Pushing back against human trafficking in Guelph and Wellington County | TheRecord.com

Human Trafficking Awareness Day is Feb. 22, an important opportunity to open up some conversations about an issue that impacts all of us in Guelph and across Wellington County.

We tend to think of human trafficking as a problem that only happens in big cities, but traffickers target and recruit people all across Canada, even in rural and remote locations. Contrary to popular belief, people who are trafficked in Canada usually stay in Canada, too. They're moved along trafficking corridors; highways that connect Canadian cities and towns in which people are bought and sold.

The biggest trafficking corridor in Canada is actually the 401.

WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT HUMAN TRAFFICKING?

Learning more is a good first step to pushing back on the rising rates of trafficking in Guelph and across Wellington County and the Waterloo Region. Trafficking often looks very different from what people expect, so the more we learn about it and the more we share our learning, the better we can be at spotting it and disrupting it.

We can also talk about trafficking with the young people in our lives. Young people are at risk because traffickers, especially sex traffickers, target them specifically. In fact, 45 per cent of people who experience trafficking are between 18 and 24 and a further 24 per cent of trafficking victims are under 18. The more young people know, the more we can empower them to recognize when someone is trying to exploit them and to reach out for help.

And finally, we can have conversations about the larger systemic changes we would need to make to reduce the likelihood of trafficking happening in our communities. Canada has criminalized trafficking, but we haven't eliminated the structural factors that create conditions where trafficking can thrive in the first place.

Addressing the root causes of trafficking will be our most effective way of challenging trafficking in our communities. That will include having hard conversations about how to create pathways out of poverty, about making housing first policies that take housing as a human right and about decolonizing and restoring Indigenous connections to traditional territories.

When we create more pathways to prosperity, we give traffickers fewer ways to exploit people and fewer footholds in our communities.

TO LEARN MORE

If you or someone you know is at risk of or has experienced trafficking, you can reach out to Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis for support at 519-836-1110 ext. 222 or through our 24/7 Crisis Line at 519-836-5710 or 1-800-265-7233 (SAFE).

And if you'd like to learn more about human trafficking in the region, sign up for our Human Trafficking Awareness Day virtual event on Feb. 22 from 6-7:30 p.m. Register here or visit www.gwwomenincrisis.org to learn more.

Cindy McMann is a public educator at Guelph-Wellington Women in Crisis.