This is a really great question. It's something that is a really special part of our work at the Association for New Canadians.
As you mentioned, we are located in nine communities, including eight communities that are outside of the urban core. Those offices are sometimes in really remote communities, like Forteau, Labrador, Labrador City, which are part of mainland Canada as opposed to the island of Newfoundland. Among all of our offices we more or less cover the entire geography of the province.
As you mentioned, what we are actually seeing in those offices, particularly for this study, is that the farther and more remote the newcomers travel, the greater the immediate risk they are at for human trafficking. In fact, of the cases that have come forward since we started the WAGE project, only one is located in the urban centre of St. John's. We really found that the current phase of our project is going to these remote rural communities.
We've seen this quite a lot with the Ukrainian folks who have arrived in our community, where they get offers, both from overseas as well as from inside the country, and then they travel to these communities. Then when they get there, the offer wasn't as expected or the behaviour of the employer isn't as expected. In fact, sometimes we even struggle as an organization to get employers to come forward with the details of the employment offered to newcomers.
Some of the more significant cases, even the non-Ukrainian cases, are happening in places like Labrador. Some of the information that is being shared with us includes concerns from newcomers of involvement greater than the just the employer, from people like police and from local people in power. These cases are extra disheartening because of how remote they are. They are so removed.
Some of the colleagues have mentioned, and MP Gazan mentioned quite briefly, the status issue. In a lot of the cases we're seeing they're terrified of coming forward but also are missing information about status and how to regularize those pathways.
Like Jovana from FCJ mentioned, the issue is not so simple as getting a TRP from IRCC when there's no clear pathway to how you reach permanent residency, or how you share your story and get that permanency without having to file criminal charges. That is in fact the most common thing we're hearing, the fear people have even when we have incredible colleagues here from the RCMP, from IRCC, telling them they're going to be safe. It doesn't matter. They're still not coming forward with these cases. Ultimately, the pathway doesn't really exist in practice, even though it's there in theory.