Det. Alison Church says, “It is a crime that knows no borders; it happens in both small towns and big cities.
In the last three years, investigations into human trafficking have led to more than 300 charges being brought by the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams.
During that time, a special unit within ALERT has been in charge of these hard cases.
But Det. Alison Church, who is in charge of the area north of Red Deer, says that this is only a small part of a crime that is often not reported.
Church says, “We are seeing investigations that we would never have seen before because we didn’t work with other police departments.”
ALERT was started in 2006, and most Albertans probably know it best from pictures of drug busts with cops and tables full of drugs, money, and guns. Its job is to fight serious and organized crime by putting together teams of officers from the Edmonton Police Service, the RCMP, the Calgary Police Service, and other agencies.
ALERT’s Human Trafficking Unit started working in 2020, the same year that the Alberta Human Trafficking Task Force started looking into the issue.
Church said that before the ALERT unit was made, it was hard for police forces to work together to stop human trafficking because it happened in different places and required specialized knowledge.
“If we didn’t have that responsibility for northern Alberta, some investigations would fall through the cracks or not be done right,” she said.
“It’s very important to work together because it’s a crime that doesn’t care where it happens. It happens in both small towns and big cities.”
One way that traffickers make money is by controlling how their victims move. The Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking will be open in 2021.released a reportOn “human trafficking corridors”—ways that people are often moved to exploit them.
Human trafficking connects Alberta’s two biggest cities, Edmonton and Calgary, with Grande Prairie and Fort McMurray. This links the province’s biggest online commercial sex markets with sex markets connected to oil and gas work camps in the north.
The report says that the number of victims and survivors from Quebec who speak little or no English is on the rise. This is because the language barrier is another way to keep people in line.
Trafficking in Albert
Law enforcement reports show that human trafficking has gotten worse over the past ten years. From 2011 to 2021, police reports from across Canadagrew from 60 to 352; within Alberta, it went from two to 38.
That’s only for one charge — CC 1525 trafficking in persons — but perpetrators would likely face a slew of other charges as well.
Whether the problem is getting worse or coming to light more is obscured by gaps in available data.
“The data is so incredibly flawed,” said Kate Price, executive director of the Action Coalition on Human Trafficking Alberta (ACT). The organization provides services to trafficking victims over 18.
Price stresses ACT clients are not pressured in any way to go to police and that there are many barriers to doing so.
Evidence is difficult to provide, especially in situations where a perpetrator has had such control over a victim’s life. Repeatedly retelling the story can be a painful process. What’s caught in the statistics is just the “tip of the iceberg” for what happens in Alberta, Price said.
One of the Alberta task force’s primary recommendations was to enhance and centralize data collection and research. Price said the lack of data can make it difficult to identify trends and direct policy.
On Friday, the province announced $4 million over two years has been set aside to launch an office to combat human trafficking, whose work will include improving data collection. It’s part of $22 million set aside for anti-trafficking initiatives in this year’s budget.
Establishing an office to oversee anti-trafficking efforts was another recommendation from the task force.
Within enforcement, Price said police are generally under-resourced for human trafficking and typically only pursue sex trafficking — ACT also supports clients who have been trafficked for labour.
That makes ACT’s client demographics different from what’s captured in police-reported statistics. According to Statistics Canada, 96 per cent of the 2,688 trafficking victims detected between 2011 and 2021 were women and girls.
Price said many of her clients identify as men and have an international background, which creates additional barriers. Trans and non-binary individuals are also often targeted, she said.
Supporting victim
About a year after it was established, ALERT’s human trafficking unit began embedding workers from the Centre to End All Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
The Edmonton-based organization has existed for decades to support victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking. Executive director Liz John-West said the organization has had informal working relationships with detectives for years (CEASE does not require clients to report, however).
She said around the time the ALERT unit was formed, CEASE had brainstormed how it could be part of the growing momentum to combat human trafficking within the province. They teamed up with ALERT, providing a member who gives community and wraparound support to victims and guides them through the court system.
John-West said more people are coming forward and accessing the service.
“We will see more and more human trafficking cases coming up, not because we have more, but because we’re putting resources into it.”
Public misconception
A secondary aspect of the ALERT unit is education. Church said the agency gives presentations at schools and even to fellow cops.
“There are also police officers who are at times dealing with something and they aren’t aware that what they’re dealing with is trafficking.”
She said the public is not aware of the magnitude of trafficking.
“One of the biggest misconceptions of human trafficking is that it doesn’t happen here,” she said.
“They don’t believe it happens in Spruce Grove. They don’t believe it happens in Grand Prairie. They don’t believe it happens in Fort McMurray.”
John-West warns it’s something that can happen to anyone.
“We can all be groomed,” she said, warning that anyone can be charmed and lured in, and that in some cases that phase can last for up to a year.
It’s often not some random kidnapping as dramatized in film — according to the police-reported data from 2011 to 2021, more than 90 per cent of victims knew their accused trafficker.
But Price said it’s also important to employ empathy and nuance in thinking of a victim’s circumstances.
“When people want to only think of one kind of human trafficking experience … and it’s an idea or an image they can wrap their head around, we just always ask people to remember that that’s one experience.
“And that this can be so different for each individual, and that doesn’t make their experience less horrible or have less value to them.”