The British Columbia Restaurant & Foodservices Association (BCRFA) is urging restaurants in Metro Vancouver to participate in a human trafficking training ahead of the summer, when thousands are expected to visit during the FIFA World Cup.<\/p>\n
The association says it wants to raise awareness of the crime to prevent it from happening in Vancouver and offers two seminars to workers in the hospitality business in cooperation with the Human Trafficking Prevention Network of British Columbia.<\/p>\n
Ian Tostenson, CEO of the BCRFA, tells 1130 NewsRadio that large international events require extra vigilance when it comes to human trafficking.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel that it\u2019s such an important topic to raise awareness that putting that into our guide to make sure that people are aware of human trafficking and how extensive it is throughout the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
With over 200,000 workers in the provincial restaurant sector, Tostenson hopes that the tools taught in the training will help staff spot the warning signs during this summer\u2019s events.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was really quite surprised [at] the amount of human traffic there actually is. I always thought that human trafficking was somebody who brought somebody from another country, but it\u2019s not. It happens right here,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think of human trafficking as an international sort of trafficking, but it could be domestic, and it can be in the form of sexual human trafficking or labour trafficking where people prey on the vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizations providing help to human-trafficking victims warn of racial profiling<\/p>\n
However, the Supporting Women\u2019s Alternatives Network (SWAN) in Vancouver has some hesitations as it warns that anti-trafficking campaigns often negatively affect marginalized communities.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor our community, we have only seen a handful of human trafficking cases,\u201d SWAN spokesperson Cystyal Ladaers tells 1130 NewsRadio.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt appears that for our community, they are actually harmed more by these sorts of anti-trafficking initiatives that encourage people to call police.\u201d<\/p>\n
She adds that those campaigns tend to lead to racial profiling and negatively affect sex workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn some cases, it has seemed to cause a lot of racial profiling. It encourages people to surveil others in public and have the belief that trafficking is around every corner.<\/p>\n
Laderas stresses the need for support for human-trafficking survivors and also highlights the importance of sexual assault prevention during events like FIFA.<\/p>\n
According to the RCMP, there were 43 reported cases of human trafficking in B.C in 2023; however, it assumes that many cases are unreported.<\/p>\n
\u2013 With files from Raynaldo Suarez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The British Columbia Restaurant & Foodservices Association (BCRFA) is urging restaurants in Metro Vancouver to participate in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-620562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vancouver","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-vancouver"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}