The Decibel - How short-term rentals are fuelling human trafficking in Canada

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

A court case in Winnipeg has offered a rare glimpse into the mechanics of how human trafficking can work. And it showed that short-rental rentals, like Airbnb and Vrbo, can be used by traffickers while on the move with their victims. But some cities, like Winnipeg, are taking action. Temur Durrani is a reporter for The Globe based in Winnipeg. He explains the story of a Quebec teenager who survived being trafficked and the regulations Winnipeg has put in place to try and combat human traffickers from using short-term rentals. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In early 2024, a grade 12 student from Quebec went missing. Her parents contacted police, but there was no sign of her for weeks. Tamar Durrani is a Globe reporter based in Winnipeg. And then suddenly, in late March, the girl sends a message to one of her friends back home. She was being held in an Airbnb in downtown Winnipeg. She told her friend she was in trouble and she needed some help. And her friend immediately talks to local police in Quebec. Then local police contact police in Manitoba

and they were immediately dispatched to the unit in downtown Winnipeg. It turned out that the woman was being held captive in this condo unit. When they get to the unit, they find a man there. He is a 24-year-old rapper Malik Regali Mark, and they also locate her and rescue her. And they eventually charge him with human trafficking. Malik Regali Mark ended up pleading guilty to multiple charges related to human trafficking.

It was found in court that he had trafficked this teenager into the sex trade. This story is a rare instance where the invisible crime of human trafficking is seen. Detection can be difficult. A globe investigation has found what Canadian law enforcement, advocacy groups, and academics have been sounding the alarm about for years. Predators are increasingly using short-term rentals on platforms such as airmen Airbnb and Verbo to facilitate human trafficking. Tamar looked into this issue where the crime occurred, in Winnipeg.

He wanted to find out what is being done to try to stop traffickers from using short-term rentals. And he's here today to explain. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the decibel from the Globe and Mail. Hi, Tamar. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. So let's start with the Quebec team that we talked about in the intro. how did she get trafficked in the first place? So this is a case that we started following,

partly because it's very, very emblematic of how almost all human trafficking cases end up being. She was a teenager, so she was vulnerable because of her age. She just turned 18. She was in her last year of high school when she started getting in touch with this guy whose videos she was following on YouTube. As she was looking at these videos,

she started commenting on them. She was a fan of his. And eventually they decided to meet up, at a bar in Montreal. When they met up at this bar and they started talking online and after that, around that period he sort of convinced her that they would be in this romantic relationship. He convinced her to leave the province and travel across the country with him. He told her she could earn a lot of money. And between March 6 and March 21, that's exactly what happened. He took her westward through Ontario to Toronto, Sudbury, Timmons and Thunder Bay before winding up in

Manitoba. And in this case, what happened was that he took her bank cards, he took her bank cards, he took her cell phone, and so she had no way of contacting her family either. And only when she texted her friend, as we heard in the intro, was she able to escape the situation? So zooming out from this story to Moore, what did you learn about how human trafficking works? One of the things that I learned is that there's not necessarily physical violence that gets exerted on the victims. There was manipulation here.

There was verbal manipulation going on there. And there was coercion going on here. And so that's exactly how he was. able to control this victim. He was able to make sure that she could continue in the sex trade. He made her meet with these 50 clients during that 15-day period. And this tends to happen with almost every trafficking case where you get convinced that, you know, someone's going to be in a romantic relationship or is there something in it for you, right? And then eventually you get pulled into the trade and that's how this continues. What do we know about who tends to be at

risk of being trafficked? So if someone is poor, they're more likely to be trafficked. If someone is homeless, they're more likely to be trafficked. If someone is dealing with drug addictions, and yes, of course, if they're dealing with systemic discrimination, say, you know, if they're an indigenous woman or girl, they're more likely to be trafficked. In this case, the crown had said that, you know, the youth of the victim played into her vulnerabilities. And that tends to be the case.

You know, the average age of entry actually in human trafficking, in sex trafficking, is 13. So that's usually the age where you get entered into it. Yeah, that is quite young to think about that. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, it is. And while many types of vulnerable people are perhaps more likely to be traffic, predators are manipulative, and this is a crisis that we all should pay attention to. Do we have a sense of scope in Canada? Like, how often does human trafficking happen here? Statistics Canada has said that between 2014 and 2024, there were at least 5,070 cases of human trafficking that were reported to police across the country. So different jurisdictions, that's all included in that.

in Canada. But even Statistics Canada, every time it talks about any annual figures or anything like that, they keep putting up these caveats that this is extremely underreported. And, you know, we've talked to the Joy Smith Foundation, which is the leading organization on human trafficking prevention, and they've estimated that it could be at any given moment, 69,000 people in Canada are being trafficked. And that's a huge number. But see, this is what we're talking about, right? Like this extreme undercount of anybody being trafficked at any point in time. Yeah, that number is completely different from the stat that you got from stats can, which was 5,070 between 2014 and 2024. So that really does show this undercounting that's going on.

