Marketing shapes the biggest trafficking awareness campaigns, leading journalists to ditch experts and fall for slogans.
Journalists are rushing to the most sensational spokespeople while covering human trafficking, and they all say variations of the same thing:
“Trafficking is everywhere you look.”
“Trafficking is in your backyard.”
“Everyone is at risk of being trafficked!”
Human trafficking is an extreme form of exploitation that should be taken seriously. The criminal charge of trafficking in persons applies to anyone who “recruits, transports, transfers, receives, holds, conceals or harbours a person, or exercises control, direction or influence over the movements of a person, for the purpose of exploiting them or facilitating their exploitation.” This heinous crime has captured media and public attention through PR campaigns, PSAs and digital ads, but the interest often results in misinformation, moral panic and oversimplified solutions. Strangely, journalists who often seek interviews with academics are not turning to evidence-based experts for insight when reporting on this complex topic.
The making of an anti-trafficking campaign
Some of the most sought-after spokespeople for human trafficking stories are from the Joy Smith Foundation, founded by former Conservative MP Joy Smith and currently led by Smith’s daughter Janet Campbell. As part of the Harper Government, Smith wanted internet companies to block pornography and called for a boycott of the erotic romance novel-turned-movie 50 Shades of Grey. However, she’s most known for introducing two private members’ bills, including one that led to mandatory minimum sentences for traffickers who victimize children.
Continuing her anti-trafficking work after politics, Smith’s Foundation partnered with Toronto-based Diamond, a marketing agency with a portfolio that ranges from menopause PSAs to the Fairmont Hotel’s Barbie Dream Suite. To coincide with the 2023 National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, they launched the “See the Signs” campaign, featuring images of teenagers on posters, billboards and other marketing material that encouraged people to look for indicators in their day-to-day life that purportedly show that someone is a sex trafficking victim. Some of these “signs” include grades dropping, a sudden change in style and make-up, and having a new group of friends. These indicators are not based on evidence. Neither is the slogan that anchored the campaign:
“One kilometre from where you are, someone is being trafficked.”
The claim is shocking, attention-grabbing, and effective in making the public more concerned about human trafficking. It triggers an emotional response that compels people to support counter-trafficking police units and donate to NGOs that they envision will carry out dramatic rescue efforts. But the slogan is just that, a slogan. It’s corporate advertising that brings attention to a complex social problem, regardless of its factuality. Any academic will tell you it’s bogus. There is no scientific methodology that would lead anyone to come to that outrageous conclusion.
There also isn’t any peer-reviewed research that has provided any evidence that there are visible signs the public can use to identify a trafficking victim, but Diamond’s senior vice-president and creative director provides his take:
“The warning signs of sex trafficking are there in plain sight, if you know what to look for,” stated Dave Stevenson in a news release distributed by PR company Glossy Inc for the launch of the campaign.
Rounding out the Foundation’s branded activism, it also partnered with influencers “with a combined reach of 1.5 million” to spread their message further.
From myth to media reports
Media ate up the “one-kilometre” soundbite. It was featured prominently in news stories on the day of the PSA launch, with reporters letting the Foundation go unchecked on its most sensational statement. In the years since, questions about the claim prompted the Foundation to adjust its messaging slightly, sometimes using the phrase “lured into trafficking.” Still, the original statement is featured prominently across PSAs, on the Foundation’s website and repeated in news segments where journalists area expected to cut through catchphrases to present the truth.
The Foundation said during one Human Trafficking Awareness Day, the campaign was featured in 100 news stories while Glossy Inc. boasted about 127 million media impressions. In 2024, a CTV journalist even falsely attributed the slogan’s source to research, stating on-camera:
“Research has shown that one kilometre from where I’m standing right now, or any other community across the country, a young person is being lured into sex trafficking.”
The Joy Smith Foundation does not conduct peer-reviewed studies or research of any kind.
Reality isn’t marketable
The truth is far less alarmist. It’s downright boring.
Statistics Canada notes human trafficking cases accounted for 0.02 percent of all police-reported crimes between 2013 to 2023. Police reported 570 instances of trafficking in 2023, down from 597 the year before. A 2020 study led by B.C. criminologists Hayli Millar and Tamara O’Doherty, analyzed data on trafficking and found that between 2006 and 2018, only 92 human trafficking cases were prosecuted in Canada, with many cases resulting in charges withdrawn, stayed or acquitted.
