article 3(3) of it authorizes each state party to enact penalties consistent with the "grave nature" of the offenses, yet our Criminal Code does not now contain such penalties.
3-The minimum sentence feature of C-268 are perfectly acceptable from a constitutional perspective. Perrin cites in his article R. vs. Ferguson in which Chief Justice McLachlin gives reasons for all her Supreme Court of Canada colleagues. The test is whether a penalty is disproportionate. No-one could reasonably say that five years in prison disproportionate in cases such as the Nakpangi and Mark ones.
In short, please attend in the chamber for the debate when C-268 is called and do your utmost to send it to committee the same day. Doing so will demonstrate Canada's commitment to make things more difficult for human predators of our vulnerable young people.
Thank you.
David Kilgour
