Paul Brandt’s a star in more ways than one

By Lethbridge Herald on September 16, 2025.

Alexandra Noad
Lethbridge Herald
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in Canada, with more than 4,500 incidents being reported between 2013 and 2023.

Paul Brandt, an Alberta country singer known for his hits Alberta Bound, Convoy and My Heart Has a History, has been working in the anti-trafficking sector for over two decades.

He says he first got introduced to human trafficking during the height of his career, when he and his wife, Liz, would watch true crime shows together during their time off. One of those shows was the documentary “Children for Sale” on Dateline NBC.

“We had never been exposed to the issue of trafficking and back then, some 20 years ago, most people weren’t talking about the issue,” Brandt told the Herald in an interview.

About two weeks after watching the documentary, Brandt’s manager was approached by a humanitarian organization that was doing work in 90 countries offering Brandt and his wife a trip to become donors or spokespeople for their organization, given his history as a registered nurse at the Alberta Children’s Hospital and his philanthropy with children’s organizations.

Brandt and his wife accepted the offer and chose to go to Cambodia, where “Children for Sale” was filmed, to learn more about the issue of human trafficking.

He says nothing could have prepared them for what they saw.

The humanitarian organization would pay the rate that someone would’ve paid to exploit the child for the day, and instead take them to a safe location where they were able to get food, clothing, safety and a chance to be a kid.

Unfortunately, at the time, Cambodian law saw children as property, so at the end of the day they were forced to go back to their exploiters, which was traumatic for the Brandts.

“Even though they provided safety for the kids during the day, they had to take them back into these horrific, abusive situations at the end of the day and that was pretty traumatic,” he says.

Due to Liz experiencing abuse as a child, seeing what these children went through deeply affected her.

“When she saw what was happening to these kids there, she got very sick,” says Brandt. “She had an acute PTSD response and we started learning a lot after that about trauma and PTSD and how it can impact a person.”

Eight years ago, Brandt started his own campaign, NotInMyCity, to help raise awareness of trafficking in Canada.

The initiative began with 14 airports, which participate in training on how to spot and handle human trafficking situations, and display a yellow rose to show their commitment to victims. NotInMyCity has since grown to more than 40 airports across the country, including YQL in Lethbridge.

Brandt also was appointed chair of the Alberta Human Trafficking Task force to create recommendations for the Alberta government. Eighteen of the 19 recommendations were accepted. The primary one was to create the Alberta Centre to End Trafficking, to co-ordinate the entire response to human trafficking.

Brandt says the trafficking industry makes $150 billion per year globally, which demands a strong response.

“Traffickers in Canada are making over $280,000 per year per victim, and they often refer to their victims as their stable of girls, so they got multiple victims in this very dehumanizing situation where force, fraud and coercion are being used and they’re making a profit from that force.”

Some 93 per cent of those trafficked in Canada are Canadian women and girls, with the average age being 13 years but can skew even younger for Indigenous populations.

The three main forms of trafficking in Alberta are labour trafficking, sex trafficking and organ trafficking, with sex trafficking being the most prevalent.

The Alberta Centre to End Trafficking is currently traveling around the province providing workshops for those on the frontlines including law enforcement, immigration agencies and social workers.

The two-day workshops provide the opportunity to be able to work together and to share what the needs are in the community that Alberta Centre to End Trafficking can better support them. There are plans to build a strategic plan on how to respond to trafficking in the province

While organizations are working together and airports are donning the yellow rose, Brandt encourages the public to jump on board in educating themselves on human trafficking by taking the free 25-minute training on the NotInMyCity.ca website.