Status of Women committee  Yes, remove any immigration law that prohibits people from working in sex work and related industries. Also, do not put the immigration prohibition on people's work permits. This is very important. We just want you guys to support and eliminate it as soon as possible. The other

Status of Women committee  At Butterfly, over 60% of our members have reported that they have experienced different kinds of violence from police and law enforcement. Because the police system is designed to end sex work and it is designed to police many racialized and migrant people, if you give them the

Status of Women committee  In many instances, for example, in mental health, there are now more initiatives to provide community support, because sex workers are the best defenders of the rights and safety of other sex workers. When sex workers are not criminalized, they can protect each other and monitor

Status of Women committee  I think we need to differentiate clients who are giving money and are actually an important support system for sex workers from the perpetrators. They pretend to be clients to harm the community. Because sex work is criminalized, we see lots of law enforcement, including police

Status of Women committee  In the current legal system, other third parties, such as those who help other sex workers do advertisements, for example, or who help other people find a workplace, have all become illegal. In that narrative, in that story, and also in the law, they are often framed as human tra

Status of Women committee  It's just like Sandra described. The terms “human trafficking” or “sex trafficking” are useless and confusing. We hear many anti-sex work organizations call any sex work activity human trafficking. If we can take out this ideology about how sex work is bad and people should not

Status of Women committee  We don't need to waste so much energy and time to identify who is being trafficked and who is not. What is human trafficking? We hear stories. It maybe related to domestic violence. Many in our community.... If I'm a sex worker and take money, I'm seen as human trafficking. That

Status of Women committee  I'll just say, for example, that when sex work is still criminalized, when sex work is being seen as human trafficking and when sex work is being seen as exploitation, we cannot differentiate the violence. We know very well much gender-based violence is—

Status of Women committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is Elene Lam. I am the executive director of Butterfly, which is an Asian and migrant sex workers support network. We are the community-led organization that organizes and provides support for over 5,000 Asian and migrant sex workers across C

Justice committee  I think decriminalization, one, is very helpful to not make people think sex workers are something wrong or to not think they are evil. This is very helpful to eliminate the hate against sex workers and to promote respect for the sex worker. The other piece, as we keep saying,

Justice committee  Social supports, including health, social services and legal clinic support, are very important for undocumented workers. Despite the City of Toronto having the access without fear policy, we see that it is not often enforced, and we still have workers who, when they call because

Justice committee  The criminal law gives the power to the police and the law is designed to eliminate sex workers, so no matter how you train law enforcement or how good law enforcement is, it is still designed to target sex workers. That's why we say training police is not helpful. You can see th

Justice committee  For many sex workers, saying that sex workers do not have the brains to make decisions about their life is also violence. It is taking away their agency and not respecting what they want in their lives. For example, in Toronto, when the City of Toronto wanted to shut down massage

Justice committee  Many non-status people already have lots of challenges working with law enforcement, but for sex workers, because of the sex worker law, there are more and more opportunities to have unwanted contact with law enforcement. For example, often the undocumented sex worker is arrested

Justice committee  It's like racial profiling. Also, when we talk about the fear of the police, they are not being told to fear the police. They really are fearful of the police, because the law can be used against them and to arrest them. We see that this is happening. Often, the police use crimin