Thank you.
My name is Shelly Walker. I'm the founder and chief executive officer of the Women's Trucking Federation of Canada. I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
I've been involved with the transportation industry for over 30 years. I started my career as a school bus operator, and for the last 20-plus years I've been a professional driver.
I became aware of human trafficking several years ago and decided I needed to learn more. I reached out to Timea Nagy, an expert in this space, because I wanted to do more within the transportation industry. Through funding from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, we hired Timea's Cause to create an online survivor-led driver training course for professional drivers. We have also wrapped several 53-foot trailers with the “No Human Trafficking” message. We host a public launch with each trailer. We invite various levels of government, local police, victim services and local organizations to attend and give remarks about the services available in their areas.
We have also championed the Ontario Ministry of Transportation to include human trafficking awareness training in entry-level training. Hopefully, the federal Minister of Transport will also include this in the federal mandate. We would like to see online survivor-led training mandatory for every class of commercial licence. Whether you drive a cab, a school bus or a transportation van, everybody needs to have this training.
Every year at our annual conference, we bring in guests to speak about human trafficking. We want our attendees to learn more about what they can do to help, whether it is helping to spread knowledge or to make financial contributions. Unfortunately, so many Canadians still believe it doesn't happen here in Canada. We believe a solution for this is probably custom-designed mobile educational trailers. With government funding and partnering with survivor-led organizations, we can make a difference. These trailers would have the ability to travel to remote locations to spread education and awareness. Skills Ontario and the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association both use these types of educational trailers and are having great success in their respective areas.
We all have a role to play in fighting to end human trafficking. By working together instead of against each other, we can all make a difference.
Thank you.