Are there parts of the country where the risk of being trafficked is higher? For sure. You know, so last year there was geospatial research that Thompson Reuters conducted, including in areas such as Winnipeg, and they found a larger volume of sex ads linked to trafficking was correlated with a higher number of cases of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. So they were able to look at all these different geographies in Canada and they found where exactly, unfortunately, this is happening more. You know, the research showed that Edmonton and Ontario, particularly the greater Toronto area, have higher numbers of both disappearances and then, of course, sex ads featuring indigenous women.

So it's basically the first time these two data sets have been overlaid to detect potential linkages and patterns such that they found the U.S. and Canadian ecosystem with these sex ads and linked it with the missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. Let's talk about Winnipeg. What makes Winnipeg different from other cities when it comes to trafficking? You know, I think the thing about why we focused on Winnipeg is that so much of the proliferation of trafficking here is directly tied to geography. You know, it's situated debt center in Canada. It's this midway point on roads that, you know, snake across North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It even is, you know, part of this logistical transportation hub across North America. So even the United States is part of that logistical hub in terms of how it is. That makes it a perfect location in some ways to be the sort of midpoint of how you can track cases of human trafficking across the country, across the continent really.

But then also specifically with the demographics in Winnipeg, in particularly, you know, there's a very higher proportion of indigenous women and girls that are based in Winnipeg, higher than most other cities. And so that makes them more vulnerable to these trafficking-related crimes. Okay, let's bring it back to the Quebec teen. The man who trafficked her was booking short-term rentals while he traveled from city to city. Is this a common technique for traffickers? Absolutely. That's exactly why we focused on the story, Cheryl.

So we wanted to make sure that people understood this idea about short-term rentals is happening across the country. It's now being used even increasingly so as a tool for traffickers because of just the way that they're so anonymous. and in the way that you can get away with a lot of things on short-term rentals. In fact, there have been too big trafficking and exploitation bus in Winnipeg in the last seven or eight months. And we've confirmed both involved an element of short-term rentals. Why do traffickers prefer to use a short-term rental over a hotel or a motel? You know, so short-term rentals allow for this high mobility. They have, you know, less oversight.

They have more privacy, partly because, you know, they're not required, much like hotels, to exist in sort of customer registries. a lot of them also are concierge-free, so you don't have anybody actually looking at who's coming into a place and how long they're there for. And in many cases, you know, instead of hotels, they're likely to skirt around customer registry requirements because they're not listed municipally.

So it's hard to even keep track of how many Airbnbs, verboes, and other short-term rentals even exist in a given municipality. We'll be right back. So let's get into what is being done about this to more. So we're going to focus on Winnipeg and Manitoba specifically, because they've been quite proactive on this issue. So let's start with the city, Winnipeg. What actions has the city taken to address concerns around short-term rentals?

So you know, back in 2024, just a few days, actually, in fact, after the arrest, Winnipeg, they joined many other Canadian cities in introducing these restrictions for short-term rental operators. So they are imposing penalties and fines if people don't adhere to occupancy limits, you know, annual fee structures, standard background checks. But then Winnipeg also became one of the only urban centers in Canada to introduce this mandathing that short-term rentals have to display specific signage with information about human trafficking. The only other jurisdiction that we found that does this is the Lakeside, Ontario town of Innesville. But no other cities, you know, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, nobody requires any signage like that

at Airbnb's for human trafficking. So what is the signage? Like, it's a poster, right? Like, what's on it? Yeah, it's a poster that they created in consultation with Winnipeg Police and the Joy Smith Foundation. And basically, it cites statistics about how 93% of victims, nationwide are born in Canada, you know, that 13 is the average age of entry, as we mentioned, and that $280,000 is the average annual revenue one victim generates for a trafficker.

And also make sure that people know that, you know, the rental property is committed to preventing human trafficking, that, you know, it will warn someone who's staying there that they can alert local authorities without notifying guests that if they see something suspicious, they'll let you know. And that's something that nobody else does in Canada beyond that. So these rules have been in effect for a little over two years now. How effective have they been? You know, at best, we found that they've been mixed. And that's exactly what our investigation has shown for a lot of these cases.

