On a recent flight to Halifax, I sat next to a police officer who worked in human trafficking. He had just spoken on the topic at a conference in Vancouver and was making his way home across the country. He shared that Halifax has one of the highest rates of human trafficking. It is interesting to note that Statistics Canada reports that rates of human trafficking are in fact highest in Halifax (3.7 incidents per 100,000 population), followed by Thunder Bay (3.0), Ottawa (2.7), Peterborough (2.6) and Windsor (2.3).
In recognition of National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, Nogojiwanong Friendship Centre invited service providers to meet the Peterborough County Human Trafficking Coalition. It was an opportunity to learn more about how our community is providing resources to survivors and their loved ones and bringing awareness and education to Peterborough and area. It was also an opportunity to connect with area agencies who have provided us with an opportunity to support their clients.
The United Nations defines Human Trafficking (HT) as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons by improper means for an improper purpose including forced labour or sexual exploitation. More broadly, HT is the forced exploitation of a person for financial gain. There are three elements that must be present for HT to exist: force, fraud, and coercion, all of which must be facilitated by a third party, working behind the scenes to accrue a profit.
According to the Peterborough County Human Trafficking Coalition, the process of recruitment for domestic sex trafficking often follows the same pattern and has been broken down into the stages of commercial exploitation. These stages include luring; grooming and gaming; coercion and manipulation; exploitation; and recruitment. Traffickers target vulnerabilities of young individuals, often posing as boyfriends in the luring stages before taking them further through the stages to ensure survivors are dependent on them for both physical and emotional needs.
There are three main reasons why people do not or cannot leave, including fear of physical violence, fear of the unknown and the psychological hold and relational trauma bond that the trafficker has created between themselves and their survivors. These reasons make it even more challenging to support survivors, even after they have been identified.
In Canada, an estimated 71% to 93% of all cases can be classified as domestic sex trafficking and of these cases, 93% are female and 72% are under 25 years old. Shockingly, the average age of recruitment is between 13-14 years old. In our area, girls as young as 11 years of age are being actively recruited. Involvement in the child welfare system is the greatest risk for trafficking.
HT is a serious and on-going epidemic in Ontario, which accounts for 39% of the total Canadian population, and has accounted for just over two-thirds (68%) of all police reported HT incidents since 2009. From April 2021-December 2022, Victim Services of Peterborough and Northumberland supported survivors in 110 case files.
One of the strategies of the Coalition is to build a shared understanding of HT as an issue. It is pleasing to see the agencies listed under the Peterborough County Human Trafficking Coalition Team come together to address this issue. Since 2017, the Durham Region Human Trafficking Model has supported over 500 HT survivors in various stages of exploitation and the Peterborough County Human Trafficking Coalition team has chosen to follow the Durham Region model. For more information, contact Victim Services of Peterborough and Northumberland.
