Liberals seek to address U.S. ask for sharing police data on sex offenders

The government's border plan appears to fulfill a U.S. ask for greater police collaboration to combat cross-border sex trafficking, but advocates say more needs to be done at home.

A measure in the federal government’s new border security plan to expand the sharing of police data on sex offenders appears to answer a U.S. request to help combat cross-border sex trafficking.

But advocates say there still needs to be greater collaboration and data sharing between Canadian police forces for sex trafficking investigations within the country, where a majority of victims are Canadian women and girls.

“There’s a profound failure of Canada’s justice system in serving survivors of human trafficking and especially sex trafficking,” said Julia Drydyk, executive director of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking (CCEHT), in an interview with Global News.

The $1.3-billion border security plan includes a proposal first mentioned in the government’s fall economic statement to amend the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to “enhance” the RCMP’s ability to share information about “high-risk travellers” with domestic and international partners, officials announced Tuesday.

“As well, we will enhance and expand information and intelligence sharing between federal, provincial, territorial and Indigenous authorities,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told reporters.

“Throughout, there will be a sharp focus on fentanyl, human smuggling and organized transnational crime at our borders.”

Canadian law currently states information in the National Sex Offender Registry is only available to police for limited investigative purposes within Canada. By contrast, U.S. sex offender data from across the country is openly accessible to the public and is easily shared between federal, state and local police forces.

In an interview on The West Block earlier this month, David Cohen, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, told Global News the “heightened privacy rules and regulations that exist in Canada” regarding sex offenders was “one of the real barriers to full cooperation” with the U.S. government on combating sex trafficking, which he called a “significant issue.”