The teenager from rural Quebec was in her last year of high school when she went missing in 2024.
Her parents reported her disappearance to police, but for weeks there was no trace of the young woman, who had just turned 18.
And then, one Thursday in late March, she sent a frantic message to a friend back home. She was being held in an Airbnb in downtown Winnipeg and needed help.
Court would later hear that the Grade 12 student was caught up in a human-trafficking scheme orchestrated by 24-year-old rapper Malik Regele Marc.
The Quebec teen’s case is emblematic of a worsening trend that 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 Airbnb and Vrbo to facilitate human trafficking.
Staff who work at major hotels are trained to see warning signs of trafficking. But this is not an expectation for the short-term rental industry, which a recent study estimated made up more than 15 per cent of revenues in the Canadian accommodation services subsector.
This is one reason why the concierge-free units have become a useful tool for traffickers, experts say. Short-term rentals allow for high mobility, limited operator oversight and more privacy.
Even in jurisdictions where short-term rental operators are required to register units with the municipality, bad actors who choose to skirt the rules can often avoid detection and consequences.
But despite mounting evidence that short-term rentals are facilitating human trafficking, a Globe and Mail investigation has found that municipalities across Canada have been slow to address the problem.
An exception is Winnipeg.
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Inspector Rick McDougall of the Winnipeg Police Service oversees the force’s counter-exploitation unit. The city’s location gives it ‘feeder status’ for larger trafficking networks, he says.
In recent years, Manitoba’s capital city has been aggressive in creating new regulations and licensing mandates that target short-term rentals.
These policies are not a silver bullet. Measuring their effectiveness has been challenging, The Globe has found. Still, advocates say Winnipeg’s efforts are significant and should be replicated elsewhere, because the problem is nationwide.
In the instance of the missing Quebec teenager, Mr. Regele Marc relied on multiple short-term rentals to move the young woman from her home province to Manitoba. Her story offers a case study in how units on platforms such as Airbnb have been able to support human trafficking.
According to an agreed statement of facts that was eventually presented in court, the teenager met Mr. Regele Marc at a bar in Montreal. The pair began chatting online after she started commenting on his YouTube music videos.
Mr. Regele Marc, who performed under the stage name “Baby Bricks,” promised the teen they would be in a romantic relationship. He convinced her to leave the province and travel across the country with him. He told her she would earn lots of money.
Once away from home, the man pulled the teenager into the sex trade.
Now-imprisoned Malik Regele Marc, 24, transported an
18-year-old victim from Quebec to multiple cities between
March 6 and March 21, 2024, where he used verbal and
psychological manipulation to intimidate the teen into
providing sexual services to at least 50 men during
the span of 15 days.
john sopinski and temur durrani/the globe and mail,
Source: police reports and court records
Now-imprisoned Malik Regele Marc, 24, transported an
18-year-old victim from Quebec to multiple cities between
March 6 and March 21, 2024, where he used verbal and
psychological manipulation to intimidate the teen into
providing sexual services to at least 50 men during
the span of 15 days.
john sopinski and temur durrani/the globe and mail,
Source: police reports and court records
Now-imprisoned Malik Regele Marc, 24, transported an 18-year-old victim from Quebec to multiple cities
between March 6 and March 21, 2024, where he used verbal and psychological manipulation to intimidate
the teen into providing sexual services to at least 50 men during the span of 15 days.
john sopinski and temur durrani/the globe and mail, Source: police reports and court records
Between March 6 and March 21, Mr. Regele Marc took the teen westward through Ontario to Toronto, Sudbury, Timmins and Thunder Bay, before winding up in Manitoba. He used her earnings to book various hotel rooms and short-term rentals, where she would meet clients. He told her the plan was to end up in Calgary, where he had been based.
Mr. Regele Marc seized the teenager’s cellphone and bank cards. He took intimate photos of her that he used to create an online sexual menu.
Court heard Mr. Regele Marc used verbal and psychological manipulation to intimidate the teen into providing sexual services to at least 50 men during the span of 15 days. Most of the clients did not use condoms.
When she finally managed to reach out for help on March 21, her friend immediately alerted police.
