Advocates and opposition politicians want Ontario to help survivors of human trafficking get back on their financial feet.
Michelle Furgiuele, a human trafficking survivor who now advocates for and works with other survivors, said her exploiters ruined her credit.
She said she had "zero financial literacy" when she finally escaped, and suddenly found herself unable to rent a home or buy a car.
"I believed that I was responsible for these debts, causing me to experience anxiety, stress, financial hardship and further exploitation," she said. "I simply tried to forget about the issue until my employer, from my first real job, informed me that creditors were trying to garnish my wages."
Jamie Beck, the president of Free to Thrive, an American nonprofit that helps survivors, said Furgiuele's story is similar to most of her clients.
"Take Jennifer's story as an example," Beck said. "Jennifer's exploiter put an apartment lease in her name. And they were then evicted from that apartment. He then took out credit cards in her name and had her cash bad cheques. This destroyed her credit, further trapping her into a life of exploitation."
Richard Dunwoody, the executive director of Project Recover, which advocates on behalf of trafficking survivors with creditors, said his nonprofit is currently managing 389 survivors' cases. The average debt faced by Canadian trafficking survivors after exploitation is $24,700, not including student loans, he said.
NDP MPP Chris Glover brought forward a motion two years ago calling on the government to forgive all fraudulent student loans and government fines for human trafficking survivors, he said.
Liberal MPP Lucille Collard went a step further, introducing a <a href="https://www.ola.org/en/legislative-business/bills/parliament-42/session-2/bill-99" target="_blank" rel="noopener">private member's bill</a> in March to ban credit reports from including "unfavourable information about a consumer that resulted from human trafficking."
In a rare moment of bipartisanship, the United States House passed the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2332/all-info" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Debt Bondage Repair Act</a>, to do just that.
Collard's bill for Ontario died on the order paper when the house rose for the summer, but she said she plans to re-table it.
She said she wrote to the minister, spoke about it in question period and tabled petitions in support of the bill, but hasn't received "real interest" from the Ford government.
She said it wouldn't cost the province anything to implement.
"It's not a partisan issue," she said. "The fact that it passed in the U.S. — I don't understand why the Ontario government is just not paying more attention."
Solicitor General Michael Kerzner's office passed a request for comment to the Ministry of Children, Community and Social Services.
The ministry outlined its <a href="https://www.qpbriefing.com/2021/05/11/solicitor-general-brushes-off-advocates-concerns-that-anti-human-trafficking-bill-would-further-criminalize-sex-workers/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">existing strategy</a> and did not address Collard's bill.

Liberals and NDP push for human trafficking debt forgiveness

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