Human Trafficking in Canada 2026
Canada’s response to human trafficking reached a series of significant milestones in the opening months of 2026. In January 2025, the federal government appointed its first-ever Chief Advisor on Human Trafficking — a three-year mandate to provide independent guidance to government on how Canada’s anti-trafficking framework can be strengthened, modernised, and made more responsive to the lived experience of survivors. And at the federal level, 2025 was the year the government formally committed to renewing the National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking — the comprehensive five-year framework that had governed Canada’s coordinated response since 2019 — with engagement sessions running from August 2024 to March 2025 and incorporating the voices of Indigenous peoples, survivors, frontline service providers, and law enforcement. These developments matter because the data consistently shows that Canada’s trafficking problem — while comparatively small in absolute numbers against countries like the UK — is stubbornly persistent, deeply gendered, disproportionately concentrated in a handful of provinces and cities, and closely intertwined with some of the most entrenched social inequities in Canadian society.
The Statistics Canada Juristat report on Trafficking in Persons in Canada, 2024 — the most authoritative and comprehensive statistical analysis of police-reported human trafficking in Canada’s history, published in December 2025 — found that from 2014 to 2024, there were 5,070 human trafficking incidents reported to Canadian police services, an average annual rate of 1.2 incidents per 100,000 population. In 2024 alone, there were 608 incidents, marginally higher than the 605 recorded in 2023, continuing a decade-long trend of year-on-year growth. These figures, compiled from the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Survey across every police service in Canada, capture only the visible surface of a crime that is, by its nature, hidden. The Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline identified 466 cases involving 579 victim-survivors in 2024 alone — a 35% increase from 2023 — and government-funded NGOs identified an estimated 1,888 trafficking victims in 2024, up from 1,135 the year before. Together, the official and NGO data streams sketch a picture of a crime that is growing in reported frequency, growing in victim identification, and still vastly undercounted relative to its true scale.
Key Facts About Human Trafficking in Canada 2026
FAST FACTS — Human Trafficking in Canada 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Police-reported incidents (2024) : 608
Police-reported incidents (2014–2024 total) : 5,070
Average annual rate (2014–2024) : 1.2 per 100,000 population
Victims identified in police data (2014–2024) : 4,075
Victims — women and girls : 93%
Victims aged under 25 : 63%
Accused — men and boys : 82%
Hotline cases identified (2024) : 466 cases / 579 victims
Hotline case increase (2023→2024) : +35%
NGO-identified victims (2024) : 1,888
Estimated people in trafficking on any day : 17,000 (Global Slavery Index)
National Strategy funding per year (post-2024): CAD $10.28 million
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Key Fact | Statistic |
|---|---|
| Police-reported trafficking incidents (2024) | 608 |
| Police-reported incidents (2023) | 605 |
| Police-reported incidents (2022) | 596 |
| Total incidents reported (2014–2024) | 5,070 |
| Average annual rate (2014–2024) | 1.2 incidents per 100,000 population |
| Total identified victims (2014–2024) | 4,075 |
| Victims — women and girls | 93% |
| Victims aged under 25 (2014–2024) | 63% |
| Accused — men and boys | 82% |
| Median age of accused | 27 years |
| Hotline cases (2024) | 466 cases involving 579 victim-survivors |
| Hotline case increase (2023→2024) | +35% |
| NGO-identified trafficking victims (2024) | 1,888 (vs 1,135 in 2023) |
| Police-identified victims (2024) | 452 victims (formal UCR data, 2023 year) |
| Federal/CBSA/RCMP new investigations (Apr 2024–Mar 2025) | 298 new cases (vs 133 prior period) |
| Estimated people in trafficking in Canada on any given day | 17,000 (Global Slavery Index) |
| US State Department Tier 1 ranking (2025) | Maintained |
| National Strategy (post-2024 annual funding) | CAD $10.28 million |
| National Strategy (2019–2024 total funding) | CAD $57.22 million |
| First Chief Advisor on Human Trafficking appointed | January 2025 |
Source: Statistics Canada — Juristat: Trafficking in Persons in Canada, 2024 (published 8 December 2025); US Department of State — 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Canada (published 30 September 2025); Statistics Canada Daily — Preliminary National Estimates on Police-Reported Human Trafficking Incidents, 2025 (published 18 December 2025); Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline Annual Report 2024; Public Safety Canada — National Strategy to Combat Human Trafficking 2023–2025 Report (published 2025)
The Statistics Canada Juristat figures confirm that 2024 saw the highest annual volume of police-reported human trafficking in Canada’s recorded history, at 608 incidents — a marginal increase on 2023’s 605 but part of a decade-long rising trend. The data also confirm that this is almost certainly a significant undercount: the Statistics Canada report itself notes that human trafficking is “difficult to detect and measure due to its hidden nature” and explicitly warns that the official figures “likely underestimate the true prevalence.” The fact that government-funded NGOs identified 1,888 victims in 2024 — more than four times the number officially identified in police records — illustrates the depth of the identification gap. The Global Slavery Index’s estimate of 17,000 people in trafficking in Canada on any given day is orders of magnitude higher than even the NGO figure, reflecting the international evidence that visible, identified victims represent a small fraction of actual exploitation.
