Human trafficking is happening in northern Sask; P.A. women’s group says

“Not only do we have people who are being trafficked here, what we know is that if you’re being trafficked, it’s a very high chance if you’re from P.A., you’re not going to stay in P.A.,” Vedress said.

Former Prince Albert Police chief Jonathan Bergen restarted the women’s commission in 2022 and current chief Patrick Nogier asked the group to find ways to reduce trafficking of people who are 99 per cent Indigenous women and girls.

“Our mandate is to pull in the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and 2Spirit calls to justice,” said Vedress. Calls to Justice are part of outcome of the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation and one of the calls is to focus on how police respond to files involving Indigenous women and girls.

“We’re looking at what are we doing here in the service, what do we have in place, what is working, what isn’t? those kind of things,” Vedress said.

“Our job as the Women’s Commission is to add a specific female perspective to that work in order to offer some kind of wisdom or guidance, I guess, to the Chief of Police.”

The women on the commission have been looking at how PAPS has been handling those files – which they say is quite good – and looking for ways to do more.

One of the challenges of investigating and helping trafficked people is the fact that they get moved around by the traffickers. Many of the victims that come to Prince Albert are drawn from northern communities and are lured south.

“It’s really, really hard to trace, it’s very hard to prove. It’s almost impossible to prosecute. There are so many barriers and boundaries to human trafficking,” Vedress said.

When they were first tasked to approach the issue, some of the women in the group attended a conference featuring well-known Canadian country singer Paul Brandt. Brandt has spearheaded an effort to tackle the issue that features the hashtag #notinmycity.

It was talking to Brandt that really opened their eyes to how pervasive the issue is.

“That’s when we started that conversation and really wanting to bring #notinmycity to our city,” Vedress said.

When most people picture human trafficking, they think someone has been taken from overseas and shipped to Canada but that is not necessarily the case.

The group said that human trafficking is anyone that’s being sold against their will and the seller is profiting from it.

Drugs are sold and used once but people can be sold and used over and over again and because the current legal reality is that it is difficult to prove, the trafficker has little fear of any consequence.

One trafficked person can earn their seller up to $300,000 annually so there is also a huge motive for the trafficker and makes it one of the fastest growing crimes in Canada.

Around 93 per cent of Canadian trafficking victims are sold within Canada.

Traffickers have different ways of luring their victims. Some pose as modeling agencies to convince girls to meet them and scoop them up. A video shared on the #notinmycity website featuring a charged human trafficker has a more subtle take.

The man charged talks about how to find the girls ‘that are broken’ and use their need to find love to sell them the illusion that being sold for sex is love. He doesn’t call himself a pimp, he calls himself a ‘manager.’

Some of the warning signs are young girls in places with someone who is not letting them speak, or they are travelling with someone older than them who is not a family member or the girl shows signs of being uncomfortable, afraid and unwilling to look up.

The commission said the previous officer, Sgt. Kathy Edwardsen, did a ‘phenomenal job’ of connecting with the families of women who have gone missing. The baton has now been passed to other officers, but they are taking up the reins with no slack.

Vedress said that PAPS has two officers dedicated to investigating human trafficking and they have said that after taking the training, they can look back and see that they have met multiple victims — they just didn’t know it at the time.

The women said that one of their areas of focus is to reach out to young girls, especially those that are more vulnerable and if they suspect trafficking, to build a relationship.

They said it takes about seven interactions before the victim feels safe enough to reach out.

“It’s not like you wake up one day and say, I don’t wanna do this anymore. It is not that easy,” Vedress explained.

“You have someone who has a great deal of power and authority over you. There are threats against your family, there are so many different things that are able to hold that person in that confinement.”

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susan.mcneil@pattisonmedia.com

by Susan McNeil

Human trafficking is happening in northern Sask; P.A. women’s group says

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