You know, prior to the regulations, third party data indicated that there were at least up to 1,800 short-term rentals in Winnipeg. And as of this month, city data show that 886 such listings are licensed. This suggests that many short-term rental operators aren't getting licensed. But we found, again, that, you know, despite the city's background checks, units, where crime have occurred are still listed. And when we talk to police, they've actually told us that more than even the city's regulations, which they don't know, they don't track any statistics about,

so they don't know how helpful it's actually been in real time. But they've told us more than that, the provincial legislation about the hospitality sector has actually helped more. They've had a real direct effect on, you know, people being called about it. You know, police are making sure that they are going to these places. But the only reason why that is, we've been told by Winnipeg Police, is because hotels, are the ones doing that more so, even though, of course, the provincial legislation explicitly states that both short-term rentals and hotels are supposed to follow those rules.

Yeah, tell me more about this legislation. So in 2022, we've talked to actually the minister who was in charge of spearheading this. Her name is Rochelle Squires. She was a former politician. She spearheaded these 2022 legislations that made sure that it's called the provincial bill 40, that the hospitality sector as a whole is supposed to keep customer registries and provide police with access to them for investigations, no questions asked. So basically, you know, if, you know, Cheryl, you and I are going to a hotel or an Airbnb, they're going to make sure that they keep an

account of that of how many days we were there, when we were there, and any information like that. All that does is it makes sure that if something bad does happen, they can go back and verify exactly that was. But of course, this is part of the problem with short-term rentals, right? Like, you could use someone's clean record not only to get a license for that as an operator for short-term rentals, but you could also, on the actual Airbnb platform, use someone else's name to be able to stay at a place, right? So even then, you just don't have to verify those things. But any information like that would be beneficial, police have told us, right, for the investigations in order to find someone. And hotels have been very proactive with this. What they've, in fact, also done is they've

taken it a step further. They've trained their staff to look out for signs of suspicious activity, and they've actually proactively alerted police to show up to their place, to, you know, show up to the hotel and find out if something like this is happening and investigate it. Short-term rentals are not like that, just by way of the way in which they exist. There's nobody there to make sure that someone's actually, you know, following the rules or how things are going, only until the next day when they've even left the unit, will you maybe find out something like that, right? So we've been dancing around the issue of responsibility that short-term rental owners have in all of this. I mean, for example, we've talked about how hotel staff are trained to identify human trafficking. But what are

are fair expectations for a rental owner to help stop this problem? And that's something advocates have been talking about for years, Cheryl, right? Like the idea that, you know, people need to be trained when they're using their property as something that is essentially in many ways acting like a hotel, right? Like, and this is where the responsibility comes in, where it's like we're asking this question, if you own a property. Of course, you don't want any damage to your property. You don't want something happening to it if someone's staying there.

But then, of course, you probably also hopefully don't want anything happening at your property that may lead to arrest, that may lead to these bigger trafficking-related accusations. And we're not accusing operators of being culpable in that. But we're also looking at the systematic practice of how the city can ensure that people are trained about these things. And that's something advocates have talked about for a very long time. Even in Winnipeg, something like that does not exist to this day. As aggressive as Winnipeg has been about these short-term rental regulations, they have not introduced any mandate to make sure that, you know, short-term rental operators are educated to look out for signs and things like that.

that. This poster is a requirement because it, of course, you know, make sure that people know that this is an area where this is not going to be tolerated. But it's not necessarily educating the actual operators themselves. And so we've spoken with the Manitoba Association of Short-Term Rental Owners. The president of that is Melanie Mitchell. She's actually a proud Airbnb operator herself. And, you know, she fought heavily against those 2024 regulations in Winnipeg. But she says she's learned a lot since then, mostly about human trafficking, actually. And she still has reservations about it. But her reservations are more so to do with now how trafficking cannot be caught by these regulations. So she, for example, takes issue with the 29-day limit for bookings.