The 35% increase in Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline cases in 2024 — from 345 to 466 — is one of the most concrete signals of rising awareness and improved reporting infrastructure, particularly following the expansion of the hotline’s reach and its operation in over 200 languages, including 27 Indigenous languages. Of the 466 hotline cases, 70% involved sex trafficking, 22% involved labour trafficking, and 4% involved both. Of the individuals who contacted the hotline, 44% were victims or survivors themselves, and 22% were family members or friends of victims — a demographic profile that reinforces what researchers have consistently found: trafficking in Canada is not primarily an anonymous crime committed by strangers. It is embedded in the intimate, community-based, and workplace relationships of the most marginalised Canadians.
Victim Demographics in Canadian Trafficking Cases 2026
VICTIM AGE GROUPS — Police-Reported Trafficking Canada (2014–2024)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Aged 18–24 (largest group)
████████████████████████████████████████████ 41%
Aged 25–34
████████████████████████████ 24%
Under 18
██████████████████████ 22%
Aged 35–44
████████ 8%
45 and older
████ 4%
VICTIM GENDER BREAKDOWN (2014–2024)
Women and girls ████████████████████████████████████████████████ 93%
Men and boys █████ 7%
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Victim Demographic Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Victims — women and girls (2014–2024) | 93% |
| Victims — men and boys (2014–2024) | 7% |
| Victims aged 18–24 (2014–2024) | 41% (largest single age group) |
| Victims aged under 18 (2014–2024) | 22% |
| Victims aged under 25 (combined, 2014–2024) | 63% |
| Women and girls aged 18–24 (of female victims) | 43% |
| Girls under 18 (of female victims) | 23% |
| Men and boys — largest age group | 25–34 (33% of male victims) |
| Victims in incidents with multiple victims | 22% of women/girls; 64% of men/boys |
| Average victims per multi-victim incident | 2.9 victims |
| Range of victims in multi-victim incidents | 2 to 49 |
| Incidents with multiple victims | 10% of all police-reported incidents |
| Women/girls trafficked by intimate partner | 36% — most common relationship type |
| Men/boys trafficked by business associate | 46% — most common relationship type |
| Accused — men and boys | 82% |
| Accused — women and girls | 18% |
| Age of accused — 73% between 18 and 34 | Median age 27 years |
| Women accused — median age | 23 years |
| Support program referred victims (2024) | 108 potential victims (vs 59 in 2023) |
Source: Statistics Canada — Juristat: Trafficking in Persons in Canada, 2024 (December 2025); US Department of State — 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Canada
The victim profile that emerges from a decade of Statistics Canada data is consistent and deeply instructive. 93% of identified trafficking victims in Canada are women and girls — a proportion that has remained essentially stable over the entire 2014 to 2024 period, with the exception of 2022, when a spike in labour trafficking investigations temporarily elevated the male victim share to 20%. The dominance of women and girls reflects the overwhelming predominance of sex trafficking in Canadian police data: because the UCR Survey captures sex trade offences as the most common co-occurring violation in trafficking cases, and because sex trafficking disproportionately victimises women and girls, the gender ratio in official data is heavily skewed toward female victimisation. This does not mean that male and labour trafficking are rare — it means they are more systematically undercounted in official statistics.
