Justice Committee on April 1st, 2022

[Dr. Andrea Krüsi]

Yes, absolutely, and I think it is really imperative to repeal all the provisions of the PCEPA. That will give way to implementing occupational health and safety standards that can actually regulate the industry. That is something that was possible in the New Zealand context post decriminalization.

I have noticed that in your next hearings around the PCEPA you have some really outstanding experts speaking from New Zealand: Professor Abel and Professor Lynzi Armstrong. I think it will be really important to hear them speak about what was possible in terms of occupational health and safety guidance for the sex industry in the context of decriminalization.

I think that is a really important piece to think about. What can the reality of sex work look like post decriminalization, and what avenues of implementing occupational health and safety standards will that open up for different sectors of the industry? These need to be, as in New Zealand, developed with sex workers in the driver's seat at the table and based on empirical evidence.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to turn to you, Ms. Davis. We've often heard during these hearings from witnesses who say that if you define all sex work as exploitation, you miss the real exploitation, and if you define all sex work as violent, you miss the real violence.

Ms. Davis, from your experience, how would you react to that statement?

[Susan Davis]

I think the Vancouver experience is very critical in this regard, and while our policing policy is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, what it has done is free up police resources to actually fight exploitation and to not blanket-target the entire industry in sort of throwing mud at the wall to see if they can find any human trafficking victims, as they did before the Olympics.

Before the Olympics, there was a big push to fight human trafficking. They raided 68 health enhancement centres where all the sex workers were Asian. They found zero human trafficking victims and detained and deported hundreds of women. Three people from the Asian sex worker community in Vancouver were murdered the following year. The direct correlation is there.

I think we need to take a step back from this and understand that exploitation does happen, and there has to be a way to work on it without throwing the rights of sex workers under the bus, which is illegal under the charter: You cannot undermine the rights of one group to save another. As well, with youth, they're not “sex workers”. They're “exploited”. I think this label plays into our obligations at UNAIDS, where we're supposed to be removing those kinds of discriminatory laws and the language and all of those things.

For me, again, I think we need to take a step back and, as all of my cohorts are saying, we need to work with sex workers towards a strategy that is going to ensure our health and safety as well as free up all these resources that are currently being used in horrible operations like Operation Northern Spotlight, which is a blanket action and is a waste of resources. If we really want to fight exploitation, we need to put our money where it counts and work on strategies that have been proven to actually have an impact in places.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you.

I want to thank Ms. Lukings for making the connection between criminalizing coercive and controlling behaviour and combatting exploitation. It's something that we actually hadn't done at this committee before, so I think it's a valuable contribution to our debate on that legislation.

I want to put the same question to you, Ms. Lukings. By blanket enforcement against the entire sex work industry, do we really miss real instances of trafficking and real instances of exploitation?

[Melissa Lukings]

Yes, absolutely. By criminalizing the whole sex work community, you're essentially eliminating all of your allies. I think someone already mentioned that. Where you would have sex workers report suspicious things in a decriminalized context, you're not getting that right now. Where you would have clients recognize red flags and be able to report things, you're not having that now.

These blanket enforcement laws are really just a waste of resources, which is really unfortunate, because you're not actually targeting the issue. That is being hidden. You're targeting what you can see, but it's what you can't see that's the problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Lukings.

Thank you, Mr. Garrison.

In the interests of time, and if it's okay, I'll condense the next two rounds to two three-minute rounds and two two-minute rounds.

We'll go over to you, Mr. Cooper, for three minutes.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of the witnesses for their testimony. It's been very helpful and interesting.

Ms. Davis, I'd like to address a question to you.

At the end of your testimony, you said that Canada, in order to live up to its international obligations, should repeal PCEPA. I would be interested in having you elaborate a little bit on that, having regard for the fact that Canada signed the Palermo protocol, which provides among other things that Canada “adopt...legislative...measures...to discourage the demand” and “adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to establish as criminal offences.”

How does that square from the standpoint of repealing PCEPA? It would seem to me that PCEPA does precisely that, namely discouraging and targeting the issue of demand, in accordance with the Palermo protocol.

[Susan Davis]

I would say that whether or not the Palermo protocol is legitimate under the UN is under question, and that the WHO, the World Bank, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNESCO, the ILO, and all of these parts of the UN have signed on to decriminalize and remove laws that criminalize people who are vulnerable to HIV/AIDS.

We as a country have spent over $2 billion at UNAIDS. We have signed on to fight AIDS across the planet. Frankly, I think the Palermo protocol, which is based out of the U.S., really has no place in this, and if it were looked at reasonably, it would not be adopted again. I think that protocol needs to be revisited and that it is not helpful on any level.

[Michael Cooper, Conservative, St. Albert—Edmonton, AB]

Thank you for that.

Looking at some of the statistics that are available before and after PCEPA, we see, for example, that according to Statistics Canada, in 2021 there was a decrease in reported injuries and homicides of sex workers. Moreover, before PCEPA, 43% of those accused of sex-trade-related offences were women. Today it is 93% men. What do you say to that?