At 5:40 p.m. that same day, Winnipeg police arrived at 311 Hargrave St., a condo tower. They located the missing teenager in a two-bedroom rental on the eighth floor.
In 2025, Mr. Regele Marc pleaded guilty to multiple charges related to human trafficking. He is now serving an eight-year sentence in federal prison.
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The high-rise building at 311 Hargrave St. in downtown Winnipeg where the missing Quebec teenager was located in March, 2024.
Coincidentally, it was a little more than a week after police arrested Mr. Regele Marc that the city introduced its suite of new regulations for short-term rental operators. (The policy changes had already been in the works.)
Under the 2024 rules, there are strict limits on the number of people who can stay in a unit based on the number of bedrooms; units cannot be booked for longer than 29 consecutive nights; and owners are subject to annual fee structures and background checks. Operators face penalties and fines for any violations.
Winnipeg is one of the only cities in Canada to have also introduced another mandate: Short-term rentals must display specific signage with information about human trafficking.
Another jurisdiction that does this is the lakeside Ontario town of Innisfil. But most major cities – such as Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, Calgary and Edmonton – have not implemented such measures.
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As of 2024, Winnipeg has mandated all short-term rentals display specific signage with information about human trafficking.
Created in consultation with Winnipeg police and the Joy Smith Foundation, the country’s leading organization on human-trafficking prevention, the poster cites statistics about how 93 per cent of victims nationwide are born in Canada, 13 is the average age of entry and $280,000 is the average annual revenue one victim generates for a trafficker.
It warns that operators will allow access to local authorities without notifying guests.
Janet Campbell, president and chief executive of the Joy Smith Foundation, says the posters are a small but significant step: “They show the maturity of city council to make sure people know more about it here – something that happens everywhere across the country in plain sight.”
Human trafficking is a complex problem.
From recruitment to exploitation, it overlaps with broader societal concerns, such as drug addiction, poverty, homelessness and systemic discrimination.
But the crime is notoriously difficult to detect and investigate because traffickers employ psychological manipulation and coercive control, experts say. Rather than exerting physical violence, predators commonly weaponize victims’ fears and dependency.
As provincial court Judge Cindy Sholdice stated during Mr. Regele Marc’s sentencing hearing: “Trafficked victims often convince themselves that what is happening to them is okay.”
Statistics Canada has repeatedly warned that trafficking figures – including the agency’s own data, which recorded 5,070 incidents nationally between 2014 and 2024 – only provide a partial picture of the “extremely under-reported crime.”
For Winnipeg, the proliferation of trafficking is also tied to its geography.
The midway point on the highways and roads that link the Atlantic to the Pacific, it has long been a transportation hub.
“We’ve always been the gateway to the West,” Inspector Rick McDougall, who oversees the Winnipeg Police Service counterexploitation unit, told The Globe.
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Insp. McDougall says Indigenous women and girls are especially vulnerable to trafficking. ‘Nobody chooses this to happen to them, but they’re just exploited because of their vulnerabilities,’ he says.
The location gives it “feeder status” for larger trafficking networks, the senior inspector explained. He added that the population has a high proportion of Indigenous peoples – among the largest of any major city – and Indigenous women and girls are especially vulnerable to trafficking.
“Nobody chooses this to happen to them, but they’re just exploited because of their vulnerabilities,” Insp. McDougall says.
Geospatial research from Thomson Reuters last year showed that, in many areas, 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.
How short-term rentals factor into the complex web of human trafficking is difficult to quantify. No authority appears to be tracking those numbers.
The Globe reached out to the Manitoba RCMP, Winnipeg Police Service and the municipal government. None were able to provide such data. And yet, it is clear that trafficking cases involving short-term rentals keep occurring in the province.
Winnipeg police worked on a joint human-trafficking operation with the RCMP in November, dubbed Project Intercept/D-Line, leading to 32 men being arrested over a three-day period for obtaining sexual services. Police confirmed at least one short-term rental unit was involved in the bust. (The majority of the arrested men qualified for restorative justice. Four are facing criminal charges.)
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A recent human trafficking investigation in Brandon, Man., involving Winnipeg police and local authorities also involved a short-term rental unit.