The age distribution is particularly alarming for what it reveals about the life stage at which trafficking risk is highest. The 41% of victims aged 18 to 24 represents the largest single cohort — but when added to the 22% under the age of 18, nearly two-thirds of all identified victims in Canada were under 25 years old. This is a crime that targets people at the earliest, most vulnerable stage of their adult lives, when financial precarity, relationship inexperience, social isolation, and the lack of stable housing make them susceptible to the “romeo pimp” or “loverboy” recruitment model — where a trafficker poses as a romantic partner before transitioning to exploitation — which is the most common recruitment pathway for women and girls in Canada’s domestic sex trafficking network. The fact that 36% of female victims were trafficked by an intimate partner confirms that this relationship-based model is the statistical norm, not the exception.
Provinces, Cities and Trafficking Hotspots in Canada 2026
POLICE-REPORTED TRAFFICKING RATES BY PROVINCE (2014–2024 avg. annual rate)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Nova Scotia ████████████████████████████████████████ 4.1 per 100,000
Ontario ████████████████████ 2.0 per 100,000
National average ████████████ 1.2 per 100,000
All other provinces ████████ <1.2
TOP CITIES BY TOTAL INCIDENTS (2014–2024)
Toronto ████████████████████████████████████████████ 1,038 (20%)
Ottawa █████████ 416 (8.2%)
Halifax ████████ 326 (6.4%)
Montréal ████████ 272 (5.4%)
London ON ████████ 217 (4.3%)
TOP CITY RATES — 2024 ALONE (per 100,000 population)
Guelph ████████████████████████████████████████████ 11.0 ← #1 in 2024
Halifax ████████████████████████████████████ 7.5
Thunder Bay ████████████████████████████████ 6.1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Provincial / City Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Highest average annual rate (2014–2024) | Nova Scotia — 4.1 per 100,000 |
| Second highest rate | Ontario — 2.0 per 100,000 |
| Only provinces exceeding national average (2014–2024) | Nova Scotia and Ontario |
| Nova Scotia rate in 2024 | 4.5 per 100,000 — triple the national average |
| Ontario 2024 rate | 2.3 per 100,000 (374 incidents) |
| City with most total incidents 2014–2024 | Toronto — 1,038 incidents (20% of Canada total) |
| Second city (total incidents) | Ottawa — 416 incidents (8.2%) |
| Third city (total incidents) | Halifax — 326 incidents (6.4%) |
| Fourth city (total incidents) | Montréal — 272 incidents (5.4%) |
| Fifth city (total incidents) | London, Ontario — 217 incidents (4.3%) |
| Highest city rate — 2024 | Guelph — 11.0 per 100,000 |
| Second highest city rate — 2024 | Halifax — 7.5 per 100,000 |
| Third highest city rate — 2024 | Thunder Bay — 6.1 per 100,000 |
| Average annual rate — census metropolitan areas (CMAs) | 1.4 per 100,000 |
| Average annual rate — non-CMAs | 0.7 per 100,000 |
| Share of incidents in CMAs (2014–2024) | 85% |
| Top 5 CMAs share of all incidents | 45% of all Canadian incidents |
| Ontario — 5-year anti-trafficking strategy funding | CAD $307 million ($213.5 million) |
| Quebec — 2021–2026 sexual exploitation action plan | CAD $150 million ($104.3 million) |
Source: Statistics Canada — Juristat: Trafficking in Persons in Canada, 2024 (December 2025); Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking (CCTEHT) — Human Trafficking Corridors in Canada, 2021
The provincial and urban concentration of human trafficking in Canada is extreme. Toronto alone accounts for 20% of all police-reported human trafficking incidents across the entire country over the decade from 2014 to 2024. Add in Ottawa, Halifax, Montreal, and London (Ontario), and you have explained 45% of a decade’s worth of trafficking incidents with just five cities. 85% of all incidents occurred in census metropolitan areas, reflecting the structural reality that trafficking operations require urban infrastructure: anonymous accommodation, client bases for sexual exploitation, labour demand in hospitality and construction, and transport links. The Highway 401 — which runs through Toronto, Mississauga, Brampton, Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo, and London before reaching the US border at Windsor — is explicitly identified by the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking as a major trafficking corridor, connecting urban hubs and facilitating rapid victim movement between cities and across the border.
