National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking

The National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking is a four-year action plan that was established by the Government of Canada on June 6, 2012 to oppose human trafficking in Canada. In 2004, the government's Interdepartmental Working Group on Trafficking in Persons was mandated to create a national anti-human-trafficking plan, but the mandate went unfulfilled despite reminders from politicians and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Member of Parliament (MP) Joy Smith put forward motion C-153 in February 2007 to put a plan in place, and the House of Commons passed it unanimously. Smith began developing a proposal and released it in September 2010 under the title "Connecting the Dots". University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin helped guide Smith's writing of the proposal. Before the establishment of the NAP-CHT, a variety of people and organizations—including the 2009 and 2010 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Reports of the United States Department of State—criticized Canada for failing to have such a plan.

During the 2011 Canadian federal election, Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, promised to establish the NAP-CHT by 2012 and to invest CA$20 million into it. The Plan was established by the Government of Canada on schedule on June 28, 2012 with a budget of $25 million, $500,000 of which was to be used for supporting victims. The NAP-CHT's recommendations are divided into four categories called the "4 Ps": partnership, prevention, prosecution, and protection. Although Smith recommended that the government investigate ways in which prostitution law in Canada might be altered to emulate Sweden's Sex Purchase Act, thereby prosecuting those who purchase sexual acts and not those who perform them, the plan does not make any such legislative recommendations. The NAP-CHT replaced the IWG-TIP with the Human Trafficking Taskforce, chaired by Public Safety Canada and mandated with coordinating the plan's implementation and the generation of annual progress reports, to be made publicly available.

The National Action Plan was received positively by many, but not all, Canadian NGOs and law enforcement officials. Natasha Falle, founder and director of Sex Trade 101, said that, as an organization of sex trafficking victims, they were extremely pleased with the establishment of the NAP-CHT. When the Canadian government announced that the country's sex industry would no longer be allowed to employ foreign workers because of the risks of exploitation, abuse, and trafficking in that environment, Tim Lambrinos—leader of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada—said that he might challenge the policy because he believed that the government was "destroying an industry [and] creating a labour shortage." Bethany Hastie of McGill University, Shae Invidiata of Free-Them, and Andrea Burkhart of ACT Alberta all criticized the plan for focusing too much on law enforcement and not enough on victim services.