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Sex traffickers are using the country’s major highway networks to transport women and girls, taking them to small towns and cities in order to isolate them, avoid police and maximize their financial gain, according to the first research in Canada analyzing how victims are moved.
A report from the Canadian Centre to End Human Trafficking identifies some of the key routes traffickers use to transport their victims, isolating them from family, friends and familiar surroundings that could offer an eventual escape, and making them wholly dependent on their perpetrators.
The research suggests there’s a trend in young women being trafficked from Quebec to Alberta, where criminals can make more money selling sex services than in other provinces, according to police officers.
The Globe and Mail spoke with two women who shared their personal experiences being sex trafficked and a third woman who shares her daughter’s story.
Jennifer Holleman's apartment in Kentville, N.S., has a tribute wall to her late daughter Maddison.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
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Climate, pandemic and economy on the agenda as Biden and Trudeau meet Tuesday in effort to renew ties
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden will meet via videoconference on Tuesday, along with members of their cabinets. It’s Mr. Biden’s first bilateral with a world leader since taking office last month, and an opportunity for him to make good on promises to restore the U.S.’s stature in the world by mending fences with allies.
Mr. Trudeau, who has so far been stymied by the U.S. President on major bilateral files including access to COVID-19 vaccine supplies and the Keystone XL pipeline, will be looking for the U.S. to grant Ottawa an exemption to stricter Buy American rules, and to help secure the release of two Canadians detained in China.
Provinces are working with outdated vaccine-tracking systems, hindering national data
Some provinces and territories are using outdated technology to record their vaccination data and not fully participating in the Panorama system that Ottawa created to manage infectious-disease outbreaks.
The results of a Globe and Mail survey sent to every province and territory found a patchwork of systems for recording vaccine information that will be crucial in monitoring supply, adverse reactions and population immunity across the country, and for booking appointments. The result is 13 different vaccine-tracking systems, many of which do not communicate with each other or Ottawa.
More coronavirus news:
- Meet the minister responsible for buying COVID-19 vaccines: Anita Anand, who came into politics in 2019 from a career as a law professor.
- The leaders of some churches in B.C. and Alberta are defying public-health orders, arguing that restricting their ability to hold services violates several Charter rights, including freedoms of religion, assembly and association.
- In spite of a recent decline in cases, the U.S. is nearing a grim milestone as it prepares to mark 500,000 coronavirus deaths this week.
- Tanzanian President John Magufuli has repeatedly claimed to have defeated the coronavirus with the power of prayer, but there is mounting evidence that Tanzanians are dying and travellers are exporting the virus to other countries, according to the World Health Organization. The WHO has urged the government to begin preparing for a vaccination effort that it has long rejected.
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Also on our radar
Mass strike in Myanmar: Demonstrators filled streets across Myanmar Monday in a mass general strike to protest the Feb. 1 coup that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi. The military has threatened to use force against demonstrators, and its 33rd Light Infantry Division, notorious for brutality against Rohingya and other ethnic groups, has been deployed to urban protest sites.
How Canada’s real estate market has defied expectations: When the pandemic hit last March and lockdowns started, many assumed that the economic downturn would hammer real estate. But after a lull in March and April, sales activity and prices came roaring back to hit new records. Alongside this unlikely, unpredicted boom, other shifts were under way, such as prices skyrocketing in cottage country and demand for condos cratering.
First temporary housing arrives for Stoney Point Indigenous community: Almost 80 years after the last homes of Stoney Point community members were removed by the Canadian government on flatbed trucks to make way for a military base, the first new homes for their descendants arrived this week in the same manner. The prefabricated homes are a welcome sight for Pierre George, brother of Dudley George, the Indigenous protester killed by an Ontario Provincial Police sniper in 1995.
One of Canada’s most celebrated scientists brings her new discovery to market: Molly Shoichet is stepping up plans to take a key discovery out of her lab and into the marketplace. On Monday, AmacaThera Inc., the third startup spun out of Dr. Shoichet’s University of Toronto lab, is announcing it has raised $10.3-million from investors in Canada, the U.S. and Europe to take its product – an injectable gel that can improve postsurgery pain treatment – into human safety trials this year.
