Recently, I watched the documentary soft white underbelly. It’s a series of interviews about people who are often left unseen like drug dealers and users, trafficking victims and strippers to name some examples. The stories that captivated me the most followed the lives of women Prostitutes or sex workers, the story of their life and how they ended up in the situation that they are. Most interviews that were conducted discussed sexual abuse, however I noticed that in most situations women were trafficked, leading to their profession. This led me to thinking about something that isn’t talked about enough in Canadian media, human trafficking but especially in northern Ontario.
These are facts about human trafficking in Canada that I found in the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies library archives:
The incidence of trafficking is widely believed to be under-reported. However, this is what the data tells us:
- In 2019, there were 511 cases in Canada reported to the police (where trafficking was the most serious violation)
- According to the RCMP’s Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre, over 96% of identified cases in Canada since 2005 were domestic (not international) trafficking cases
- Between 2009 and 2016, two thirds (66%) of cases in Canada were reported in Ontario
- Trafficking cases are more often reported to police in urban areas, with almost half of all trafficking cases between 2009 and 2016 being reported in the census metropolitan areas of Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal
- Between 2009 and 2016, the majority (95%) of victims/survivors in cases reported to police were female
- Between 2009 and 2016, over a quarter (27%) of victims/survivors in cases reported to police were under the age of 18
It’s important to note that service agencies provide higher estimates than police-collected data. For comparison, in a study of sex trafficking of women and girls, 266 service agencies across the country collectively identified over 5,500 trafficked or sexually exploited girls (under 18 years of age) seeking service and supports in 2012 alone.
My experience with human trafficking happened when I was 16. My friend had gotten invited to a party by a boy she was interested in, however this wasn’t just any party. It was in a garage full of boys, some we went to high school with and others we didn’t know but seemed old. There were no girls other than me and my friend. Being stupid and naive we didn’t see anything wrong with that and stayed. The guys eventually encouraged us to drink quite a bit, and that’s when things got weird. They started showing us strange videos and pictures, of tons of money, cars and drugs (All of my passions at the time). Then came a video of one of the guys shooting a man dead in the neck, cornered. That’s when I knew things weren’t right. I had a curfew of 11 and had driven there, and by the time I realized I needed to leave it was close to 11 but I had drank a lot. My friend wanted to stay since I was drunk driving and said that her mom was going to pick her up. Her mom did not pick her up there.
The alcohol they gave us was drugged and soon after I left she was driven to someone else’s house. I only found out what happened recently while meeting up with her. While at that house she took a substance that she didn’t know and ended up being driven to the woods, where she was supposed to be picked up by traffickers. Her mom found her but this really affected her mentally, and with reason. After it happened, they filed a police report against the boy who had invited us and orchestrated everything. Nothing happened other than that boy threatening to leak a video of me and my friend doing something sexual. However, 5 months later there was 3 arrests made for human trafficking, involving one of the people she saw at the house she was taken to.
The only reason they got caught is because they tried to traffic a 15 year old that had influential and wealthy parents, resulting in the Police having to resolve the situation out of backlash from the community. The reason we stayed at that garage party is because we trusted many other boys there since we knew them, they went to surrounding high schools, and were well known. That didn’t matter at the end of the day since they were just as clueless as we were and that’s the main issue. What happened in high school might seem like an extreme situation, but I can guarantee you it’s not that dystopian in Northern Ontario.
Human Trafficking isn’t talked about enough. This has led to some extreme measures to reduce the number of human trafficking cases in the region. Grassy Narrows, a reserve up north has even implemented human trafficking stops and checkpoints due to the overwhelming risks associated with being an indigenous woman. It’s estimated Indigenous women make up about half of human trafficking victims in Canada, according to the Native Women’s Association of Canada. I bring up Grassy Narrows because Statistics Canada identified that 78 per cent of First Nation communities in Ontario are located in Northern Ontario, representing that human trafficking is very prevalent up north in general possibly due to the high indigenous women population. This is one theory on why northern Ontario is one of Canadas human trafficking hotspots because of the elevated number of indigenous women at risk and I think this is the main factor at play.
I want to bring awareness to this topic since it’s something that I’ve faced in my small hometown, not Toronto. In general, most people are clueless about the signs of human trafficking and that’s something that I think needs to be changed since it can negatively and significantly impact someone’s life and their future.