And earlier this month, Winnipeg police co-conducted another operation in Brandon, the province’s second-largest city, which resulted in 23 arrests. Again, police confirmed at least one short-term rental was involved.
While Vrbo declined to comment, Airbnb says that trafficking issues are rare on its platform and that the company is invested in combatting human trafficking and exploitation.
“We invest in efforts like education for hosts and guests on how to help identify and report potential concerns, training for law enforcement on how we can aid relevant investigations, and partnerships with experts to help inform our work,” Airbnb spokesperson Ruthie Kongo said in a statement.
Advocates are not convinced.
“For years, hotels and motels have been training their staff to understand these issues and know when to spot them,” says Ms. Campbell of the Joy Smith Foundation.
“But Airbnb and Vrbos are not like that,” she says. “They are private property owners who don’t necessarily know what to look for.”
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The Glasshouse condo tower in Winnipeg, where a victim of human trafficking was found in 2024, has attracted police attention in recent years.
When the Glasshouse condo tower at 311 Hargrave St. opened in 2016, the high-rise building was marketed as urban luxury. Politicians of all stripes supported the project as a way to revitalize downtown Winnipeg.
Today, the building has become a quandary for owners and city officials alike. City records show that a quarter of the building – 47 units out of a total 194 – are listed as licensed short-term rentals.
In addition to garnering noise complaints and attracting a transient population, these units are frequently visited by local police.
Court records connected to a 2022 fentanyl case indicate that officers referenced the building’s problems in a search warrant application. Investigators stated that 311 Hargrave had become a “hotspot for drug trafficking activity” because of the volume of short-term rental units.
Sinan Leylek, a condo owner and member of the building’s condo board, says he wasn’t surprised to learn about Mr. Regele Marc’s 2024 arrest.
“These are all part of the issues that happen when we’ve created what is essentially an ill-managed, ill-equipped hotel space in what was supposed to be a residential building.”
He and other members of the board have tried to ban short-term rental operators in the building, but their efforts have failed for numerous reasons, including legal challenges.
The problem is only getting worse, he added – when owners who want to get out can’t sell their units, they end up listing their condos as short-term rentals.
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Though initially advertised as urban luxury in the heart of the city, the Glasshouse building has now become a ‘hotspot for drug trafficking activity,’ according to court records connected to a 2022 drug case.
While the building is an extreme example, City Councillor Janice Lukes says “the Hargrave problems” illustrate why Winnipeg needed to usher in the 2024 regulations.
Towers Realty Group, which manages the Hargrave building, did not respond to The Globe’s requests for comment.
The city’s impetus for the changes, Ms. Lukes explains, was threefold: to collect accurate data about how many short-term rentals exist; to bolster the supply of longer-term housing options by creating limits on stays; and to weed out bad actors by creating safety barriers that would discourage crime.
The results have been mixed, The Globe has found.
Prior to the regulations, third-party data from analytics companies such as AirDNA indicated there were up to 1,800 short-term rentals in Winnipeg as of 2024. But as of this June, city data show that only 886 such listings are licensed.
Ms. Lukes acknowledges that some operators may not be bothering to get licensed, while others may have shut down because the extra work wasn’t worth it.
Despite the city’s background checks, records confirm that units where crime has occurred are still licensed.
In June, 2025, a year after Mr. Regele Marc’s arrest, the unit where the missing Quebec teen was found received a licence from the city. It remains licensed today.
Housing records show the unit is owned by a local leasing and rental company. The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Globe.
Short-term rental operators are required to submit a Winnipeg Police Vulnerable Sector Check and receive approval from the review board as part of their application for a licence, which includes an assessment of an applicant’s criminal record.
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Condo board members of the Glasshouse tower have tried and failed to ban short-term rental operators in the building, where a quarter of the units – 47 out of a total 194 – are short-term rentals.
City spokesperson Julie Dooley told The Globe that if police notify the municipality about illegal activity at a short-term rental, they would launch an investigation that could result in the suspension or cancellation of the licence.
However, “just as would be the case at any business or establishment, a licence application would not necessarily be affected by a patron of the rental engaging in criminal activity at the property if the activity was found to be unrelated to the property owner,” Ms. Dooley says.
