When Ana* and Lily* were recruited for work in Canada, they thought they were leaving behind life in the Philippines to make their dreams come true.
"I had a good life there, but I gave up everything to pursue success and a better life here" Lily, 35, says.
In addition to families and friends, Ana, 28, left behind a serious boyfriend while Lily gave up a secure job she'd held for 13 years in a luxury hotel in Manila, all for the promise of good-paying jobs in an Alberta resort that supposedly awaited.
But when they arrived in Vancouver four years ago, their dream quickly turned into a nightmare.
Their passports were seized and they were forced to work gruelling hours as housekeepers and nannies in the homes of a middle-aged businesswoman and her extended family in Burnaby.
They say they were treated like slaves, enduring constant verbal abuse. They were summoned by numbers assigned to them - their captors refused to use their names - at all hours of the night to "wash undies" or clean bedsheets.
They didn't know it at the time, but they'd become victims of human labour trafficking.
With the exception of two recent charges stemming from allegations of domestic slavery in the Lower Mainland, the issue has been a well-kept secret in British Columbia.
Mumtaz Ladha, a 55-year-old West Vancouver woman, was charged in May with human trafficking and human smuggling. Mounties allege that Ladha hired a 21-year-old African woman in 2008, promising her a work visa and a job and instead took the young woman's passport and forced her to work long hours at her West Vancouver home with no pay.
"Many people would be shocked to know that it happens here in our own backyard," B.C. RCMP Human Trafficking Coordinator Cpl. Jassy Bindra said, adding that labour trafficking issues in particular "are coming to the forefront."
One reason it has gone under-reported is a lack of public awareness. But this is slowly changing.
On Monday, Tara Teng, Miss Canada 2011, and nine other anti-human-trafficking activists launch a Canada-wide campaign in Vancouver to raise the profile of what she calls "the human rights issue of our time."
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Three months after arriving in Vancouver, Ana, Lily and six other Filipinas were moved to a lakeside town in southwestern Alberta where they were kept among gift shop stock in a cramped basement.
"You could touch the ceiling," says Lily, describing the tiny room she lived in on and off over two years. They finally did work in a hotel, but for 16-18 hours a day and often for no pay.
Subject to extreme control, they were only allowed to eat one hamburger a day, were forbidden to talk to anyone else and were even given specific times they could flush the toilet that eight of them shared.
They endured humiliation as other hotel employees would sing "Here come the slaves" when they arrived for work, Ana says.
At a private party their trafficker hosted for a housing charity she reportedly supported in India, Lily, Ana and the six other women were summoned in front of the crowd and commanded to sing on the spot.
Lily says they were petrified. Not knowing what to do, they started singing in monotone, "thank you, thank you."
"It was so embarrassing," she says.
People in the town also knew what was going on, but many kept the secret.
"Some of them offered to escape us," Ana says. "But, we were so scared, because we don't know where to go after that."
Not only did they not have their passports, their trafficker told them if they tried to escape, she would have them deported on the spot or thrown in jail.
They were moved from B.C. to Alberta and back every six months over the course of about two years.
Naomi Krueger with Deborah's Gate, the Salvation Army's safe house for trafficking victims in Vancouver, said using threats, fear and emotional manipulation are classic grooming strategies traffickers employ to keep their crime a secret.
She said women, in situations similar to Ana and Lily's who so desperately want residency and know so little about employment standards in Canada, are in a vulnerable position that traffickers further exploit.
"We've been intrigued and interested by sexual human trafficking and we haven't necessarily focused on labour trafficking," Krueger said.
Yet, immediately after Deborah's Gate opened in late 2009, they were receiving calls about it.
Krueger said "a high percentage" of safe house residents are victims of labour exploitation who came to Canada for live-in caregiver or tourism jobs.
Westcoast Domestic Workers' Association director and lawyer Virginie Francoeur advocates for women who come into the country as live-in caregivers.
Francoeur said in the last year and a half she has worked with three women who were labour trafficking victims - one of whom also endured severe sexual abuse.
But she said the numbers coming forward don't reflect what's actually happening.
"There are definitely more," Francoeur said, adding that it often takes time for victims to realize they've been trafficked and then try to do something about it.
She said the trafficked women she sees come from developing countries and hoped to escape extreme poverty, support their families, or sometimes, escape abuse they were subject to there.
"They come here often being promised a lot of things," Francoeur said, but that usually doesn't happen.
She said traffickers could be anyone, but tend to be people, in the case of live-in caregivers, who are quite well off because they have to prove they have the income to pay for one.
In cases she's seen, Francoeur said, they're often immigrants who bring their nannies with them and treat them according to accepted cultural practices around domestic labour, or what they were able to get away with in their homelands.
"Most people would be shocked to know how much this is happening."
Human trafficking has been referred to as "modern-day slavery" and involves the domestic or international recruiting, transporting and harbouring of people for forced labour exploitation and is unlike human smuggling, where people pay someone to bring them into the country illegally.
Statistics around how many people are trafficked into the province annually and where from are virtually non-existent.
Bindra said it's difficult to quantify because the crime is secretive and victims face numerous challenges in coming forward.
The United Nations has estimated 2.5 million people are trafficked annually, 32 per cent of whom were exploited for their labour.
