Anti-trafficking policies and programming have received considerable attention and funding in Canada in the last decade. In Ontario, the first Strategy to End Human Trafficking was introduced in 2016 by the Liberal government, with a dedicated $72 million. In 2020, the Conservative government released its own Strategy, dedicating $307 million over five years. This presentation explores interviews with 22 service providers funded by the Province of Ontario to develop anti-trafficking programming. Interviews reveal the reliance on law enforcement and carceral systems of protection to both inform and address human trafficking. In most cases, funded organizations centralize the sex industry, including women and young people who trade sex and third parties, in their responses to trafficking. The anti-trafficking solutions being applied to experiences of exploitation, abuse, and labour are largely nestled in a neoliberal yet paternalistic framework that intersects with moral order and white supremacist ideologies. They locate trafficking in individuals while the structural and systemic drivers of exploitation and abuse remain unchallenged. The presentation then offers counter narratives to the anti-trafficking discourse being propelled in the province and Canada more widely, both based on interviews and other organizations and campaigns seeking justice and liberation for sex workers and other workers.
