Targeting inhuman trade

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This article was published 29/07/2023 (804 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For decades, fighting human trafficking has been the focus of Joy Smith’s working life, both as an elected official and through the charitable foundation which bears her name.

Within the next year or so, the former math and science teacher plans to make Winnipeg the epicentre of that battle, by building a bricks-and-mortar education facility to teach people about the signs and consequences of human trafficking.

“Our vision is to have this onsite training centre right here in the centre of Canada and have a residence attached to it,” says Smith, 76, of the proposed $200-million building at a yet-to-be-determined location.

The residence would offer survivors a safe place to recover from their trauma as well as providing transitional housing while they complete their education or enrol in training programs.

Right now, Smith and her daughter Janet Campbell, who took over as CEO and president in January of 2021, run the Joy Smith Foundation from a small office on the 18th floor of 201 Portage Ave. When out-of-province travel was grounded during the pandemic, they could no longer make in-person presentations to students, parents and front-line workers, so instead they launched a virtual National Human Trafficking Education Centre, where users can create an account to take free courses on the risks and signs of human trafficking.

Tens of thousands of hits later, and with pandemic restrictions lifted, both Campbell and Smith are back leading workshops and educating parents, students, teachers and other professionals about the realities and risks of human trafficking. Campbell undertakes the bulk of the travel, while Smith works mostly from her East St. Paul home, while also caring for her husband who has health concerns.

Human trafficking — a term describing both workers lured into the sex trade or forced labour — is more pervasive than most Canadians realize, says Smith, rattling off statistics featured prominently on the foundation’s website.

The average age of entry into the sex trade is 13, and each victim generates about $280,000 of annual revenue for the trafficker. The large majority — 93 per cent — of victims are Canadian-born, and where they live is irrelevant, with rural kids being as susceptible as their urban counterparts.

“Every time we make a presentation, some student emails us about their story,” Smith says about victims, mostly lured as minors via their social media profiles. Sometimes parents see the red flags first, concerned about the behaviour changes in their kids, and ask Smith and her team to intervene.

One mother from a southern Manitoba community contacted Smith about the man her teenage daughter interacted with online. When he couldn’t persuade the teenager to travel to the United Kingdom where he lived, he decided to come to Canada, but Smith’s queries to immigration officials prevented him from entering the country.

“It if hadn’t been for her mother and her sense something wasn’t right,” it could have been disastrous, recalls the 2019 Order of Manitoba recipient of the incident which happened in the early days of the pandemic.

“They fell in love without her ever meeting him.”

Fortunately, she never did meet him, but many others fall for the well-oiled approach used by traffickers to lure young victims, mostly girls, says Campbell.

Traffickers offer gifts or cash for no reason, isolate the victims from their former social group, withhold their identification and control their phones.

“Kids today spend a lot of time online and that’s a huge tool for predators to spend time with victims,” says Campbell.

With more than 7,000 victims known to the foundation, Campbell says there is one repeated theme: victims — and their parents — didn’t know they were at risk of being trafficked.

That lack of knowledge about the risks originally spurred Smith into action. While teaching junior high school in Winnipeg, she noticed one of her students had ended up on the streets of downtown Winnipeg. Smith found her and started handing out coffee and sandwiches to other young sex workers and listened to their stories.

“These were very young girls, and they were talking to me about their manager and what they had to earn,” she says of her earliest exposure to human trafficking.

She also realized Canada didn’t have laws in place to bring human traffickers of minors to justice.

“It infuriated me, and I decided this is my calling on my heart and I believe God calls you to the destination you’re supposed to have,” says the native of Deloraine, a small town in southwestern Manitoba, who credits her Christian faith as a main motivation in her work against human trafficking.

Recognizing real change could only happen if laws were amended or new ones written, Smith first ran for MLA in 1999 under the Progressive Conservative banner, and then set her sights on Ottawa, serving as the Conservative member of Parliament for Kildonan-St. Paul from 2004 until 2015.

“I went to Parliament, and I naively thought it was the answer, because everyone knew about human trafficking,” she recalls about her first term in Ottawa.

“But no one knew about human trafficking, and no one wanted to talk about human trafficking. They didn’t believe it was happening in Canada.”

Smith employed her best teacher skills to persuade her colleagues, as well as flying in survivors of human trafficking to tell their stories. She met with MPs one by one, gaining support for her legislation across party lines, recalls fellow MP Kevin Lamoureux.

“She went out of her way to work with other political parties to make it clear this was an issue that was so important it didn’t have to be partisan,” says the Liberal MP for Winnipeg North who also knows Smith from their days in the Manitoba Legislature.

In 2010, Smith’s private member bill C-268 became law, amending the Criminal Code to create a new offence for child trafficking with a five-year mandatory sentence. Two years later, Smith’s Bill C-310 also passed into law, amending the Criminal Code of Canada to allow for the prosecution of Canadian citizens and permanent residents trafficking outside our borders, as well as enhancing the definition of exploitation.

Soliciting broad support across party lines not only meant Smith’s legislation could pass, but also brought more awareness to the issues surrounding human trafficking in Canada, says former chief of staff Joel Oosterman.

“It was the right thing to do in protecting survivors and gave them the support they need,” says Oosterman, now director of policy for Conservative MP Arnold Viersen (Peace River-Westlock).

“In her time in Parliament, whatever she’s put her mind to, she’s done. I’m encouraged to see her continue in that role with the foundation.”

Along with strengthening laws around human trafficking, Smith became the first parliamentarian in Canadian history to pass two private members’ bills amending the Criminal Code.

Her tenacity over the years continues to inspire other legislators, including Viersen, who co-founded the All Party Group to End Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking.

“She’s raised the conscience of human trafficking the way no other parliamentarian has,” says Viersen of Smith. “The thing that gives me hope is folks like Joy who went on before and never gave up hope and (shared) the stories of survivors.”

Now that tenacity will be directed toward building the new bricks-and-mortar education centre in Winnipeg. Although a downtown location functions well for the administrative side of the foundation, Smith and Campbell plan for the new building to be located away from the city’s core, where trafficked girls and women are often forced to become sex workers. They’re envisioning a safe place where survivors can rest and figure out their next steps.

Not only would the new centre support survivors, says Campbell, but a physical space would serve as a beacon in the fight against human trafficking in Winnipeg and beyond.

“On the issue of human trafficking, it would be a huge game-changer in Canada. It would be monumental,” says Campbell. “It creates jobs, it builds capacity and expertise in this area. Nothing like this exists in Canada.”

For Smith, the new centre would add another layer to her decades of work of speaking to survivors, educating students and adults, and changing laws so traffickers can be brought to justice. She still thinks about how her young student introduced her to the terrible reality of human trafficking, and how that story didn’t have a happy ending. The girl dropped out of view, and Smith has never found out what happened to her.

“I know now that traffickers move their girls around the country,” she says of the probable outcome for her former student.

“I think that (incident) was a catalyst for getting me involved in human trafficking.”

brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca