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The files were always going to be ugly.
But the release of tens of millions of pages tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation has revealed something even darker than most people expected. Not just the crimes themselves, but the sheer number of powerful people who brushed up against Epstein's world and faced no consequences at all.
Epstein ran a sex trafficking network that preyed on girls and young women for decades. He was a convicted sex offender by 2008. And yet he kept traveling, kept corresponding with politicians and executives, kept getting access. Federal investigators knew about his crimes for years. A draft indictment was prepared in 2007. It was never used. Epstein pleaded to a state charge and got 18 months.
That is the real story. Not just that a monster existed, but that the systems we trust to stop monsters chose, repeatedly, not to.
What the Files Show
The American government signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act in November 2025, after a bipartisan group of lawmakers forced the issue past a resistant White House. The law required the DOJ to release all files without redacting names of government officials and public figures.
What happened next speaks volumes.
Bondi's DOJ released millions of pages but redacted the names of "politically exposed individuals and government officials" anyway, in violation of the law. Lawmakers from both parties called it out. At one point, Trump called the Epstein files "a big hoax." The DOJ announced no new charges would be coming.
Think about what that means. Nearly two decades of evidence of child sex trafficking. Hundreds of thousands of pages showing Epstein's network in detail. The official American response: nobody else did anything worth prosecuting.
This is not justice. It is the powerful protecting the powerful.
This Is Also a Canadian Story
This country has its own uncomfortable relationship with Epstein.
Records from the files confirm he traveled to Vancouver in 2014 and 2016 to attend TED conferences, despite being a registered sex offender. He stayed at luxury hotels on the waterfront. In at least one case, he masked his name on reservations. He was finally barred in 2018, but it took a decade after his conviction for the border to close.
Canada also has its own convicted sex trafficker in this orbit.
Fashion mogul Peter Nygard, found guilty of four counts of sexual assault in 2023, appears in the Epstein files through his connections to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly Prince Andrew. U.S. investigators were seeking to question him about visits to Nygard's Caribbean property.
Mountbatten-Windsor is one of the most prominent figures in the entire Epstein saga. He was stripped of his royal titles by King Charles III over the scandal.
This morning, on his 66th birthday, he was arrested by Thames Valley Police on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He has denied wrongdoing, but his name appears in the files hundreds of times. Released emails showed him forwarding confidential government reports to Epstein while serving as UK trade envoy.
Canada was not a passive bystander in this story.
Our border let a convicted sex offender walk through it for years. Our institutions intersect with the same networks.
We have standing to act.
The World Is Changing. International Accountability Is Real.
Anyone who thinks powerful people cannot be held accountable across borders stopped paying attention in January.
The United States military forcibly extracted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his country and flew him to New York to face drug trafficking charges. The operation violated the UN Charter. International law experts called it kidnapping. The Trump administration called it law enforcement.
The point is not whether it was legal. The point is that it happened.
A sitting head of state was abducted and is now standing trial in Manhattan. The US Supreme Court has already ruled that even if someone was brought to the United States illegally, American courts can still prosecute them. The doctrine is called Ker-Frisbie. If you can be physically dragged into a courtroom, you can be tried.
That precedent exists now. If the United States can kidnap a president it considers a criminal, other countries can certainly apply legal sanctions to individuals who enabled child sex trafficking.
Canada does not need to invade anyone.
We have a law specifically designed for this. We just need to use it.
There Is a Law for This
Most Canadians have never heard of the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act, also called the Sergei Magnitsky Law. Passed unanimously by Parliament in 2017, it is one of the most powerful human rights tools our government has.
The law allows Canada to impose targeted sanctions on foreign nationals who are responsible for, or complicit in, gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Those sanctions include asset freezes and travel bans. A person designated under this law cannot do business in Canada, enter Canada, or move money through Canadian institutions.
Crucially, it was designed for exactly these situations: when another country's justice system has failed. When powerful people commit serious crimes and their governments either cannot or will not act.
We Wrote a Great Law and Stopped Using It
Bill Browder is the man who lobbied for Magnitsky legislation around the world after his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was tortured and killed in a Russian prison. When Canada passed its law in 2017, Browder called it a victory. Then, in Senate committee testimony, he said this: "Since 2018, the Magnitsky Act has not been used in Canada. I scratch my head and I ask, why not?"
The criteria are clear. The law covers gross violations of internationally recognized human rights. Child sex trafficking is not a grey area. The systematic exploitation of children and young women by and for the ultra-wealthy is exactly what this legislation was designed to address.
Canada has 1,038 Magnitsky-style sanctions in place as of late 2025. Nearly all target officials from Russia, China, Myanmar, and Saudi Arabia. Not a single one has been applied in connection with Epstein's network.
What Kind of Country Do We Want to Be?
This is the editorial question.
Not "should Canada sanction someone without evidence," but "what does Canada stand for when the evidence is overwhelming and the American government has chosen to look away?"
We live in a moment when the American government is actively hostile to accountability for the wealthy. Trump's DOJ redacted names in violation of its own law. The president called the files a hoax. Bondi refused to apologize to victims who sat in the gallery of a congressional hearing and watched her testify.
Canada is not the United States. We have said that a lot lately, and it is increasingly important that we mean it.
Here in Langley and across the Fraser Valley, we are communities built on the idea that no one is above the law. That is not a partisan principle. It is a basic social contract. If you traffic children, if you enable someone who does, if you use your wealth to help a convicted predator move through the world unbothered, there should be a cost.
The Magnitsky Law exists to impose that cost when other systems fail. The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights has pushed for years for Canada to use this law more actively. Irwin Cotler, the legal scholar who championed the legislation, built it to be applied in exactly these situations.
The Carney government has positioned itself as a defender of Canadian values against a chaotic American political environment. Here is a chance to prove it. Canada should be asking whether the Magnitsky Law applies to individuals identified in the Epstein files as having facilitated child sex trafficking. If the answer is yes, we should act.
The victims of Epstein's network spent years being told that powerful men face no consequences. Some were 14 years old when this started. They deserve more than redacted files and press conferences. They deserve to see that somewhere, in some country, the law still applies to everyone.
Canada can be that country. We just have to choose to be.
References and Further Reading
Jeremy Assaly
Readers can submit a sanctions recommendation if they so choose
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