Human trafficking in Canada

Human trafficking in Canada is prohibited by law, and is considered a criminal offence whether it occurs entirely within Canada or involves the "transporting of persons across Canadian borders. Public Safety Canada (PSC) defines human trafficking as "the recruitment, transportation, harbouring and/or exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person, typically through sexual exploitation or forced labour. It is often described as a modern form of slavery."

Between 2009 and 2018, police services in Canada have reported 1,708 incidents of human trafficking. In this period, Nova Scotia and Ontario recorded average annual rates higher than the national average. Accounting for 39% of the total Canadian population, Ontario has accounted for 68% of all police-reported human trafficking incidents since 2009; Nova Scotia, on the other hand, accounts for 3% of the overall population and 6% of all human trafficking incidents. According to Statistics Canada, evidence suggests that Nova Scotia, and Halifax in particular, are part of a corridor that is frequently used to "transport victims of human trafficking from Atlantic Canada to larger urban centres elsewhere in Canada."

Human trafficking has become a significant legal and political issue in the country, and Canadian legislators have been criticized for having failed to deal with the problem in a more systematic way. In 2007, the Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons was formed in British Columbia, making it the first province of Canada to address human trafficking in a formal manner. In 2010 came the biggest human trafficking case in Canadian history, which involved the dismantling of the Dömötör-Kolompár criminal organization. On 6 June 2012, the Government of Canada established the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking in order to oppose human trafficking; the Human Trafficking Taskforce was subsequently established to replace the Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons as the body responsible for the development of public policy related to human trafficking in Canada.

In 2019, the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking launched the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline, funded in part by PSC, to provide crisis response to people being trafficked and tip reporting.

U.S. State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons placed Canada in "Tier 1" in 2017.