Canada’s privacy laws limit cross-border sex trafficking probes: U.S. envoy

Ambassador David Cohen says progress has been made on strengthening Canada-U.S. border security, but sex trafficking remains a 'significant issue.'

Canada’s privacy laws are one of the “real barriers” to addressing the significant issue of cross-border sex trafficking, the outgoing U.S. ambassador to Canada says.

Sex trafficking is one of several border security concerns that have been routinely discussed between the two countries under the Biden administration, Ambassador David Cohen says, long before U.S. president-elect Donald Trump began pushing Canada and Mexico to address irregular migration and drug trafficking or risk punishing tariffs.

While Cohen points out progress has been made on those fronts, he said there was still work to do on other border issues.

“Not mentioned in the president-elect’s social media post is a problem we have with sex trafficking between Canada and the United States,” he told Mercedes Stephenson in an interview that aired Sunday on The West Block.

“Sex trafficking between the United States and Canada, and between Mexico and the United States as well, is a significant issue, and it is one of the real focus areas of our Customs and Border Protection personnel (in the U.S.)”

Cohen said the biggest issue was adequate information sharing and cooperation between Canadian and American law enforcement agencies — particularly privacy laws surrounding the National Sex Offender Registry.

Canadian law states information in the registry is only available to police for limited investigative purposes. By contrast, U.S. sex offender data from across the country is openly accessible to the public and is easily shared between police forces.

“One of the real barriers to full cooperation, maybe the way the United States would like to see it, is the heightened privacy rules and regulations that exist in Canada, as opposed to the United States,” he said.