October 8, 2014
By Marty Klinkenberg,
EDMONTON – Just like everyone else, (click here) sex-trade workers are travelling across the country to earn big money in Alberta.
All but one of 16 prostitutes interviewed by Edmonton police recently as part of a human-trafficking investigation had arrived from outside Alberta, mostly from Toronto and Montreal.
“There is a pattern where women are coming to an oil-rich province chasing the money, and we are seeing more and more of that,” Det. David Schening, with the Edmonton police’s vice unit, said Tuesday.
Participating in a nationwide undercover probe called Operation Northern Spotlight, Edmonton detectives contacted sex-trade workers by responding to advertisements on the Internet and then offered intervention and exit strategies instead of arresting them. A secondary goal was determining if they were being forced to work for somebody else....
