Canada is spending billions to strengthen its military, modernize the Canadian Armed Forces, and meet its NATO 2 per cent GDP commitments. Yet while debates about national security increasingly focus on geopolitical competition, border security, and defence spending, a serious threat to public safety persists within Canada’s borders: human trafficking. 

The protective measures in place are regionally organized in the form of women’s health networks, special investigation units, women’s shelters, and call centres, all of which have received budget cuts in the past year. If security is ultimately about protecting Canadians from harm, these services deserve a place in the national security conversation. 

Sex trafficking remains one of the country’s most pervasive forms of exploitation, disproportionately affecting women, girls, Indigenous communities, and other vulnerable populations. Any serious conversation about Canadian security should include the safety of those most vulnerable to abuse and coercion.

The scale of the problem is difficult to ignore. In 2025, the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline reported a record 5,900 calls from across the country, a 14 per cent increase from the previous year’s all-time high. Most identified trafficking victims in Canada are Canadian citizens, and the overwhelming majority are women and girls. Indigenous women and girls remain disproportionately affected. 

Despite these realities, human trafficking rarely occupies the same place in national conversations about security as military readiness, border protection, and geopolitical competition. Human trafficking is often viewed in Canada as obscure or foreign, detracting from the urgency that Canadians should be placing upon the issue.

The truth about human trafficking in Canada

When most Canadians think about human trafficking, they approach the topic with a degree of geographical and social distance. According to a 2021 survey conducted by the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking, only 15 per cent of respondents believed it possible that Canadian citizens are victims of human and sex trafficking. More than half of the respondents were in disbelief or wholly unaware that trafficking could exist in their own communities. In truth, 93 percent of identified trafficking victims in Canada are Canadian citizens. Nearly all of the Canadian trafficking victims are female, over 70 percent of victims are under the age of 25, and 91 percent of trafficking victims (incidents recorded from 2011 to 2021) knew their trafficker prior to their exploitation. 

To add to the severity, vulnerable populations such as Indigenous, First........

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