ID 96678581 © Stepan Popov | Dreamstime.com

By Curtis Galbraith

Community

Country singer Paul Brandt brings effort to combat human trafficking to Grande Prairie

May 29, 2025 | 12:00 PM

Country singer Paul Brandt has been meeting with various services in Grande Prairie about the problem of human trafficking.

Those services include health care, law enforcement, and Occupational Health and Safety.

Brandt says it looks like “there is a real desire to collaborate” amongst the agencies here.

He described the first set of meetings he had here as “amazing.”

“I’m very excited just to see the response. There’s a lot of collaboration. We’re working on just identifying what gaps in the system there are and how we can work together more cohesively.”

Brandt says the work against human trafficking means that everyone in the community must bring what he calls “their own special super powers” to the effort.

The Grande Prairie Airport recently joined the #NotInMyCity movement, a national effort meant to bring attention to this crime.

Brandt says airports are important partners in this work.

“Human trafficking doesn’t really have any borders. It can impact anybody. The realities of the crime in Canada, and while it looks different in different communities and different places, (is) it’s always an outcome of vulnerability.”

“Traffickers kind of work in the shadows. This is a crime that’s hidden in plain site.”

Brandt says the three most common types of the crime are sex, labour and organ trafficking.

“Primarily, what we see in Canada from human trafficking just in general is that 93 per cent of victims are girls and women and 93 per cent of victims are also Canadian. They’re not people necessarily from another country, they’re actually Canadians that are being trafficked, which surprises a lot of people.”

Brandt says traffickers can make about $280,000 per year, per victim, in Canada and “often have multiple victims”. He adds human trafficking globally generates $180 billion per year.

“There are over 21 types of trafficking that have been identified globally and there are new types of trafficking being invented,” says Brandt, adding “it’s this outcome of vulnerability, and traffickers, whether it’s labour trafficking or for organ trafficking or for sex trafficking, are great at identifying those vulnerabilities.”

Brandt says he became passionate about human trafficking after he and his wife watched a television news show about a sting operation on child trafficking connected to Cambodia, a place they later visited and saw the problem first-hand.

Brandt is the co-chair of the board for the Alberta Centre to End Trafficking in Persons.