More education needed to fight human trafficking, experts say
Global News
More education in human trafficking is needed across Canada to combat the growing issue, which has been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, experts say.
More education in human trafficking is needed across Canada to combat the growing issue, which has been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, experts say.
Julie Jones, a former police detective, human trafficking investigation specialist and founder of Human Intelligence Services Inc., said people often don’t know how to identify human trafficking, even when experiencing it themselves.
“The most important aspect of trafficking today is grooming and how it’s done,” she said. “It’s all about manipulation and coercive control because, as is also common in domestic violence cases, people often don’t realize that they’re in an abusive situation until they become dependent on their abuser, are removed from their support network and can’t get out.”
To address the need for more awareness, the Joy Smith Foundation officially launched Canada’s first online education centre this week.
The platform offers online courses on human trafficking prevention and intervention, and provides lessons for children, parents, teachers, social workers, first responders and judges to aid in their understanding of the crime, how to identify it and how to intervene.
Smith, who was a member of Manitoba’s legislature and a member of Parliament, founded the organization in 2011. She said the pandemic has pushed youth online, making it much easier for predators to find and groom victims, but that shift also created a space for connection and conversation, which was the inspiration behind the foundation’s platform.
“There aren’t enough police officers, social workers or citizens who know how perpetrators work, and some of them don’t even know human trafficking still exists in Canada,” she said. “We can hardly keep up, which is why we are thrilled about (creating) online education programs that are accessible to all Canadians.”
Statistics Canada and the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking both released reports this year showing an upward trend in human trafficking in Canada.
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