The Nova Scotia anomaly deserves careful attention. Despite being a relatively small province, Nova Scotia has consistently recorded the highest average trafficking rate in the country at 4.1 per 100,000 — more than triple the national average in 2024. The explanation lies in geography: Nova Scotia’s coastal location, ports, and transportation links make it a key node in a trafficking corridor that facilitates movement of victims either originating from or passing through Atlantic Canada on their way to the rest of the country. Notably, in 2024, more than 60% of Nova Scotia’s trafficking incidents were Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) offences rather than Criminal Code violations — a ratio not seen since 2017 — indicating that international trafficking routes into and through Nova Scotia are becoming more active. Guelph’s sudden emergence as the highest per-capita city in 2024 (at 11.0 per 100,000) is linked explicitly by the Guelph Police Service to the introduction of new specialised trafficking teams and intensified investigative efforts, rather than a genuine explosion in trafficking activity.
Trafficking Routes and Exploitation Types in Canada 2026
CANADIAN TRAFFICKING HOTLINE — EXPLOITATION TYPE BREAKDOWN (2024)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Sex trafficking 70%
Labour trafficking 22%
Both sex and labour (same situation) 4%
Other/Unknown 4%
POLICE-REPORTED — VIOLATIONS WITH HUMAN TRAFFICKING (2014–2024)
Human trafficking ONLY violation 61%
Includes sex trade co-offence 53% (of multi-violation cases)
Includes physical assault 34% (of multi-violation cases)
Includes sexual offence 30% (of multi-violation cases)
Includes deprivation of freedom 10% (of multi-violation cases)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Route and Exploitation Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Sex trafficking (hotline cases, 2024) | 70% |
| Labour trafficking (hotline cases, 2024) | 22% |
| Domestic trafficking (no cross-border element) | Majority of cases — 75% Criminal Code, 25% IRPA |
| Share of incidents with IRPA (international) violations | 25% of all 2014–2024 incidents |
| Estimated annual cross-border trafficking into Canada | 600–800 persons annually (RCMP historic estimate) |
| Estimated cross-border trafficking through Canada to US | 1,500–2,200 per year (RCMP estimate) |
| Labour trafficking sectors | Agriculture, construction, caregiving, hospitality; temporary foreign worker exploitation |
| Sex trafficking recruitment model | “Romeo pimp” / intimate partner — 36% of female victims |
| Criminal trafficking — women/girls relationship with accused | 36% intimate partner; 22% acquaintance |
| Criminal trafficking — men/boys relationship with accused | 46% business relationship; 13% acquaintance |
| FINTRAC human trafficking disclosures (since 2016) | ~2,000 disclosures to assist police |
| FINTRAC Project Protect labour trafficking disclosures (2023/24) | 147 actionable disclosures (43% proactive) |
| High-risk sectors for labour trafficking | Seasonal agriculture; car washes; restaurants; nail salons |
| Temporary Foreign Worker Program suspected forced labour (Apr–Dec 2024) | 53 suspected cases |
| Entry/transit cities | Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto — key organised crime hubs |
| Highway 401 designation | Major trafficking corridor; connects multiple urban centres and US border |
| Canada’s status | Primarily domestic trafficking; also destination and transit country |
Source: Statistics Canada — Juristat: Trafficking in Persons in Canada, 2024; Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline Annual Report 2024; Public Safety Canada — National Strategy 2023–2025 Report; RCMP; FINTRAC Annual Report 2023–24; US Department of State 2025 TIP Report: Canada
Canada’s trafficking problem is, in its dominant form, a domestic crime. The 75% of police-reported incidents recorded under the Criminal Code — rather than the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act — means that the majority of trafficking cases do not involve international border crossing. A Canadian woman trafficked between Toronto and Hamilton, a First Nations teenager exploited in a hotel on the outskirts of Winnipeg, a young man indebted to a labour contractor in the Niagara grape-growing region — these are the statistical majority of Canada’s trafficking victims. The RCMP’s historic estimates of 600 to 800 persons trafficked into Canada annually from overseas, and a further 1,500 to 2,200 transiting through Canada into the United States, have not been updated recently, but the 25% of incidents involving IRPA violations in the decade-long dataset confirms that international trafficking remains a real and persistent dimension of the problem.
FINTRAC — Canada’s financial intelligence unit — plays an increasingly important role in trafficking detection through Project Protect, launched in 2016 and expanded in 2023/24 to cover labour trafficking money laundering. Since inception, FINTRAC has generated close to 2,000 disclosures related to human trafficking, and its 147 actionable labour trafficking disclosures in 2023/24 — 43% of which were identified proactively — represent a model for financial intelligence being used as a trafficking disruption tool. The identification of 53 suspected forced labour cases within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program between April and December 2024 confirms a concern that advocates have raised for years: that Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which ties migrant workers to specific employers, creates structural conditions of dependency and vulnerability that traffickers and exploitative employers are able to exploit.
