International female students at risk of abuse, sex trafficking by unscrupulous landlords in Ontario, officials say

In recent months, Peel Regional Police have sent out an SOS concerning the trafficking and prostitution of young female international students in southern Ontario. 

The conversation first garnered public attention when Brampton City Councilor Rowena Santos highlighted high-risk rental conditions in Brampton. 

During this hearing, Santos referenced a rental ad for an apartment near Brampton’s Bramalea City Centre, which prominently indicated that it was “ONLY FOR GIRLS.” 

The advertisement, which offered free accommodations and pocket money “for those who are okay with a Friends-with-benefits relationship,” was immediately underscored as targeting young female students by Santos — as she stated that these young women were being “prostituted for rent.” 

In response to the spotlight on small rental homes — and by extension small landlords — representatives from Small Ownership Landlords Ontario (SOLO) were quick to dismiss the rental ad as a fake and purpose-built to incite an online reaction. 

INsauga.com contacted Santos to comment on her statements surrounding the vulnerability of international students and she says the exploitation of young students in southern Ontario is anything but a hoax. 

“They’re financially vulnerable; they come from cultures that are not like North America, where we openly talk about sex and consent.” Santos told INsauga.com.

“Then they get faced with a situation where they are financially vulnerable, and they see an ad that says ‘no rent’ without fully knowing what the implication that comes with ‘friends with benefits’.” 

Santos indicated that the majority of these exploited young women (mostly from India) are actively enrolled in one of the many dubious private diploma programs that financially take advantage of international students in the Greater Toronto Area. 

According to Santos, as a byproduct of mounting academic pressure and increasingly claustrophobic living conditions, these young women seek more suitable lodging while not comprehending what lurks in the fine print. 

They then, in turn, get trapped in a sexual relationship with their landlord, who exploits them by blackmailing them with pictures or videos of these encounters, she says. 

Due to the catastrophic nature of this sexual abuse, these instances are seldom reported to local law enforcement or the press. 

“I did an on-camera interview earlier this month at City Hall, and one reporter told me that she spoke to some of these young students in attendance, who relayed to her that everything I have been saying about the issue was spot on,” says Santos. “When I further inquired if they were comfortable going on camera, they said no, they wanted to remain anonymous.” 

INsauga.com reached out to Peel police to learn how many of these incidents involving international students get reported — if at all. 

In response, investigators indicated that, since 2022, only two incidents involving the sexual exploitation of international students have been reported to the police. 

However, it was quickly noted these numbers are not a reflection of the current reality in the Greater Toronto Area. 

“Although we have not seen a large amount of international students being trafficked, in speaking with community partners, we believe this to be due to under-reporting. PRP has several initiatives in place, including the South Asian Community Engagement team, which continually engages South Asian community groups to ascertain their needs in order to develop a culturally responsive approach to these issues,” a Peel police representative told INsauga.com via email. 

Santos revealed that systemic aspects of the Canadian immigration system stonewall these young women from outing their abusers, as they would rather not file a report out of shame or fear of being deported. 

Under the current framework of Canadian student visa regulations, if any student were to engage in sex work of any kind, they would face immediate deportation. 

Gurpreet Malhotra, CEO of Indus Community Services, has seen this exploitation of students adapt over his years of serving Brampton, Mississauga, and Caledon’s South Asian community. Like any form of unchecked exploitation, its evolution has not been for the better. 

“It is feeding on [these young women] and is creating an environment that is destabilizing for others. Because on the one hand, is a landlord exchanging sex for rent, and on the other, additional forms of prostitution are now starting to appear,” Malhotra told INsauga.com 

Malhotra then illuminated two fundamental realities about the current situation in Brampton.

Primarily, many of the landlords who operate these exploitative households come from within the South Asian community, as they are likely known to the victim as friends of friends or even ‘cousins.’ 

“The sad part of this is that it’s so many people from the same community, other South Asians or people from India who own 10 homes, or two homes in another person’s name and then another three homes in another person’s name,” says Malhotra. 

The second is that the forcing of sex in exchange for lodging seldom stops at the front door, as the landlords who brute force a personal sexual relationship with a tenant will then allegedly force them into wholesale non-consensual sex work at their discretion. 

“Before you know it, it goes beyond let’s have sex and I have pictures, to ‘go have sex with my friends,’ and then straight to prostitution. This is what we have seen over the last few years,” says Malhotra. 

As a result of this behaviour metabolizing itself within Brampton, Peel Region, and by extension, the GTA, community leaders sent out a detailed letter asking for aid from both the provincial and federal governments on Oct. 31. 

The letter—signed by Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, Santos and Malhotra—calls on the federal and provincial governments to protect those left behind by the churn of international student policies. 

“We recognize many international students face financial challenges, housing insecurity and a lack of adequate institutional support making them prime targets for exploitation and trafficking,” read the letter. “Specifically, we are gravely concerned that female students have been exploited by not only predatory landlords but human traffickers, leading to cases of unwanted pregnancies, mental health crises and even suicide.”

The letter addresses other planned mechanisms the City of Brampton aims to address internally, which include:

• Revisions to the Residential Rental Licensing (RRL) program, which aims to further monitor, inspect and penalize dangerous living conditions imposed by small-scale landlords in Peel Region. 
• Collaborative efforts with community organizations such as Indus to develop a culturally sensitive pilot program to provide wrap-around services, including housing assistance, mental health and anti-trafficking strategies. 

The letter then ends on a single primary clause, a signal flare to Parliament Hill that indicates that if there is going to be any progress in protecting these young women, legislative changes must be implemented to remove deportation conditions surrounding students who engage in sex work — coerced or otherwise. 

“We’re calling for the federal government to remove sex work as a condition of deportation because that is what these human traffickers do. They dangle deportation above the heads of these young women,” Santos told INsauga.com when discussing the letter. 

Santos believes that — despite its hail-mary nature — this plea for change will hopefully catch the ear of policymakers, as removing deportation policies tied to sex work, in reality, won’t cost the Canadian taxpayer a single dime. 

Despite these attributes, Santos still remains slightly apprehensive.

“I don’t know, I just don’t know. These issues hit most at the municipal level because we see it,” says Santos. “I fear that the government — whether the province at Queen’s Park or the feds at Parliament Hill — I fear that they may be a little bit more out of touch than we are.”