An award-winning Canadian country music star has brought his nationwide campaign against human trafficking to Waterloo Region. Paul Brandt founded the “Not In My City” campaign back in 2017 in an attempt to bring more attention to crime networks operating in Canada. It offers a free 30-minute e-learning course to help people recognize the signs of human trafficking. He brought that message to Waterloo Region on Thursday. “I learned about the issue of human trafficking about 20 years ago, and had the opportunity to take a trip overseas and actually interact with and see an organization that was intervening on behalf of child trafficking victims,” Brandt told CTV News. “It really changed my perspective and helped me to understand that this is an issue not only internationally, but here in Canada.” People may notice yellow roses throughout the region as part of the ongoing effort to raise awareness. “When most people hear about human trafficking, they think about what they’ve seen in the movies. They think about chains, they think about all those dark images. What they should be thinking of is trust and the fact that there’s actually something that we can do about this. That there is hope and there are things we can do to prevent it from happening in the first place,” Brandt said. Police have previously said the Highway 401 corridor is a particular area of concern when it comes to human trafficking crimes. Earlier this year, police said human trafficking cases in Waterloo Region nearly tripled the national average. In 2024, Waterloo Region saw 3.4 reports of human trafficking per 100,000 people. “We are committed as a police service organization to be relentless in our investigation an dour pursuit of human traffickers and trying to infiltrate those who are exploiting the most vulnerable in our community,” Waterloo Regional Police Service Chief Mark Crowell said. “We also need to mobilize and empower community organizations and citizens broadly in this region and beyond to take the cause, to work through some of the education awareness pieces and move towards prevention.” With reporting from Spencer Turcotte
