If you think the Canadian public is unaware of the phenomenon of human trafficking, wait until the small police department on the Prairies or in Quebec gets the human trafficking victim who phones 911. Then all hell's going to break loose at about 2 a.m. They're going to have nowhere to put that victim. In our case, from our experience, we had a detective using his own credit card to house someone until I could get money from the department, and then it was hands off from everybody because it's big and it's expensive.
There is no handbook other than the one Yvon Dandurand is producing, and I believe he's coming out with a second edition. So training is essential, and I will tell you the members of my police department don't know anything about this phenomenon or about the law or about section 279, because no one has been charged yet. We're trying to bring forward our first charge, but we haven't been able to do it, because crown counsel won't cooperate with us.
So everybody is ignorant of the issue, which is one of the reasons we stressed--and my friends also stressed along with me--to have training. That includes training for police officers, first of all. The Canadian Police College should have a course on human trafficking, and we should all be going to it, and then crown counsel and CBSA and CIC people as well, so we can all work in concert with each other--the conferences and the seminars also, so that we can network with one another and know who to phone in what city. We're dealing on a file right now with York Regional Police, and we get great cooperation, but yes, the ignorance is widespread.