I am the mother of a teen who has been groomed, exploited, and lured away from home by drug dealers. The dealers’ identities are known, but law enforcement has repeatedly refused to intervene. Through this nightmarish experience, I have discovered some large gaps in the Canadian justice system, which enable dealers to prey on kids.

The Canadian Government is legally bound to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 33 of the Convention reads “State Parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislative, administrative, social and educational measures, to protect children from the illicit use of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances… and to prevent the use of children in the illicit production and trafficking of such substances.”

Despite this, police have informed me that they are not interested in prosecuting small-scale dealers; they cannot investigate reports of drug trafficking without an eye witness willing to testify in court; they cannot use minors as informants; they have no budget for surveillance or other forms of investigation; they cannot search a minor’s phone or social media account for evidence; and they cannot provide witness protection.

As reported by the CBC, Julie Nystrom is a mom in Vancouver who hired a private investigator to gather evidence about her teenage daughter’s drug dealer, but even that evidence was not enough to launch a police investigation.

The vast majority of drug trafficking to minors is taking place online, with social media companies unequipped to stop it.

Kids are also being groomed by drug trafficking organizations across Canada, pulled into a criminal world beyond their comprehension, with no laws protecting minors from criminal exploitation. For a recent example, see The Fifth Estate’s report about young boys in Toronto being lured to trap houses in Northern Ontario.

Grooming and drug use can both have long term consequences on youth mental health. Overdose and suicide are the leading causes of death among Canadian teens. If they survive long enough, criminally exploited kids become adult dealers, and the cycle continues. This situation is fuelling both the drug crisis and the youth mental health crisis in Canada, and the effects go far beyond individual children & families. 

For these reasons, I created a petition on the House of Commons website, asking the federal government for a comprehensive legal framework to protect minors from predatory drug dealers, including:

-Monitoring social media to target online drug trafficking, and requiring social media companies to implement policies to prevent it;

-Enacting a federal law against Child Criminal Exploitation, based on the approach of the United Kingdom’s Crime and Policing Bill 2025; and

-Empowering and requiring police to thoroughly and effectively investigate all reports of drug trafficking and criminal exploitation involving minors, and to provide witness protection when needed.         

The House of Commons petition closed on March 24, 2026 with 710 signatures, and was presented in parliament on April 14. The government posted their response on May 28. The proposed Bill C-16 addresses the problem of child criminal exploitation, but the rest of the response contains no new commitments to protect youth from drug trafficking, either online or in person. The Minister of Public Safety states  that the RCMP are currently mandated to investigate reports of drug traffickers  targeting minors, but the fact remains that they are not doing so. Even when dealers’ identities are known, police are telling parents “There’s nothing we can do.”

On June 10, the government introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, to protect children under age 16 from certain online harms. Despite the fact that most drugs sold to minors are trafficked on social media, drug trafficking is not included in the list of online harms.

The Minister of Justice/Attorney General Hon. Sean Fraser has recently informed me that the RCMP is mandated to target “Transnational Serious and Organized Crime groups involved in the production and trafficking of illegal substances, including opioids.”  I interpret this to mean that RCMP are not mandated to target small-scale dealers, not even those who traffic to minors. He also informed me that “matters related to the oversight of police services are the responsibility of the provinces and territories.”

Therefore, we urge the Government of Canada, the governments of Canadian provinces & territories, and the RCMP to mandate police to investigate and  prosecute small-scale drug dealers who target minors. We also call on the Canadian government to include drug content and trafficking as online harms under the proposed Safe Social Media Act.

Thank you for standing up for our children.

“Let all that you do be done in love.”—1 Corinthians 16:14