It seems to me that this is evidence that PCEPA is working in large measure.

[Susan Davis]

I would say that this is a reflection of, first of all, some bias on the part of police, in that they're looking for sex work only as it relates to human trafficking. It's not as sexy and fun to go to a farm and see if the farmhands are being human trafficked.

I would also say that we have not heard from Health Canada or the Public Health Agency of Canada in terms of what the numbers are related to risk of HIV or syphilis or other blood-borne infections.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Davis.

Thank you, Mr. Cooper.

Next for three minutes we have Ms. Diab.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I just want to say thank you to all our witnesses on the panel today. You've made excellent presentations.

Quite frankly, we've been listening to this now for many weeks. I would have to say I've heard in your testimony today a bit of a different and a better light on this question, so I really want to thank you all for that.

You're all, quite frankly, recommending decriminalizing, and you all know that we have issues in our society. We all know exploitation happens and will continue to happen. There's trafficking, and there's whatever.

I want to get your feedback perhaps, Dr. Goldenberg or Dr. Krüsi, on how we can combat these other issues, and what they have to do with PCEPA, if anything.

I would like to hear that from you.

[Dr. Shira Goldenberg]

Thank you so much.

I think you raise a really important question. From what we've seen in the public health literature and our own experience working with sex workers in the context of our research, it's really clear that the stigmas and the values that we hold as a society are very much shaped by public policy and public discourse. A law like this, as we've seen and as other scholars have shown, can actually fuel those sorts of issues that you mentioned and the ways in which sex work can be singled out and conflated with trafficking. When something is criminalized, it is seen as immoral, as something going on that we need to be concerned about in a different way.

Trafficking exists across many sectors. Exploitation occurs across all sectors of work. When a type of work is pushed underground, that's when getting reports around these things become impossible.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

We know sex workers, from your testimony and that of others, have challenges with doctors, the police and the law. Because of all of that, what would be a next step, other than totally decriminalizing the PCEPA?

[Dr. Shira Goldenberg]

What would be consistent in our advocacy for the repeal of the laws because of the framework that we feel underpins them and the challenges that they pose as a whole.... However, if the committee is debating particular provisions, I would agree with our colleagues around the provisions around communication, advertising, the things that pose barriers to working with supportive third parties.

At the same time, the provisions around clients are extremely complicated. In work led by Dr. Krüsi, for example, participants' quotes literally said, when you criminalize the client, it's exactly the same thing as criminalizing the sex worker. By failing to repeal that provision, we're sort of stating that we're wishing to perpetuate the previous laws that were struck down, because that's essentially what the research showed that particular provision has resulted in.

I think it's a challenging question, but those are my perspectives based on the scientific evidence.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Madam Diab and Ms. Goldenberg.

Next, for two minutes, we have Mr. Fortin.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question is for Ms. Lukings.

I was listening to your testimony earlier. You think prostitution should be decriminalized.

In your opinion, if we were to do this, if we were to remove the offences that are already in the Criminal Code, should we also introduce a certain number of standards that sex workers would have to respect?

[Melissa Lukings]

That could be a good idea, but I think it's beyond the scope of what we're looking at here. I know that the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform has already made suggestions about how decriminalization could work with occupational health and safety standards. I think that would be something to look at.

For me specifically, being able to have the normal human standards and laws apply would be really helpful, because it's just a job. It would be really great if—

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

If so, that would be a matter for the provinces. I understand that, in your opinion, it might be appropriate to provide a framework in which the profession would be practised. You could put it that way.

[Melissa Lukings]

The framework would have to be developed with the people who are impacted, so that would be with the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, with the sex workers themselves. Again, it would be because we would be talking about an area that would be decriminalized. We would not be looking at exploitation or trafficking, so you would have to work with the—

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

I have one last question for you, if I may. I'm sorry for interrupting you. I know I'm being rude, but I have no choice.

Would you distinguish between the different types of prostitution?

For example, I've often heard about end‑of‑month prostitution, which means that some people will prostitute themselves at the end of the month to buy food or take care of their children, for example. Others, who have addiction problems, engage in what is called drug‑related prostitution.

Do you think there are different types of prostitution and should we take them into account in our analysis? If so, should treatment be different for different types of prostitution?

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Very briefly.

[Melissa Lukings]

I think you're running into the same thing, where it's just a job. Someone might take more shifts working at a bar to buy drugs or to pay for their kids, or to buy bread or whatever. It's just a job. What they're doing doesn't actually apply to whether or not there's exploitation happening. These other things that you're bringing up, the drugs, the economic instability, are pervasive in our society regardless of where someone works. Is it related to sex work? Not really. It's about the relationships and the social conditions that we're already facing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Lukings. Thank you, Mr. Fortin.

The last two minutes are for Mr. Garrison, please.