“Despite these very small number of alleged trafficking cases, the mainstream media, academics, various levels of government, and civil society organizations continue to promote a fear-based narrative about human trafficking, recently suggesting, for instance, that it is Canada’s ‘best hidden crime’ and that police-reported incidents of trafficking represent actual ‘victims,’” write Millar and O’Doherty.
Facts attract far less attention than campaigns. Leading up to the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, the Salvation Army faced backlash for graphic posters that argued human trafficking increases during major sports events, while another religious organization, REED (Resist Exploitation, Embrace Dignity), encouraged prayer walks outside of strip clubs and massage parlours. The Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) Canada investigated their claims in a Public Safety Canada-funded study and lead author Annalee Lepp concluded that there was no evidence of a spike in human trafficking around the Games. The demand for sex workers’ services didn’t increase either.
In the Prairies, Julie Kaye explores settler-colonial perspectives of anti-trafficking activities and notes they’re heavily conflated with addressing sexual exploitation of Indigenous children, while simultaneously giving police and child welfare officials more tools for unwarranted intervention.
Robyn Maynard, an assistant professor of Black feminism at the University of Toronto-Scarborough, explains how the anti-sex work movement has hijacked slavery terminology for anti-trafficking efforts and, “Joy Smith directly parallels her work to the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.”
Maynard says that groups use this language and call for more police enforcement, which works directly against efforts to combat anti-Black policing and Black incarceration. Writing with lawyer Sandra Ka Hon Chu, the two detail the impact of an Ontario policy that allows inspectors to enter establishments without warrant or notice–part of a provincial anti-trafficking plan that is especially harmful to Black, racialized, Indigenous and migrant sex workers.
Intuitive journalists should find these experts fascinating, critical and evidence-based. They could lead reporters to dozens more critical human trafficking experts, spanning from academics to sex workers, who are often the target of anti-trafficking enforcement. Sex workers and their support organizations are frequently passed over for media interviews on trafficking, despite their value in providing journalists with an inside look at what police operations made to rescue victims really look like – a crackdown on the sex industry.
These experts provide important context about the prevalence of human trafficking, perspectives from the many communities harmed by misinformed anti-trafficking efforts, and offer solutions to address root causes including poverty, racism, inequity and immigration policy. You can’t sum up their research on a billboard, school poster or sticker slapped on an airport mirror. There are no buzz words or slogans, no shock and awe. There’s no conflation of sex work with trafficking, child exploitation or human smuggling.
There is no ad agency or PR company behind the facts.
Pitch your human trafficking story
There’s a noticeable allure for journalists to cover sex trafficking. In the last few years, CityNews, CTV and others have rolled out human trafficking series. Many of them are touted as months-long investigations and deep dives, with one that was backed by up to $25,000 in funding from the Jack Webster Foundation. But they bring nothing new because they only speak with the Joy Smith Foundation, The Canadian Centre to End Trafficking, NotInMyCity and many smaller organizations that have adopted the same narrative that relies on moral panic. These non-profits compete for public funding and media attention, so their quotes have become increasingly more alarmist. For example, Ontario-based organization SEEDS warns, “your daughter can be taken while you are downstairs having a coffee in the kitchen. And she’s in her bedroom, and you think she’s safe.”
The popularity of these sensational spokespeople reveals the massive influence many mainstream anti-trafficking organizations wield over the media. They’re able to shut out academics, evidence, and sex workers who have long sounded the alarm about how they have been swept up in police anti-trafficking operations. The spokespeople usually just make the excuse that the reason data doesn’t support their claims that trafficking is rampant is because it’s such a clandestine crime.
Human trafficking is apparently cross-dimensional; it is everything, everywhere, all at once–yet miraculously undetectable.
No follow-up questions
During the See the Signs news conference, the Joy Smith Foundation appeared alongside the Winnipeg Police Services and the first question a journalist asked was, “that one kilometre stat, where does that come from?” In a video, Smith deflects from the question and falls back to sensationalism:
“We actually should have put it less than one kilometre. We worked 7,000 files and in all the cities less than a kilometre from where you’re sitting right now someone is being lured or trafficked and I’ll tell you why. We know that because of the stats we have in our office and the fact of the matter is that people are unaware of that.”
