I think the simple notion is that migrants know that their housing and working conditions, the way they're being treated, is unjust and unfair. People know when their rights are being broken. This is not about information. It's about power. If you speak up, you'll get deported. You'll get terminated, you'll become homeless and you'll be be kicked out of the country. How are you going to assert your rights? This is the entire structure. We need to move away from this notion that people don't know enough or need rights education. What they need is the ability to autonomously take care of themselves, right?
In COVID-19, or at any other point, frankly, you are making decisions every day to take care of yourself. You decide where to go, when to cover your face, and where not to go. Migrants don't have that power. It's not because they don't know it. Similarly, the entire conversation on human trafficking makes it seem as if there are very few bad apples, and it's a question of criminality and illegality and that's what needs to be dealt with. No. The problem is essentially the federal immigration law and the provincial labour laws that are working in tandem to create insecurity.
There are few rare and exceptional moments when people are in cases that could be considered as trafficking, and we work with those people. By and large the vast majority, the one in 23 people in this country who are non-permanent residents, are facing exploitation and abuse as a result of the laws that have been made in Parliament, not because of a trafficker.