Insp. McDougall says in all his years of service, he has never worked on a case where operators were held liable for trafficking that may have occurred at their property.
Melanie Mitchell, president of the Manitoba Association of Short-Term Rental Owners, fought against the 2024 regulations. An Airbnb operator herself, she continues to be skeptical that the new requirements actually curtail human trafficking.
For example, she doesn’t think a 29-day limit for bookings imposed by the city deters trafficking, and she doesn’t believe the city is delisting units nearly as much as it should be.
“It shouldn’t be hard to get your licence, sure, but it should be harder to keep it,” she says.
A 2025 Winnipeg report gauging the first year under the regulations showed that the city received 165 official complaints. City staff inspected 1,053 properties and reported an 86-per-cent regulation compliance rate.
Officials found 39 rentals operating without a licence, three advertising without a licence number and 25 not posting contact information or licence numbers in the units. At least 198 short-term rental applications were denied or withdrawn; 19 were cancelled by the applicant.
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Insp. McDougall says he has never worked on a case where operators were held liable for trafficking that may have occurred at their rental property.
Insp. McDougall says one government change that has helped with trafficking and exploitation cases was 2022’s provincial Bill 40.
This legislation mandated the hospitality sector to maintain customer registries and provide police with access to them for investigations.
“It’s actually been very successful. Hotel staff have called us and we have gone in and rescued victims.”
However, even though the provincial legislation targeted both hotels and short-term rentals, Insp. McDougall says they’ve only seen results from large commercial hotels.
He says he isn’t aware of any instance of a short-term rental vendor pro-actively calling law enforcement with human-trafficking concerns.
Former politician Rochelle Squires, the Manitoba minister who spearheaded the 2022 changes, says the goal of the legislation was to inspire the entire hospitality sector to become part of the solution.
Human trafficking is a serious problem across the province, she says. “You go to any high school in Manitoba, and I guarantee you that you will find instances of exploitation occurring.”
Tammy Nelson, who is now a practising therapist in Winnipeg, was one such high schooler.
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Dr. Tammy Nelson, who survived childhood exploitation and grooming, says many traffickers convince victims to think they love them.
Dr. Nelson, a member of Peguis First Nation, says she grew up in poverty and was exploited by an older man.
“I didn’t even know I was a victim of this kind of exploitation,” she says. “You couldn’t tell me as a teenager who had dropped out of high school that this guy was bad or was grooming me. I was poor, and he was helping me and my mom.”
The only reason Dr. Nelson was able to escape the situation was that she became pregnant, she says. “It was a blessing from the Creator.”
This year, Dr. Nelson completed her PhD at the University of Manitoba. She researches human trafficking and exploitation from an Indigenous healing perspective, working with girls and women to help them understand and escape their situations.
“It’s so hard when it’s so very rampant,” she says. “These men make them think they love them, and their networks have all these tools at their disposal, such as short-term rentals. All we can do is try to take these small steps, societally, where change is possible.”
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Dr. Nelson says short-term rentals are one of the tools human trafficking networks use to ensnare and isolate their victims.
For the Quebec teen rescued in Winnipeg, similar manipulation was at play.
Initially, court heard she wanted police to drop the charges against Mr. Regele Mark. She told officers: “I thought I loved him.”
Justice Sholdice later noted in court: “At some point, she’s going to look back on this and have an immense psychological impact.”
The young woman, whose name is protected under a publication ban, returned home to her family shortly after Mr. Regele Marc’s arrest.
In a brief conversation with The Globe, the woman, now 20, said she wants to tell her story in her own words – but isn’t ready yet. Her parents, in particular, worry about what speaking out publicly would mean for her.
“Some day,” she says, “I hope I have healed enough to help others in any capacity I can.”
With research from Stephanie Chambers
The Decibel: How short-term rentals are fuelling human trafficking in Canada
A court case in Winnipeg has offered a rare glimpse into the mechanics of how human trafficking can work, and how short-term rentals, like Airbnb and Vrbo, can be used by traffickers while on the move with their victims. Globe reporter Temur Durrani 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.