According to the U.S. State Department's 2011 annual trafficking in persons report, Canada remains a source, transit and destination country for human sex and labour trafficking.
The report notes labour trafficking victims are found on farms, in sweatshops, processing plants, or as domestic servants across the country.
Ontario brought forward Canada's first charges of labour trafficking in October 2010 against 10 people accused of trafficking in 19 Hungarians.
In 2004, RCMP estimated 800 people were trafficked into Canada per year - 200 of whom were labour trafficking victims.
Bindra said there are currently more than 30 active human trafficking investigations in the country, but couldn't say what portion were in B.C.
Victor Porter with B.C.'s Office to Combat Trafficking in Persons (OCTIP) said while numbers around human trafficking in Canada are "very sketchy," the majority of calls they receive are reports of labour trafficking.
Porter said the office, which has coordinated B.C.'s response to the problem since 2007, has helped just under 75 human trafficking victims in the province in the last three years. Funding for the office as well as its top official was slashed earlier this month.
Ana and Lily came into Canada under the Provincial Nomination Program, where if a foreign national works at the same company for two years, their employer can nominate them for permanent residency.
Both women thought they could endure the slave-like conditions they faced in exchange for staying in Canada, but as time wore on, their fellow Filipinas were being fired and deported short of their two-year contracts.
Fearing they would face the same fate, they resolved to flee.
While back in Burnaby in early 2010, Ana and Lily made their move.
"We left everything, we just ran," says Lily.
The two made it to Brentwood Mall and phoned a Filipino couple one of their cousins had met at church.
They rescued Ana and Lily from the mall and called the police.
"At first, I can't believe there's somebody helping us," Ana says. "You're still thinking, what's going to happen next."
Two days later, RCMP connected them with Deborah's Gate in Vancouver, where they were protected under 24-hour surveillance and given resources and support to overcome their trauma.
Although the recruitment agency that originally hired them tried to hunt them down at the safe house, their trafficker never did.
It took some time, but now, a little over a year later, the two women's demeanour has completely changed, Krueger says. They smile, they don't jump when the phone rings and they both have aboveboard jobs and share an apartment in downtown Vancouver.
"This is the real Canada," Lily says, laughing. Both are working toward becoming permanent residents.
Charges were never laid stemming from Ana and Lily's case.
Krueger said to lay human trafficking charges, fear has to be proven as the primary reason for keeping someone in servitude, and it's often difficult to do.
Francoeur said proving that someone's freedom of movement was restricted is also a challenge.
Investigations are also often reactive, not proactive, Bindra said.
"That gives suspects time to dispose of the evidence," she added.
While anti-trafficking efforts are still developing, it has been highlighted annually by the U.S. State Department that Canada lacks a national strategy to combat the emerging crime.
Yet, Canada continues to increase capacity in its programs that bring in temporary foreign workers to fill its labour market.
A 2010 RCMP "Human Trafficking in Canada" report noted this influx "has generated concern."
Some solutions could be tightening regulations for recruiting agencies, performing more investigations before and after placements, and creating better complaint processes for affected workers, experts say.
But the biggest thing everyone can do is open their eyes, Teng, a 22-year-old beauty queen and Trinity Western University education student, said.
"It's easy to say it happens far away in another country, but it's more common than people think" Teng said. "If you don't see it in your own city, then you're just not looking for it."
After becoming aware of the widespread nature of human trafficking, Teng decided to try and unite Canada's response to the crime by speaking out about it across Canada in the coming weeks.
Teng will be joined by 10 other activists, including a 15-year-old Walnut Grove high-school student and Tania Fiolleau, who encountered many trafficked women during her work as a former prostitute and madam in the Lower Mainland.
Ignite the Road to Justice kicks off in Vancouver, Monday Aug. 15 at 7 p.m. at Coastal Church on West Georgia Street.
"People are not commodities to be bought and sold," Teng said. "Change is possible and it starts with each and every one of us."
sdouziech@theprovince.com
INFORMATION STATION
To learn more about human trafficking:
British Columbia's Office to Combat Human Trafficking (OCTIP) launched an extensive, free online training resource that allows users to learn more about what human trafficking is, Canada's response to it, how to recognize it and how to help. It can be found at http: //www.pssg.gov. bc.ca/octip.
OCTIP's 24-hour, toll-free emergency line, 1-888-712-7974, provides help for trafficking victims and organizations or individuals working with them. For general information about trafficking, OCTIP's office is at 250-953-4970.
Deborah's Gate, a safe house in Vancouver for human-trafficking victims, has an emergency line that can be reached at 1-855-DEB-GATE (1-855-332-4283).
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's website, www.unodc.org, offers a list of signs that could indicate someone is a trafficking victim.
UBC law professor, activist and foremost human trafficking expert Benjamin Perrin's website www.endmoderndayslavery.ca offers comprehensive reading lists as well as resources for people wishing to take personal action on the issue.
The RCMP's Human Trafficking National Coordination Centre at www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/ht-tp/indexeng.htm provides key facts about trafficking in Canada as well as contact information for local centres.
For more on Tara Teng's Ignite the Road to Justice tour, visit www.ignitetheroadtojustice.com.
If you are or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking, you can report by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
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