Canada’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2017-2022 - Public Safety Canada - Progress report for fiscal year 2017-2018

Public Safety Canada and its various portfolio agencies are playing an important role in advancing the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda over the span of Canada’s National Action Plan (the Action Plan) on WPS 2017-2022. In leading Canada’s domestic response to addressing radicalization to violence, the department coordinates and develops policy expertise, mobilizes community outreach, and enhances research in countering radicalization to violence (CRV) through the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence (Canada Centre). In addition, Public Safety Canada’s Serious and Organized Crime Division leads the Government of Canada’s effort to combat human trafficking domestically, including by supporting Canada’s G7 commitments in this area. The Correctional Service of Canada, an agency within the Public Safety portfolio, is the federal agency responsible for administering sentences of two years or more, along with supervising offenders under conditional release, as well as capacity-building activities in international correctional services.

Countering radicalization to violence

Completed Activities:

Building on past work led by Public Safety – especially through the Kanishka Project Research Initiative (2011-2016), which funded several studies integrating gender and diversity-based analysis to understand and address radicalization to violence – the Canada Centre has, from the outset, woven gender analysis into CRV-related research, partnerships, and program investment through the Community Resilience Fund. Leading international approaches to CRV to integrate gender and diversity considerations, and, similarly, early investment by the Canada Centre in initiatives to develop training and tools for frontline practitioners (e.g. in health and social services), as well as to evaluate multi-agency approaches to CRV, include a central focus on gender and diversity.
During 2017-2018, the Canada Centre undertook national consultations in preparation for developing a national CRV strategy, as well as to raise awareness about the issues involved, including on gender and other identity-related aspects of CRV. As the Canada Centre continues work to develop, implement, and monitor progress of the national strategy, gender analysis will have a central place. Finally, a highlight of the last year was the Canada Centre’s core role in supporting Canada’s hosting of the G7 Security Ministers, including through co-organizing Roma Lyon Group working sessions, which featured an Ad Hoc Meeting on Integrating Gender Considerations in Anti-Crime and Counter-Terrorism Efforts.

Results and Progress:

For community consultations on a national strategy, the Canada Centre developed and executed a stakeholder engagement plan featuring guiding principles of inclusion and collaboration that emphasized engagement with women’s and other identity-based groups, non-governmental organizations and community leaders. More generally, questions about gender and diversity featured in a public online consultation, which closed May 3, 2018, as well as in the dialogue with a wide range of other community-serving agencies and organizations that participated in the consultations. More than 100 meetings with over 275 organizations were held. They included meetings with other levels of government, youth groups, community organizations and leaders, law-enforcement officials, academics, religious groups, and education sectors. Initial findings from these consultations have been posted, and the complete results of the online consultation will be released in the coming months.

For the 2018 G7 Security Ministers’ meeting, all concept papers and discussion papers prepared by Public Safety incorporated gender analysis and considerations, while the G7 Security Ministers’ final outcomes included advice solicited from the Prime Minister’s Gender Equality Advisory Council. Through such activities, the Canada Centre contributed to Canada’s G7 leadership by advancing the international discussion on how to integrate considerations relating to women and girls and other gender-related issues into CRV and counter-terrorism (CT) programming and policy.

Current Community Resilience Fund-supported projects that incorporate considerations of gender and other features of diversity include initiatives to evaluate multi-agency approaches for cases of individuals at potentially high risk of criminality or harm; and projects building resources, training, and tools for CRV practitioners. Other projects integrate considerations related to women or gender, in the course of activities such as education and awareness raising, working with individuals at elevated risk, as well as better understanding processes of radicalization to violence. To date, 13 projects have been announced, with more to follow. While many are in early stages, in the coming year the Canada Centre will be gathering and analyzing data from the Community Resilience Fund projects through performance measurement, which will include Gender-based Analysis Plus (GBA+).

Human trafficking

Completed Activities:

The Human Trafficking Taskforce, led by Public Safety Canada, is the dedicated focal point for federal anti-human trafficking efforts. The framework of cooperation and collaboration of the key federal departments and agencies that make up the Human Trafficking Taskforce, along with efforts by and coordination with provinces and territories law-enforcement agencies, and stakeholders across the country, provides the structure under which Canada’s Human Trafficking initiatives have been executed. In 2017-2018, the Human Trafficking Taskforce met five times.
Since 2013, the Government of Canada has held quarterly conference calls focusing on trafficking in persons generally, and on labour trafficking specifically, to support information sharing and the coordination of efforts. Participants in these conference calls are responsible for a wide variety of trafficking in persons-related subjects and represent departments and agencies from various jurisdictions across Canada.
During the North American Leaders’ Summit of 2014, Canada, Mexico and the US committed to work collectively to combat human trafficking in all its forms and to work toward improving services for the victims of this crime. This commitment translated into officials’ level working group meetings in Washington, D.C., in September 2014, where the issue of victim services was highlighted, and in Ottawa in December 2015, where best practices in law enforcement related to human trafficking were highlighted. The North American Leaders’ Summit in June 2016 re-confirmed the leaders’ desire for work to proceed on human trafficking. Following the 2016 Summit, the third meeting of the working group took place in Mexico City in November 2016 and focused on the topic of prevention. The fourth meeting of the working group took place in Washington, D.C., in November 2017 and focused on partnerships.
Public Safety Canada’s Grants and Contributions Program to Combat Serious and Organized Crime, which includes human trafficking, supports initiatives, research, partnership building, and projects that raise awareness and provide support services to survivors of human trafficking. In 2017-2018, Public Safety Canada funded two housing projects in Quebec and Nova Scotia, aimed at developing a human trafficking housing protocol for emergency housing by partnering with existing shelters and non-profit housing providers to address the housing needs of human trafficking victims, particularly vulnerable groups including women and girls, youth, LGBTQ2S^{Footnote 1} , and Indigenous populations. Additionally, Public Safety Canada is currently in the process of identifying a non-governmental organization to implement a national human trafficking hotline, to be initiated in 2018.
On April 19, 2018, Public Safety Canada held a roundtable with experts from academia, non-governmental and Indigenous organizations on gender and trafficking in persons. These discussions focused on how gender considerations can be better integrated into efforts to counter human trafficking in advance of the G7 Security Ministers Meeting (April 23-24). At the Security Ministers Meeting, G7 countries agreed to take clear steps to address violence against women and marginalized groups, specifically in the context of trafficking in persons. View full list of commitments.

Results and Progress: Budget 2018 announced $14.51 million over five years and $2.89 million per year ongoing to implement a national human trafficking hotline that will allow victims to easily access the help they need. The 2012-2016 National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking underwent a formal horizontal evaluation, the findings of which were published in December 2017. The evaluation recommendations called for improving capacity to collect national data on human trafficking; implementing a mechanism to connect victims with access to dedicated services; and forging closer partnerships with other levels of government, Indigenous communities, civil society, the private sector, and bilateral and multilateral partners. The evaluation will help inform the Government of Canada’s way forward in countering human trafficking. Public Safety Canada is also holding a national consultative process on human trafficking in September 2018 to gather stakeholder views on existing challenges and gaps in the federal response to trafficking in persons, as well as international best practices, with a view to inform the new Government of Canada national strategy to counter human trafficking.

Correctional service of canada