The vast majority of individuals who experience trafficking where the CBSA is involved are those migrant workers who are coming into Canada through temporary foreign worker permits and are largely experiencing labour trafficking in our agricultural and manufacturing sectors. We recently conducted research with 77 migrant workers from across Ontario, and the biggest call to action they had—or among the biggest—was to get information about their rights before they arrive in Canada, at arrival and after.
Unfortunately, the telltale signs of exploitation don't normally occur until after they have actually gone through the turnstile at immigration and realize they were sold a completely different bill of goods than what they signed up for when they were coming to work in our farms and in our manufacturing sector.
It really is about making sure that they have information about what their rights are, making sure that it's information in their mother tongue and at appropriate literacy levels, and making sure that they're getting that information consistently, because often it is a spectrum. It doesn't start off as labour trafficking or as sex trafficking. Usually there are earlier stages of exploitation, perhaps poor working conditions or unpaid wages. It's that, combined with the element of coercion and fear, where you see it fall within the Canadian Criminal Code definition of human trafficking.
Really, we need continuous supports and services and proactive educational campaigns targeted to those individuals in order to see a difference.