She asks, you know, what kind of trafficker wants to get caught by not moving around and staying put in one place? She also doesn't believe the city is delisting units nearly as much as they should be. And she's raising these issues about it because she doesn't feel the city is doing enough to let people know about it either. They're blaming this problem on short-term rental operators, but they're not providing those kind of resources. So that's where a lot of organizations have stepped up and they're providing those things so that people know more about it. But again, it's not the operator's fault here, right? Like if something like this is happening at a hotel even, all the hotel can do is alert the police, but they can't necessarily, you know, make sure it's

never going to happen there ever again because this is exactly, unfortunately, why you do proactive measures like that to prevent it from, you know, getting to that place. Speaking of delisting units, what about the specific condo where the Quebec team was rescued from? Is that still listed as a short-term rental unit? Yes, it is, in fact. Yeah. So we've tried to get in touch with the owners of this unit multiple times. You know, I've knocked on even their doors. Any doors listed for them. We've emailed them. We've tried to call them, but they have not picked up anything. They've not responded to anything we've reached out to them. But what was interesting to note that part of the reason why we focused on this building is that this building, the glasshouse condo tower at 311 Hargrave Street, you know, when it opened, it was this high-rise building that was marketed as centrally located urban luxury. You know, politicians supported it. But very quickly, they allowed short-term rentals to enter into the picture. And now a quarter of the building, 47 units as of this month out of a total of 194, at some points that number was even higher, are all listed as short-term rentals. So when we've spoken with neighbors, even condo board members, they're telling us that there's constant noise complaints, there's a constant transient population. It's a frequent port of call for police. We've actually obtained court records tied to a fentanyl investigation relating to this building in which police declared that 311 Hardgrave had become a hotspot for crime. because of the number of short-term rentals in the building. When we spoke into neighbors, they told us they weren't surprised about the 2024 trafficking case.

And the problem is it's because this is what the city is hopefully trying to curtail. And yet, you know, we're seeing that this unit is still listed as an Airbnb. It's still allowed to exist that way. Because there's sort of nothing you can kind of do about it to prevent them if they're not the ones being held responsible for it. Okay. So we've talked about what jurisdictions are trying to do here and kind of like what is possible for people that are running these short-term rentals, but what about the companies themselves? Like, what did companies say to you when you reached out to them for comment about this issue? So we reached out to both Verbo and Airbnb.

Verbo declined to comment, but Airbnb says that trafficking issues are relatively rare on its platform. Their spokesperson told us that they take this work seriously to support the global fight against human trafficking and exploitation. And they also told us that they invest in efforts like education for guests and hosts on how to help identify and report potential concerns. They also help with training for law enforcement on relevant investigations and they partner with experts to help inform how their work goes through. But advocates are not convinced about this. You know, they've told us that for years, hotels and motels have been training their staff to understand these issues and when to spot them, but they don't

believe Airbnb and Verbo's are necessarily like that. You know, they're constantly telling us that they're private property owners who don't necessarily know what to look for. Okay, so on that, what do advocates think should be done here? Like, is there more that can be done to stop human trafficking, especially around traffickers using short-term rentals? One of the big things we've been told is to look at Winnipeg and the poster regulation they've adopted. The city is at least informing people what could happen in one of these units. You know, so this is something advocates think cities should adopt. There should also be more tracking of when police do find that human trafficking happens in short-term rentals.

We just need more data. You know, anytime we've tried to reach out to the Manitoba RCMP, we've tried to reach out to the city of Winnipeg, even Winnipeg police. They keep referring us back to each other and they give us no data on this. In fact, we actually did speak with the Winnipeg police officer who works in counter-exploitation and he told us they just don't track these things. And that's something that I think a lot of advocates would say that, you know, other jurisdictions, especially as you know the FIFA World Cup is happening in Canada and, you know, there's going to be a larger population of people coming in.

We've actually been warned by Canada's agencies to look out for signs of human trafficking because again, there's a lot of travel happening in Toronto and Vancouver in other cities, and people may be staying in Airbnb's. That's something advocates have told us that in the wake of all of this happening, maybe they should be looking at Winnipeg's example by putting up this poster. It's a little small step, but it's a significant step, because at least it could let you know that this is something that we're just not going to tolerate in these places. To end here, Tamor, we started off this conversation talking about this Quebec young woman who survived being trafficked. Where is she now? How is she doing?

So right after Mr. Regeli Mark was arrested, this Quebec teen, she moved back with her family, back in Quebec. She told police actually initially to drop the charges against him. We heard in court that, you know, she said, I thought I loved him. She had said to officers to which, you know, the judge replied saying at some point she's going to look back on this and have an immense psychological impact. She's now 20 years old and she's told me that, you know, her parents worry about her speaking out. But she hopes that someday she will have healed enough to help others in any capacity that she can. And unfortunately, she did also say that it has had that immense psychological impact on her. So she's not there yet to sort of talk about it openly.

Tamar, thank you so much for bringing us this story. It's a really important topic. I appreciate it. Of course. Thank you so much for having me again. That was Tamor Dorani, a staff reporter for the globe based in Winnipeg. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mahal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby.

Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.