Justice committee  The second step would be to increase the supports for sex workers, especially marginalized workers, because there will still be a stigma that will exist even after decriminalization. There's a history of this. We need supports, education for health care workers, legal support and

Justice committee  I would point to jurisdictions like New Zealand, where they are decriminalized. I would not point to any jurisdictions that have a Nordic model like ours and tout this idea of partial decriminalization. It's either criminalization or it's decriminalization.

Justice committee  Thank you for the follow-up question. I think it really needs to be understood that there's no possibility of improving this bill, that criminalization plus supports doesn't work and that this bill doesn't facilitate access to supports. It's not a matter of adding anything onto

Justice committee  We already have legislation that exists around confinement, kidnapping and robbery. Those things already exist. What we really need is for this bill to be repealed. We need migrant workers to be able to work in sex work. We need improvement with immigration laws. I'm sorry. Go a

Justice committee  I will say that indigenous women, Black and racialized women, transgender and migrant women and people living through poverty are overrepresented in street-based work. At Maggie's we serve a lot of street-based workers. This means that sex workers who face some of the highest l

Justice committee  As I said before, this act needs to be repealed. At previous meetings, I know there were witnesses who said.... There's this misconception that it's just the privileged few who want to see sex work decriminalized. That's so false, because criminalization impacts marginalized work

Justice committee  Thank you so much for the question. There is always going to be a turbulent relationship between police and sex workers as long as police are instructed to criminalize sex workers. I want to emphasize that's really how it goes. The sex workers on the ground experience violence

Justice committee  Thank you. Maggie's Toronto Sex Workers Action Project is one of Canada's oldest funded sex worker justice organizations. For over 35 years, we've supported sex workers in Toronto through drop-in programming, harm reduction services, legal supports, food security efforts and mo

Status of Women committee  Sorry, I'm not completely clear about the question.

Status of Women committee  I will first say that the discrimination that the LGBTQ community faces in accessing what we would call “mainstream”, non-criminalized work often makes sex work the best option. It's a low-barrier entry.... We have a lot of anecdotal reports from workers saying that they experien

Status of Women committee  I think that's essential. Sex workers need to be in control of their own lives. They need to have input on laws that affect their work. Yes, just as a basic principle, sex workers should absolutely be involved in that committee. I also recall that in the Bedford case, sex worker

Status of Women committee  I wanted to double-check if this question was for me and Julie.

Status of Women committee  Certainly decriminalization is the first step, but it's still not sufficient, as it won't prevent all communities of sex workers from being profiled and over-policed. It would be a first step in reducing the stigmatization and the isolation of sex workers. We would also like to

Status of Women committee  We often talk about sex work and exploitation as the same topic. It's often assumed that sex work, the very act of selling sexual services, is inherently exploitative. It is a long-term moral debate that is false. We are being treated to harmful laws as a result of that moral deb

Status of Women committee  Being sidelined while being told you are a priority population is expensive. It costs us. Thank you very much.