Part 1-THE CRIME: Human trafficking is increasing across Ontario—police and service providers can’t keep up

Traffick Stop is a four-part series covering a range of factors in the fight against human trafficking in Peel ahead of National Human Trafficking Awareness Day on February 22. The region has been a hub of this crime in Ontario for years. The series will look at how it happens, what is being done to stop it, the obstacles that continue to get in the way—and how to remove them, once and for all. 

For those directly impacted by human trafficking, there is a sense of hopelessness, even before the crime infiltrates their life. 

“I knew in my mind that this could happen to her,” a mother of a human trafficking survivor told researchers from Family Services of Peel (FSP). “And I still could not stop it. I could not stop it with the help of the police. I could not stop it with the help of social workers. I could not stop it with the help of Peel Children’s Centre. It is like a snowballing effect, there is nothing in place to help us parents to help stop this process.”

Her crushing story was shared as part of the information gathering for what would coalesce into the most detailed look at human trafficking in the Region of Peel, published in 2019 by FSP. 

It found that human trafficking is increasing across Ontario, with Peel at the centre of the storm, and becoming more complex and harder to detect, while those tasked with picking up the shards of a survivor’s shattered life when they finally escape trafficking are vastly under-resourced. 

The mother’s hopelessness was not an outlier.

“We must have called 100 places trying to get services,” another mother told researchers. “Even the psychiatrists at the hospital, they have no help, they can’t lead you, they can’t tell you where to go, they don’t know…There’s absolutely nothing there for abused women.”

Since that seminal study was published nearly six years ago, advances have been made to help survivors in Peel and across Ontario, but in many ways the situation has only gotten worse. 

Policy makers and elected officials, ignoring the sense of urgency the study conveyed through the demand for a public health crisis declaration, have let the situation worsen. Many in the public remain unaware about this crime; service providers are overwhelmed by the number of survivors and victims in need of assistance and traffickers are abusing more women with new tactics that continue to make the job of the police increasingly difficult. 

“This crime does not sleep,” Sarah Rogers, the executive director of Victim Services of Peel told Region of Peel councillors in June of last year, delegating alongside other service providers about the struggle to help the growing number of survivors in need across the region. 

Despite the vast spread of the crime, large segments of the public still do not understand exactly what it is.

A 2021 survey conducted by the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking found that 73 percent of Canadians are concerned that human trafficking is a significant issue in the country, but 77 percent of respondents acknowledged they did not believe they could recognize the signs of the crime if it were presented to them. The survey also found misconceptions about the crime were rampant. Approximately 44 percent of respondents believed sex trafficking involved smuggling or kidnapping—human smuggling is its own issue—when in fact victims are often lured and trafficked by someone they know, usually a friend or family member. 

According to the Statistics Canada 2023 Juristat report on trafficking in persons (another term for human trafficking which is used in the Criminal Code), these crimes involve the “recruitment, transportation or harbouring of a person, and they include controlling and influencing movements with the goal of exploitation or facilitating the exploitation of a person.” Most often the crime involves sexual exploitation or forced labour.

The Pointer’s series focuses primarily on domestic sex trafficking, which occurs in every city across the province. 

A barrier to public and police understanding of the issue is the incomplete data available about this crime, creating a fractured view of its true scope. 

In Peel, trafficking in persons has increased from a single case in 2006 (trafficking in persons was officially added to the Criminal Code of Canada in 2005) to 21 cases in 2023. Yet, the Anti-Human Trafficking Services Program run by the Region of Peel assisted 613 survivors and individuals at risk between 2022 and 2023, an 801 percent increase from the year before. 

Last year, the numbers increased a further 116 percent with service providers assisting 1,323 survivors or individuals at risk of sex trafficking. There are numerous reasons for the vast discrepancies in the data. The crime is chronically underreported. The FSP Needs Assessment in 2019 found the majority of survivors do not trust police or other institutions set up to help them. A 2020 survey conducted by FSP of agencies providing services to human trafficking survivors found nearly 95 percent of the 91 survivors these organizations assisted, pointed to a “lack of trust in the system” as the number one reason they refused to come forward for help or to report what happened to them. Feelings of shame or embarrassment; lack of knowledge about available services and fear of retaliation were also identified as barriers to coming forward. 

