Girls dressed as brides in cages march during a promotional event for the movie "Daca Bobul nu moare" ("If the Seed doesn't die") directed by Sinisa Dragin and to draw attention to the dangers of human trafficking and sexual exploitation, in central Bucharest November 19, 2011.(REUTERS)
Glen Stone, QMI Agency, Winnipeg Sun
When most people think of slavery, they think of the horrific trade in African peoples, kidnapped or sold for lifelong toil and abuse in the Caribbean and the U.S.
And most of us think the practice died off after the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and all that.
If there’s a Canadian connection in the popular version of slavery, it’s our role as the end point of the Underground Railroad — the secret system of getting escaped slaves to freedom.
The whisper in the slave cabins of the American South was that if you followed the North Star long enough, you would get to the promised land of Canada, where slavery was outlawed.
While the human auctions, whipping houses and slave-catchers have disappeared from the U.S., slavery is still alive and well there and around the world.
You will even find it here in our own backyard.
Just last month, an Ontario man was convicted of human trafficking. He had forced a young woman into prostitution against her will, taking every penny she earned at gunpoint.
By the way, he got a four year prison sentence and a lifetime ban on owning firearms. For some reason, the judge neglected to have him torn apart by wild dogs.
The victim is just one of the estimated 2.5 million people around the world who are trapped in slavery at any given time, according to the United Nations.
While more than half of slaves are found in Asia and the Pacific, it is a global scourge involving 161 countries as sources, transit points or destinations.
And you will find about 11% of those slaves in industrialized countries, including Canada. The RCMP says at least 800 people are trafficked (that is, sold into slavery) in this country every year.
That’s not to mention the more than 2,200 future slaves who pass through our nation on their way to sexual exploitation, forced drug addiction, torture and death in the United States.
In fact, Canada is considered a key way station in the lucrative American slave trade, as it is easier to smuggle people across our border with the States than any other entry method.
And this is big business. The last estimate cited by the U.N., from 2005, was that human trafficking produced $31.6 billion U.S. in profits every year, with most of that money being generated in the western world.
In fact, humans are the second-biggest part of the international black market. Only the trade in drugs is bigger than the trade in men, women and children.
And speaking of that part of the nightmare, nearly half of the 2.5 million slaves in the world are children. Nearly all suffer through physical and/or sexual violence.
Canada, sorry to say, has been far behind in the global fight to end slavery.
We didn’t even have a law against human trafficking until 2005, and there is still no minimum sentence.
The first time that law was used, the victim was not a foreigner, not a naive Eastern European teen tricked into prostitution, or a Filipino forced to work for no money under threat of deportation.
Canada’s first human trafficking conviction involved a 13-year-old Canadian girl, who was being bought and sold on Craigslist.
That’s an example of why Canada is developing a reputation as a sex tourism destination for perverts and pedophiles.
Canada used to mean freedom for escaped slaves. Too often, we’re now the place where slavery starts, not where it ends.
VAST is thrilled to pick up on our ongoing "Vineyard Spotlight" series of interviewing Vineyard pastors and leaders who are responding to human trafficking within their own communities and on a global level. Below, Kathy Maskell interviews Barb Boswell of the Blue Route Vineyard in Media, PA. We know you'll be inspired by hearing Barb's heart as well as all the intentional and prayerful ways her church as responded in particular to sex trafficking, including sending out two leaders to Southeast Asia. Check out the local event they're planning for February 14, "Saving Someone's Sweet Heart": 
BB: Both. We support Love146's ministry, IJM, and home-grown missionaries, a couple who are in SE Asia. 
A Ge
