Canadian anti-trafficking hotline saw a record number of calls last year, and it says it’s on track to do it again

The hotline has seen an increased number of calls on sex and labour trafficking, with the bulk of cases coming from Ontario. CTV’s Kamil Karamali reports.

A Canadian anti-trafficking hotline says it received a record number of calls last year, with sex-related calls forming the majority.

The Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline received just over 5,100 calls in 2024, which was an all-time high. It expects to see a similar number by the end of this year.

It’s a number that “speaks to the scale of human trafficking in Canada,” according to Julia Drydyk, executive director at the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, a charity that operates the hotline.

About 70 per cent of the calls came from victims, survivors and others affected by sex trafficking – a pattern that the charity says is constant year to year.

“Often, they have no control over their lives. They can’t control when they eat, when they sleep, who they see, where they go, or how many sexual interactions they have to do in exchange for money, all for their traffickers benefit,” Drydyk also said, speaking of victims in “the full depths of exploitation.”

The hotline has been operational since May 2019. Cumulatively, the charity says it has received nearly 23,000 calls and recognized 3,317 human trafficking victims between 2019 and 2024.

A victim of sex trafficking is when someone is controlled, coerced or manipulated into exchanging sexual services for money, and when the person controlling them benefits from that exploitation, according to the charity.

Perpetrators of sex trafficking can be peers, friends, partners or parents of the victims.

Kidnapping does not occur in most cases. Victims may be groomed slowly over time, Drydyk explained, and may not realize they are being subjected to a crime.

“Absolutely,” said Drydyk. “The vast majority of survivors tell us that they never thought they were being trafficked. They didn’t see it as a crime. And then, it was often years after they’d left the situation that it kind of occurred to them that ‘that was human trafficking.’”

Labour-related calls on the rise

There were also about 100 labour-related trafficking calls, an increase of more than 300 per cent from the 2022-23 average. Victims of labour trafficking are often temporary migrant workers, according to the charity.

“Migrant workers are made vulnerable by structural inequities built into the temporary foreign worker program,” Drydyk explained in a news release. “When employers seize on those vulnerabilities, it creates the conditions in which exploitation can take hold.”

Canada’s migrant labour system has been the source of international scrutiny. The U.S. Department of State wrote in its 2024 report on trafficking in Canada that efforts to provide protections to victims, particularly forced labour victims, and bring justice to labour crimes “remained inadequate.”

It maintained Canada’s “Tier 1″ status - the best possible score - acknowledging the country’s sustained efforts to eliminate human trafficking.

That report also made note of forced labour within the federal Temporary Foreign Worker Program. Agriculture, forestry, food services and waste management are among a handful of sectors that “rely heavily” on foreign workers through the program, according to Statistics Canada.

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“Between April and December 2023, Employment and Social Development Canada identified 168 suspected forced labor cases within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, an increase from 150 suspected cases referred between April and November 2022,” read the U.S. State Department report.

The temporary worker program allows Canadian employers to hire foreign workers to fill temporary jobs when Canadian workers are not available. Work permits are tied to the applicant’s employer.

In the late summer of 2024, the United Nations called the program a “breeding ground for contemporary slavery.”

“We would like to see comprehensive and structural reforms to Canada’s temporary foreign worker system. We’d like to see open work permits, equal access to programs and services, and meaningful and realistic pathways to permanent residency and citizenship,” Drydyk said in an interview with CTVNews.ca.

Canada’s national strategy to combat human trafficking includes more than $57 million (2019-24) and $10.28 million annually (beginning 2024-25).