Criminal Justice Outcomes for Human Trafficking in Canada 2026
ADULT CRIMINAL COURT — HUMAN TRAFFICKING OUTCOMES (2013/14–2023/24)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Total cases completed (2013/14–2023/24) 1,281
Total charges completed 4,464
Cases with guilty finding 10%
Cases stayed/withdrawn/dismissed 84%
Cases resulting in custody (of those guilty) 78%
Average charges per case 18 (vs 7 for sex trade; 4 for violent offences)
Median days to complete a case 418 (vs 219 sex trade; 200 violent offences)
YEAR COMPARISON: 2013/14 vs 2023/24
Cases 2013/14 ████████ 46
Cases 2023/24 ████████████████████████ 112 (+143%)
Charges 2013/14 ████████ 142
Charges 2023/24 ████████████████████████████████ 484 (+241%)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
| Criminal Justice Metric | Data |
|---|---|
| Total court cases completed (2013/14–2023/24) | 1,281 cases |
| Total charges completed (2013/14–2023/24) | 4,464 charges |
| Guilty findings — human trafficking cases | 10% |
| Cases stayed, withdrawn, dismissed, or discharged | 84% |
| Cases resulting in acquittal | 4% |
| Of guilty cases — resulting in custodial sentence | 78% |
| Accused in guilty cases — men | 91% |
| Average charges per trafficking case | 18 (vs 7 for sex trade; 4 for other violent offences) |
| Multi-charge cases (of all trafficking cases) | 98% |
| Cases with co-occurring sex trade offence | 77% of multi-charge cases |
| Cases with kidnapping/forcible confinement charge | 27% of multi-charge cases |
| Cases with sexual offence charge | 31% of multi-charge cases |
| Median days to complete trafficking case | 418 days (vs 219 sex trade; 200 violent offences) |
| Cases in 2013/14 | 46 (142 charges) |
| Cases in 2023/24 | 112 (484 charges) — more than double |
| CBSA/RCMP prosecutions (Apr–Sep 2024) | 43 cases prosecuted |
| CBSA/RCMP convictions (Apr–Sep 2024) | 54 traffickers |
| Youth court cases completed (2013/14–2023/24) | 61 cases (141 charges) |
| Youth court — proportion with girl accused | 42% (unusually high vs adult courts) |
| FMSSP — Forced Marriage Specialist Support Program | Launched 2 January 2025 |
Source: Statistics Canada — Juristat: Trafficking in Persons in Canada, 2024 (December 2025); US Department of State — 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Canada
The 10% guilty verdict rate for human trafficking cases in Canadian adult criminal courts is the most sobering figure in the entire judicial dataset. It means that of every 10 trafficking cases that reached court over a decade, only one resulted in a conviction. The explanation is structural, not incidental: human trafficking cases average 18 charges per case — far more complex than any other comparable crime type — take a median of 418 days to complete, and rely heavily on victim-witness testimony, which prosecutors themselves acknowledge is the primary vulnerability of trafficking prosecutions. Victims may be inconsistent in their accounts due to trauma, fear of retaliation, immigration concerns, or ongoing psychological control by their trafficker. Defence attorneys systematically exploit these inconsistencies to undermine credibility. The result is an 84% stay, withdrawal, or dismissal rate that leaves the overwhelming majority of accused traffickers unpunished by the criminal justice system.
The positive counterpoint is the trajectory over time: from 46 cases and 142 charges in 2013/14 to 112 cases and 484 charges in 2023/24, the volume of trafficking matters reaching court has more than doubled over a decade. The 54 convictions secured by federal CBSA and RCMP officers between April and September 2024 — compared to 24 in the equivalent period the year before — suggests that federal agencies, in particular, are making meaningful prosecution progress. The 78% custodial sentence rate among those convicted reflects the courts’ recognition that, when trafficking is proven, it warrants incarceration. The Integrated Criminal Court Survey data showing that 5% of completed cases involved a youth accused is also significant: the 42% girl accused rate in youth court — far higher than the 16% in adult court — is consistent with research showing that young women formerly exploited as trafficking victims are often subsequently recruited as recruiters themselves, drawn back into criminal systems they were first victimised by.
Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.