Thank you. I love your questions.
There are several reasons. Governments are coming and going, and different governments have different priorities. Unfortunately, human trafficking is just another political issue. Different governments have different perspectives on this issue. The Liberals have a different view of this issue, the NDP have a different view of this issue, and the Conservatives do. The truth is that it should not be a political thing; it's not a political issue. It's not a cause that you need to pick up just before elections to get elected or push it away so that you can get more votes.
The numbers are speaking for themselves. The research is the same today as it was 15 years ago. I'm so sorry, but I didn't catch the name of the lady who was talking about the education. I loved her point of saying that it's too late now. It's too late. We said 15 years ago what would happen in 10 years if we didn't do this. We had approximately 5,000 victims 10 or 15 years ago, and now we are estimating there are 50,000.
What needs to be done? We need a comprehensive national effort. We need to put in the work and we need to put in the funding. We need to make investments in systematic changes by investing in organizations that are offering prevention and providing national prevention—a real investment in preventing this. At the same time we need to put investment into those who have already been victimized and help them to reintegrate back into society. We need to stop the Ping-Pong reaction where we just throw money right, left and centre, and there's no coordination whatsoever.
We have answers. We know what we need to do. We just need to start doing the work. There are regions, like Peel Region, that have done phenomenal work. We have best practices left, right and centre. We just need to actually take this seriously—just like all of the other presenters have said earlier.