Thank you for the question.
I'd like to direct you to Statistics Canada's juristats. The two most recent ones were released in 2022 and 2021. Both of them have criminal justice statistics with the types of numbers you're looking for.
Human trafficking is a complex crime and often difficult to detect. In terms of the data we have on it more generally, a range of data sources are required to give us a picture of how human trafficking manifests. It's not just the Statistics Canada juristats that we look to to figure out what it looks like in Canada.
You raised the difference between forced labour and sex trafficking. One issue we do have is that human trafficking provisions don't make that distinction. They apply regardless of the type of labour or service that is at issue.
What we do know from the human trafficking juristats is that the majority of cases that are going through our courts concern sexual exploitation, although forced labour cases do appear to be on the rise.
Those reports, I think, will be very useful for you in terms of understanding what human trafficking looks like in Canada.
Those juristats also refer to qualitative data, and that might help the committee as well. Qualitative data indicates that traffickers recruit and groom potential victims. They target vulnerable individuals such as those who are socially or emotionally isolated or financially desperate, and they manipulate them, including by building trust through false promises and deception.
Once victims come to rely on traffickers for their basic needs, they are very easy to manipulate.