Today is the first day of the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance’s (CVSA) five-day Human Trafficking Awareness Initiative in Canada. This annual awareness and outreach effort aims to educate commercial motor vehicle drivers, motor carriers, law enforcement officers and the general public about the crime of human trafficking, the signs to look for and what to do if you suspect someone is being trafficked.
This week, Canadian law enforcement jurisdictions, motor carrier companies and transportation safety organizations will track their human trafficking awareness and outreach activities and submit that data to the Alliance.
In the months leading up to the Human Trafficking Awareness Initiative, CVSA educated its membership and the general public on human trafficking through webinars, social media, articles, radio appearances and online resources.
The Alliance partnered with Truckers Against Trafficking (TAT) to distribute wallet cards, posters and window decals, which are still available upon request. In addition, CVSA, in collaboration with TAT, worked with the Paramount/CBS network to create public service announcement (PSA) videos, which feature a human trafficking survivor, truck driver and commercial vehicle enforcement officer. The PSAs are available for public use and distribution as 15- and 30-second videos and an extended five-minute video.
CVSA selected Feb. 19-23 as the dates for this initiative to coincide with Canada’s National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, which is Feb. 22.
The government of Canada defines human trafficking as recruitment, transportation, harboring and/or exercising control, direction or influence over the movements of a person in order to exploit that person, typically through sexual exploitation or forced labor.
If you suspect someone is in a human trafficking situation, or you are the victim of human trafficking, call the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-900-1010. The hotline is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
To find out what your local jurisdiction is doing for human trafficking awareness, contact the agency/department responsible for overseeing commercial motor vehicle safety within your province or territory.
CVSA is comprised of local, state, provincial, territorial and federal commercial motor vehicle safety officials and industry representatives in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. Mexico and the U.S. are also participating in CVSA’s 2024 Human Trafficking Awareness Initiative. The U.S. campaign was last month. In Mexico, it will be March 11-15. CVSA will combine Canada’s data with data submitted by Mexico and the U.S. and report the results this summer.
The Human Trafficking Awareness Initiative is part of CVSA’s Human Trafficking Prevention Program. The program seeks to reduce human trafficking throughout North America through coordinated enforcement and investigative and educational awareness measures within the commercial motor vehicle industry.