Country music artist Paul Brandt came to Cochrane Monday to receive a King Charles III Coronation Medal in recognition of his work with #NotInMyCity, the organization he champions to raise awareness of, and to combat, human trafficking in Canada.
Blake Richards, Conservative Member of Parliament for Banff-Airdrie, presented the medal to Brandt at Cochrane RCMP headquarters.
“Paul Brandt exemplifies the spirit of Alberta, through his artistry certainly, but more importantly through his deep commitment to help those in need,” said Richards.
Brandt worked as a pediatric nurse at Alberta Children’s hospital before getting a phone call from “a woman with a southern accent” saying she wanted to up to ‘Cal-garry’ to hear him perform a few years ago.
The rest is Canadian country music history.
“The reason I wanted to do this here today is to shine a light on the excellent work that law enforcement is doing, the dedication and the effort that goes on behind the scenes,” Brandt said.
“If this work I’m doing ends up only pointing towards me, then I’m failing. I love to be a bill board, I love to have the opportunity to use the platform and the cowboy hat to draw people and to point them in the direction of something I feel is very, very important – not only for each individual victim that we’re working on behalf of, but for our country and for what Canada stands for,” he said.
He said Alberta is leading the way on the issue.
Brandt told the story of working with a sexual assault assessment nurse recently, who told him from 2022 to 2023, a new screening program in central Alberta looking especially at child victims of trafficking, identified 53 victims. In the first quarter of 2023 they identified 80.
“There’s something that starts to happen when we shine a light. We start to realize that maybe things were a lot worse than we even expected,” Brandt said.
“I remember her coming to me and saying ‘we know what we’re looking for now. Now what?’”
He likened the thought process to how people look differently at unattended luggage in an airport post 911.
Brandt has won multiple Canadian Country Music Association awards, and Juno nominations and titles.
He founded the #NotInMyCity organization in 2014, aimed at rising awareness and preventing human trafficking in Alberta and across Canada.
Assistant Commissioner of the Alberta RCMP Trevor Daroux called it “A movement that has been instrumental in the fight against human trafficking, bringing awareness, education, and collaborative solutions to the forefront.”