Donald Trump to speak at first post-White House event: Mr. Trump will appear at the American Conservative Union’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 28 in Florida, alongside a slew of former Trump administration officials and others who represent his wing of the GOP. Mr. Trump has been keeping a relatively low profile, but re-emerged last week on phone-in interviews to commemorate the death of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.
Texans stuck with $5,000 electric bills after deadly winter storm: Elected officials in Texas said the state should help pay some of the eye-watering electricity bills sent to residents after the devastating storm that caused widespread blackouts. In the state’s deregulated energy market, some providers sell electricity at wholesale prices that rise in sync with demand, which skyrocketed during the record-breaking freeze.
Morning markets
Global shares fall: World shares sank on Monday as expectations for faster economic growth and inflation battered bonds and boosted commodities, while rising real yields made equity valuations look more stretched in comparison. Just before 6 a.m. ET, Britain’s FTSE 100 was down 0.70 per cent. Germany’s DAX and France’s CAC 40 lost 0.56 per cent and 0.58 per cent, respectively. Japan’s Nikkei ended up 0.46 per cent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng lost 1.06 per cent. New York futures were weaker. The Canadian dollar was trading at 79.20 US cents.
Looking for investing ideas? Check out The Globe’s weekly digest of the latest insights and analysis from the pros, stock tips, portfolio strategies and what investors need to know for the week ahead. This week’s edition includes bargain bank stock, high-yielding dividend plays and last-minute RRSP ideas.
What everyone’s talking about
Alberta can no longer afford to have no sales tax
David Parkinson: “Alberta could afford that luxury as long as its ample royalty revenue from oil and gas production paid the bills. That’s no longer the case, and hasn’t been for more than half a decade.”
What it feels like to be a health care worker in a pandemic
Jillian Horton: “Yes, health care is always hard, and we know we are signing up for a difficult job when we commit to working intimately with human suffering. But we have been trained to tend to suffering in a certain way, and, while the infrastructure of our personal lives weakens or crumbles, a key tool we have relied on to do our jobs – human connection – has been fundamentally altered or taken away altogether.”
The dairy industry’s use of palm oil breaches its moral contract with Canadians
Sylvain Charlebois: “The Dairy Farmers of Canada has only itself to blame for the situation. Despite its dismal track record on transparency, it should have asked Ottawa to ban these products from the market or at least openly condemned the practice.”
Today’s editorial cartoon
David Parkins/The Globe and Mail
Living better
How to help guard against colorectal cancer
An updated analysis of existing research has concluded that a number of dietary factors are clearly linked to colorectal cancer risk. Researchers found “convincing” evidence that the risk was greater with higher intakes of red meat and alcohol, and the risk was lower with higher intakes of fibre, dietary calcium and yogurt. Dietitian Leslie Beck suggests a few other lifestyle modifications to help protect against colorectal cancer.
Moment in Time: News photo archive
Sonia Guevara and her daughters plant their first garden in Toronto's east end in 2000.Patti Gower/The Globe and Mail
Sowing the seeds of community
For more than 100 years, photographers and photo librarians have preserved an extraordinary collection of 20th-century news photography for The Globe and Mail. Every Monday, The Globe features one of these images. This month, we’re exploring food security.
In an immense, densely populated place such as Toronto, many live in close quarters. For most, to have a garden in the backyard to grow vegetables is a pipe dream. As a result, thousands of Torontonians rely on a network of allotment and community gardens, like this one in the image captured in 2000 by The Globe and Mail’s Patti Gower, who took photos as Sonia Guevara and her family spent an afternoon planting tomatoes and peppers. There is fierce competition to land a space in these fertile patches. For some, it is a means to enjoy a relaxing spring and summer hobby. For others, these gardens are critical when it comes to guaranteeing food security. The grow-your-own movement becomes more and more popular all the time, and interest in it exploded last year with the arrival of COVID-19. – Marty Klinkenberg
Subscribers and registered users of globeandmail.com can dig deeper into our News Photo Archive at tgam.ca/newsphotoarchive.
This edition of Morning Update was compiled by Lori Fazari. If you’d like to receive this newsletter by e-mail every weekday morning, go here to sign up. If you have any feedback, send us a note.