Statistics regarding human trafficking in Manitoba are unknown

The number of people being trafficked in Manitoba is unknown as trafficking is either under reported or unreported to law enforcement in the province and its partners.

“That’s the problem, is a lot of these people don’t know they’re being trafficked. And then if they do find out that they’re being trafficked, because they come in contact or they see some media about it, and they go, ‘Oh, maybe I’m trafficked,’” said RCMP Manitoba human trafficking unit investigator Sgt. Cathy Farrell.

Farrel has been in the human trafficking unit since its inception in August 2024. Although the unit was created last year, Farrell said police have known and have been working against human trafficking for a number of years.

On Tuesday, the RCMP human trafficking unit in partnership with the Winnipeg Police Service’s counter exploitation unit, with support from the Manitoba Criminal Intelligence Centre of Manitoba Justice, announced they had made multiple arrests for sexual exploitation and human trafficking in Winnipeg.

The operation took place between Nov. 12 and 15 in various areas of the city and was aimed to disrupt street-level and online sexual exploitation activities, according to a press release. The police arrested 32 men between the ages of 18 to 75 and charged them with obtaining sexual services for consideration or communicating in any place for that purpose. The men were released on undertakings to appear in court at later dates.

Police made contact with 25 individuals working within the sex trade industry, ensuring their safety and offering resources. Farrell said it is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money, but it is illegal to buy sex for money or to facilitate the purchasing of sex.

“We’ve stopped criminalizing the sex sellers because the majority of the time they’re not doing it by their own free will,” she said.

Farrell said Manitoba RCMP is currently working on between 15 to 20 human trafficking cases.

The Joy Smith Foundation is currently compiling statistics on human trafficking by province and will release those results when the foundation’s learning campus opens in a few years near Niverville. In an interview with The Carillon, Joy Smith couldn’t provide statistics for sex and forced labour trafficking in the Southeast, but she said human trafficking is prevalent in the area.

“I don’t care if they live in the middle of nowhere. They have internet. They have phones. The traffickers have access to everybody now,” she said.

According to the RCMP and the foundation’s website, 13 is the average age of entry into the sex trade in Canada. Smith said sex traffickers are looking for attractive underage children who come from middle to upper-middle-class families, and that Indigenous children are disproportionately trafficked.

Farrell said victims can be anyone. The Canadian Center to End Human Trafficking website states 90 percent of sex trafficking survivors in Canada are women and girls. It further states that the overall age range for sex trafficked victims is between 12 and 50. Victims and survivors aged between 18 and 24 were the most common age group to be sold by traffickers followed by those under 18.

The foundation lists nine ways to tell if youth are being trafficked, such as new clothing, jewelry, or gifts without having money; new circle of friends or isolation from old friends; change in attitude to school, regular activities, or friends; grades are dropping; unexplained cuts or bruises; and/or using two cell phones.

“And people kind of have to understand what happens to a trafficked victim, because they’re taken away out of society, and they’re sold. And they’re sold for sexual purposes and they’re sold for forced labour,” said Smith.

Farrell and Smith said these vulnerable victims are usually sex trafficked by someone they know such as a relative, a boyfriend, or a girlfriend.

“People always worry about strangers, but most people are abused by family members. So we do have familial traffickers who traffick their own children or their other relatives,” said Farrell. “But it’s so complex. Nobody is safe or immune from it.”

Farrell also said traffickers will use intimidation tactics, sometimes through threats of violence or gaslighting, in order to keep the victim under their control. They are also taught to fear the police. She noted offenders can be an individual person, organized crime, or a gang. The Canadian Center to End Human Trafficking reports that the most common traffickers are boyfriends or Romeo pimps, followed by organized crime, a family member, a drug dealer, or a friend.

Smith estimates that a trafficker makes $250,000 annually off of a trafficking victim.

Smith said children are being lured by sex traffickers through social media sites TikTok, Kik, What’s App, Instagram, Reddit, Snapchat, Discord, Facebook, X (Twitter), and gaming sites. Both Smith and Farrell said that the offender works at gaining the victim’s trust before exploiting them. Smith said the offender will use blackmail or cyberbullying, usually after the youth shares intimate photos of themselves, in order to control them. Smith also noted 60 percent of Canadian youth share intimate pictures with their girlfriends or boyfriends.

When victims become pregnant, their children can be trafficked as well, noted Smith, sharing the youngest trafficked victim she has worked with was four years old. According to Smith, children are usually taken away from victims and put into care.

Farrell reported that trafficking hubs or corridors in Manitoba can go up to Thompson and to Brandon or “wherever there’s a demand.” She said traffickers come up to Canada from Minneapolis, for example, and go to hubs of Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, and smaller centres along the way in what is referred to by the Canadian Center for Human Trafficking as the Canadian Corridor.

“People need to educate themselves. It’s all around you. You just have to pay attention,” said Farrell. “Don’t be afraid to report something, and it’s okay to be wrong, and that’s probably one of my mantras is if you report it and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. But if you report it and you’re right, you can save somebody’s life.”