(Family Services of Peel)

The discrepancy between Statistics Canada data and information collected locally strongly suggests the actual number of cases in the region could be more than 60 times higher than 21 incidents captured by police data. This means the 4,500 cases identified by police between 2013 and 2023 across Canada could be closer to 284,000 incidents of human trafficking. 

For context, there were 778 homicide victims in Canada last year.

So where is this happening? The short answer: in cities big and small across Ontario, but the vast majority (86 percent) occur in large urban areas like Peel where it is easier for traffickers to find and move victims with various transportation options. There are more people and more potential customers. 

It happens in large Ontario cities more than anywhere else in Canada. In 2023, the province reported an average of 2.1 cases per 100,000 people, higher than the national average of 1.4. Peel Region stands out as a particularly troublesome area, with 62 percent of Canada’s human trafficking cases linked to the Greater Toronto Area in 2023. A significant percentage of these victims—63 percent in Ontario—are Canadian citizens, challenging the widespread belief that trafficking mainly involves individuals coming from other countries. Although, with the rapid influx of asylum seekers and international students into Peel, this dynamic is starting to change, according to service providers.

Gurpreet Malhotra, CEO of Indus Community Services, told The Pointer in October last year how young girls from foreign countries who came to Canada as students or migrant workers are being sexually exploited by their landlords who act like caring uncles or aunts, before employing exploitative techniques to lure them into sex work.

"The young person is paying $16,000 a year for college tuition, and that is a huge draw, so a huge amount of pressure on a young person who has not been to the big city or to Canada before,” Malhotra said, adding the exploitation can continue for months and involve numerous forms of trauma. 

“Then the perpetrator says, ‘I took pictures. I have photographs. I can share them with family and then put them all over social media. You now need to also sleep with these people.’ And before you know it, they've been pressed into a life of prostitution under threat of losing their home, or losing their schooling, or losing their reputation."

Gurpreet Malhotra, CEO of Indus Community Services, says service providers are seeing more international students in Peel exploited in the sex trade.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer files)

While this form of exploitation involves forging a new relationship with a recent immigrant, far more often traffickers are looking for easier victims to exploit—and that is often people they already know. Over 91 percent of trafficking victims are preyed upon by individuals they are familiar with; intimate partners are involved in 34 percent of these cases. Traffickers often exploit emotional vulnerabilities, presenting themselves as caring and supportive figures, only to entrap their victims in a distressing cycle of exploitation that feels inescapable.

Human trafficking often starts with a spark. A handsome man approaching a young, often vulnerable, woman. The average age of survivors and victims is 17; 90 percent of them are female. The handsome man starts up a conversation, either in person or more commonly online through an increasing number of chat apps, often with encrypted messages. The relationship begins, and everything is perfect. He showers her with gifts, praise and attention. This is the grooming phase. During this time, he will begin isolating her from her friends and family, slowly enforcing more and more control over her life. This often involves emotional, physical and sexual abuse in some form. Eventually, when things have gotten so bad, the young woman will do whatever she can to get back to that honeymoon stage when things were so happy. Then the trafficking begins. 

“Traffickers hone in on those people where their basic needs aren't being met and where they're desperate, and it's through preying on that desperation and then often promising them the moon, whether it be a good job, permanent residency in Canada, citizenship or the promise of unconditional love, a family and a life together. It's that promise of hope that's used, especially with vulnerable communities, to then exploit them into horrible, horrible circumstances,” Julia Drydyk, the executive director of the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, tells The Pointer. 

Traffickers have become increasingly skilled in their methods, making it more challenging for authorities to detect and stop these crimes. The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking describes various means traffickers use to exploit victims. According to accounts from survivors and service providers, the most prevalent form of sex trafficking occurs through escort services, where victims are moved between hotels, motels, and short-term rentals, often advertised through online platforms. This allows traffickers to remain mobile, making it difficult for law enforcement to track their activities across different jurisdictions. Another common form is illicit massage businesses, where trafficking is concealed under the facade of legal spa services, which allows traffickers to evade detection while exploiting victims behind closed doors.

Traffickers will also engage in street-level solicitation, forcing victims to approach potential customers in public spaces, making them highly susceptible to violence and run-ins with the police. Canada’s laws around this form of sex work are convoluted, but are designed with the intent to criminalize the act of purchasing sex, but not the sex worker. However, these laws have been criticized for forcing sex workers, including victims of human trafficking, into dangerous situations and locations with Johns who are looking to avoid the police. 

Increasingly the digital world has become a hive for human trafficking. Victims are forced into participating in the production of sexually explicit content which is recorded and then distributed without their consent. This further traps them in a cycle of abuse as these videos, which often end up on popular porn sites like PornHub, are nearly impossible to completely erase from the internet. Many forms of this digital exploitation can be carried out with the trafficker being physically present, making it more challenging for intervention efforts, as victims may be trapped behind a screen instead of in a location that can be identified and targeted by police.

Recognizing the warning signs of human trafficking can be crucial for friends and family to identify and help the victim avoid or escape from exploitation. Covenant House, a leading organization supporting survivors outlines key indicators that someone may be trapped in a trafficking situation. Victims often display unusual fear, anxiety, or irritability, and may seem disoriented, malnourished, or physically unwell. They might avoid eye contact, have inconsistencies in their stories, or appear controlled by someone who won’t let them speak for themselves. Other red flags include frequent pickups by different cars, having sexualized social media profiles, lacking money or ID, or possessing a second phone. Parents should also be alert to changes in their child’s behaviour, such as secretiveness about their whereabouts, sudden possession of expensive items(including handbags or jewelry), or signs of physical abuse, which could indicate they are being lured or trafficked.

For Peel Regional Police, the lack of trust that is common among survivors is exacerbated in a region that is largely visible minorities, many of whom already have complex relationships with law enforcement. This is particularly true of the region’s Black communities, which experience disproportionate use of force, pushing a large wedge between Black survivors and the desire to come forward and report their experience. 

"We are working with a number of police agencies across the social services sector," Nav Chhinzer, a superintendent with Peel police’s 22 Division, told The Pointer, pointing to the Region of Peel Anti-human Trafficking Service Providers Committee. “We're also looking for programs developed to help those that are in the process, through investing in techniques, through community partnerships, and also through community outreach,” he said. “(If) we don't know where it is or what's happening; we can't help. But more importantly, we are here to help those survivors.”

The 2019 Needs Assessment from FSP described the impact of human trafficking, both on the survivors and the surrounding communities as “unprecedented”. 

“It is integral that we do as much as we can to help unravel the pull of the sex trafficking industry, in order to have a significant, systemic impact on the industry’s rising rates,” the document concludes. 

Following the report’s release, small steps have been made. The Region of Peel, in collaboration with a number of community organizations created a services hub where human trafficking survivors could go to access a wide variety of supports. The Region, in collaboration with the Elizabeth Fry Society also launched new shelter spaces dedicated to human trafficking survivors. The study found unmet housing needs was lacking in Peel, leaving victims with few places to go if they were trying to escape their trafficker. 

But overall, according to Sandra Rupnarain, the executive director FSP, the systemic change required to address human trafficking and help survivors has not happened. 

“The systemic approach that we are advocating for is not happening and I think that’s the problem right there. You’re talking about areas essential for people to survive, a long term support system,” Rupnarain tells The Pointer.

Since 2019, “a complex issue has become more complex,” Rupnarain says. This means that in order to truly understand the changing dynamics of human trafficking, the needs assessment must be updated. From the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, the increasing number of asylum seekers and the rise of online trafficking and exploitation, none of these were considered as part of the needs assessment.

“If we don’t have a systems approach than we’re not going to have a system that includes marginalized and racialized communities which we see after COVID and the increase in immigration and international students, increasing climate change and refugees. That’s a whole big pot that never existed when we did this needs assessment, and that exists right now,” Rupnarain says.

In Part 2 of Traffick Stop The Pointer explores the services available to human trafficking survivors, the battles for funding that play out among them, and what law enforcement agencies are doing to help address the growing problem. 

-With files from Paige Peacock

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]

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