In a March 2023 interview with advertising website Little Black Book Online, CEO Janet Campbell insisted the claim is not just a hook, stating again the Foundation has helped more than 7,000 victims, survivors often approach them after public presentations and social media makes it easier to traffic victims.
“Therefore, this understanding was critical to our creative process, as it allowed us to convey the urgency and proximity of the problem powerfully and memorably to all Canadians,” said Campbell.
Who is the Joy Smith Foundation including as victims in its case files? Are they counting the survivors that approach them after presentations? Where are these thousands of victims coming from?
It’s unclear what frontline services the Foundation provides or if it can produce records that show it has supported thousands of people. Unlike many social services agencies, it doesn’t list any programs on its website and only recently posted their first annual report. The Joy Smith Foundation’s 2023 Annual Report says it supported “100+ people and their families in intervention incidents” over the year. Yet, between March 2024 and January 2025, Joy Smith herself has told APTN, The Hill Times and faith-based station CHVN Radio that her organization has now handled a whopping 8,000 files, an increase of 1,000 cases in one year.
Journalists haven’t challenged the Foundation on the data behind the one-kilometre claim any further, and in 2024, the Manitoba government pumped another $100,000 into the campaign to spread its message further.
Many mainstream anti-trafficking groups present fake or highly exaggerated statistics, spotlight survivors with horrible stories and play on parents’ “stranger danger” fears, according to Adjunct Professor of journalism Elizabeth Nolan Brown. She writes that journalists are unwilling to interrogate sensitive stories and sensationalist subjects.
“It just gives grifters and fabulists free reign to prey on people’s empathy. It also lets law enforcement get away with things like arresting and stealing from immigrant women and calling it a blow against human trafficking. And it sowed the seeds for wild conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon.”
Selling snake oil in a crowded market
It wouldn’t be Human Trafficking Awareness Day without another campaign launch. That’s exactly what The Canadian Centre to End Trafficking in Toronto did on February 22, 2025, after hiring public relations firm Strategic/Objectives. The Centre seemingly tries to distance itself from and compete with similar initiatives from the Joy Smith Foundation and Alberta-based NotInMyCity, which is known to team up with airports across Western Canada. The Centre offers the same product, but in different packaging. Though it lists many of the same “signs” as these organizations, its latest video states, “popular media has painted a false image of what human trafficking looks like,” disregarding how the Centre itself has contributed to that image before encouraging the public to look for the true signs of trafficking.
The Centre even moves in on NotInMyCity’s territory with a Calgary Herald op-ed where it writes, “the first step toward effective action is education,” mirroring one of Joy Smith’s favourite taglines, “education is our greatest weapon.”
So it begins – another set of signs, another cycle of awareness raising, public education and media coverage.
Strategic/Objectives says the first wave of the national campaign resulted in 163 media placements, 14 interviews and 17.5 million impressions. Between the Centre, the Joy Smith Foundation, NotInMyCity, smaller NGOs and law enforcement agencies, the Canadian market is saturated with sex trafficking “signs” initiatives and awareness-raising activities. Not to be outdone, the Joy Smith Foundation announced on March 13, 2025, that it’s expanding into labour trafficking awareness in Manitoba’s trucking sector. While migrant organizations, labour groups, Amnesty International and other human rights watchdogs call for an end to closed work permits in the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, Smith’s Foundation ignores any critique of the systemic factors that cause labour trafficking. Instead, the Foundation encourages workers, their bosses and the public to look for the signs of labour trafficking at the hands of individual perpetrators.
Swapping sources
“A relatively small number of people are called upon to comment on and define the day’s issues. Breaking into that circle can be difficult, and journalists who try to widen the range of sources risk criticism and condemnation.” -Cecil Rosner, Manipulating the Message: How Powerful Forces Shape the News
Veteran investigative journalist, Cecil Rosner, writes that so-called reliable sources reinforce mainstream narratives and the status quo, and their comments turn into conventional wisdom.
So how much of the ‘conventional wisdom’ about trafficking is factual and how much is creative? And who might be able to present evidence that challenges this mainstream narrative about trafficking?
Journalists won’t know until they expand their sources beyond sensational spokespeople, their slogans and marketing teams.
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Crystal Laderas is a former journalist who now leads communications and public education for SWAN Vancouver–an organization that promotes the rights, health and safety of im/migrant women engaged in indoor sex work. She manages ResponsibleReporting.ca, an online resource hub for reporting on sex work and human trafficking.