If I testify, does that mean I have to stay where he can find me

The situation

'If I testify, does that mean I have to stay where he can find me?' Alyssa asked us that in the first meeting, before we had even finished explaining how the process worked. She is a firefighter in Tillsonburg, and by the time she asked the question she had already done the hardest part: she had gone to the police and told them what had happened to Genevieve, the woman she is in a relationship with, who had come to Canada as a visitor and had been trafficked into exploitative work before Alyssa helped her get out.

Genevieve's circumstances had changed abruptly. She had arrived as a visitor, been recruited into what she believed was legitimate work, and found herself controlled by an employer, Luc, who held her documents and dictated where she lived and who she could contact. Alyssa met her through a mutual acquaintance during that period and, over months, helped her leave the situation. Once Genevieve was safe, the question became what her immigration status would be, since the visitor status she had entered on offered no protection and, on its own terms, no path to anything longer term.

There is a specific temporary resident permit route for survivors of trafficking, and the first thing we told Alyssa, because it visibly surprised her, was that Genevieve's eligibility for that permit did not depend on cooperating with a police investigation at all. That decoupling is deliberate: requiring a survivor to testify against a trafficker as the price of safety would recreate exactly the kind of coercive control the permit exists to interrupt. What Alyssa was really asking, once we had explained that, was a different and still important question: if Genevieve chose to help the police anyway, to hold Luc accountable, what would that actually require of her, and could it be done without putting her at risk, since Luc was still in the area and her safety could not be treated as an afterthought to the paperwork.

The couple's household, a dual-income one between Alyssa's firefighting work and Genevieve's growing work as an elementary school teacher once she was authorized to work, gave them some stability to weather a process that would clearly take time. But stability does not answer a safety question, and neither of them wanted a status application that solved the immigration problem while leaving Genevieve exposed.

The gap nobody had noticed

The policy behind the trafficking survivor permit is explicit that a person's willingness to help police is not a condition of getting or keeping status, precisely so nobody applying feels forced to choose between safety and cooperation the way a survivor might in a country whose immigration relief works the opposite way. What the policy does not spell out is what happens to a survivor's safety once she decides, on her own, to help the investigation anyway. Genevieve's file needed a real answer, not a general one, and that meant sitting down with the investigating officers to find out exactly what her voluntary assistance in the case against Luc would actually involve: a formal statement, certainly, but also whether that meant appearing at a future proceeding, whether her current address would need to be disclosed as part of any record, and whether the investigation's timeline had any bearing on her own.

What we found, in going through this carefully, was a gap nobody involved had actually flagged. The police investigation and the immigration application were being handled as two separate processes, on two separate tracks, by two sets of officials who were not communicating directly with each other about Genevieve's safety needs. IRCC's file correctly treated her status as independent of the police case; the police file, in turn, had not yet been finalized as to what her assistance would require, because the investigation into Luc was still active and its shape was still forming. Genevieve's safety plan sat in the space between two processes that each assumed the other had already addressed it — precisely the gap the permit's no-cooperation rule protects a person's status from, without protecting her physical safety once she volunteers to help.

That gap mattered because Luc was not a passive figure in this. Early in the investigation, he had made statements to police that were, if not cooperative, at least consistent, suggesting a plea or an early resolution that would have limited how much direct involvement Genevieve's assistance required. Midway through, his position changed. He retained different counsel, contested the statements attributed to him, and the investigation shifted toward a longer, more adversarial process that would likely require more direct evidence from Genevieve than anyone had originally anticipated, at exactly the point her status application was moving toward decision.

That shift meant Genevieve's voluntary assistance was no longer the light-touch version everyone had expected. We went back to both the police file and, separately, confirmed again in writing that none of it affected the status already secured, then worked out with Genevieve directly what she was still willing to do now that the underlying case had changed shape.

What we did

1. Confirmed in writing, with both the police and IRCC, before Genevieve made any formal statement, that her status application did not depend on cooperating with the investigation, so she could decide freely whether to assist at all. Only once that was settled did we meet with the investigating officers to understand precisely what the police case needed from her at that stage, so she could agree to help with a clear picture of what it would involve rather than an open-ended, undefined commitment.
2. Requested that Genevieve's current address and contact details be excluded from any record accessible to Luc or his representatives, using the protective provisions available within the investigation process, since her physical safety depended directly on Luc not being able to locate her through the case file itself once disclosure obligations kicked in. We treated this as a first-priority request rather than something to circle back to once other paperwork was settled.
3. Documented the specific safety risks Luc posed in writing, drawing carefully on Alyssa and Genevieve's own detailed account of his prior conduct and control over her, to give both the police and the immigration officer a concrete, evidence-based basis for treating her safety as a live and ongoing factor rather than a background concern to be assumed away.
4. Coordinated timing between the police investigation and the status application directly, pressing both offices to communicate with each other about Genevieve's circumstances instead of each assuming the other office had already resolved the safety question on its own, which is precisely the gap that had left her safety plan unaddressed for months even though her status itself was never in question.
5. Went back to Genevieve once Luc changed his position and contested the case, to confirm she still wanted to continue assisting now that the investigation had become more demanding, and, with her agreement, went back to the investigating officers to establish exactly what direct evidence the now more adversarial case actually needed from her, pushing back firmly on requests that went well beyond what her original statement had already covered.
6. Prepared Genevieve for the realistic possibility of providing testimony at a future proceeding, working through what protective measures, such as testifying without being in direct physical proximity to Luc, might reasonably be available to her, while being honest throughout that not every protective request our office made would necessarily be granted by the court, and that she could still decline to continue at any point.
7. Updated the status application to reflect Genevieve's changed circumstances and safety needs as the investigation shifted, and confirmed again for the record that none of it affected her underlying eligibility, since an application still built on outdated assumptions about the criminal case risked being read by an officer as incomplete even though nothing about her actual eligibility had changed.
8. Built a practical safety plan alongside the legal file itself, including specific advice on address confidentiality, changes to daily routines, and workplace precautions given Alyssa's public-facing role as a firefighter, so the couple had something concrete and actionable to rely on day to day beyond the paperwork moving through two separate systems that neither of them could fully control.

The outcome

Genevieve's status was approved on its own terms, independent of her cooperation with the police, which is what the law actually provides for survivors in her position. Her voluntary assistance to the investigation was ultimately narrowed to what the case genuinely required rather than the broader, undefined commitment she might have felt pressured into giving at the outset. Her address was kept out of records accessible to Luc's side of the case, and the timing of her participation in the ongoing prosecution was coordinated so it did not simply follow whatever pace the investigation happened to move at on its own schedule.

It was not a complete win on the safety front, and we do not present it as one. Once Luc contested the case and brought in different counsel, the prosecution's need for direct evidence from Genevieve increased substantially, and not every protective measure we requested, including a preference to avoid any proceeding where she would be in the same room as Luc, was granted by the court handling the matter. Genevieve will likely need to provide further testimony as the case against him proceeds toward trial, under conditions that reduce but do not eliminate her exposure to him. That is a real concession, not a technicality, and we were straightforward with her and Alyssa from the outset that it was the realistic outcome once the case shifted from an expected early resolution to a longer, contested one.

Alyssa and Genevieve's household, steady on two incomes between the firehall and the classroom, absorbed the extended timeline without financial strain, which gave the file room to be handled carefully instead of rushed toward a quicker but meaningfully less protective result. The gap between the police process and the immigration process, once identified in Genevieve's case, is something we now flag early in every trafficking survivor file our office takes on, because her case made clear how easily a person's safety can fall into the space between two systems that each quietly assume the other one has it covered.

What you can learn from this