Justice Committee on July 7th, 2014

[Timea E. Nagy]

I don't think it should just be programs like ours. I think there are programs that the opposite side is providing as well. We believe there are women who got into prostitution one way or another, and I believe they get to a place in their life when they decide they would like to leave, and it's hard to leave that industry. So I believe that money should be divided not just on our side, but on the side where they have a full understanding of what it's like to be there for 10 or 20 years. They can also assist those girls who would like to leave voluntarily one day because they have decided, not because the government tells them to.

But there are programs currently available across Canada. There are agencies, and not just Walk With Me. As I said, there are agencies on their side of the fence too that offer job counselling and therapy. There needs to be a lot of therapy once you leave this industry on your own or once you are rescued, whichever way you leave.

There are emergency safe houses where you stay for up to three days, which is one of our services. Then hopefully you go to an assessment centre. This is already being done in the United States. In the United States prostitution is illegal so when you go before a judge you get arrested, instead of going to jail you're asked to go into a treatment centre for up to three months, an assessment centre where they ask you why you originally entered this industry and how they can help you out.

The same law was just proposed. It's called a diversion program in the Los Angeles area. After a three-month assessment, a time where you literally relax, eat, sleep, and take a break from life and society, you go to a rehabilitation program for up to one year, which is no different than going to rehab for drugs or alcohol. This is an addictive lifestyle, and you need all the help you can get.

Those are the programs that can help you heal and be reintegrated as a healthy member of society so you can start paying taxes and contributing.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Our next questioner from the New Democratic Party is Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Russomanno, Professor Benedet, and Émilie or Naomi, I want to ask a few questions about advertising.

It seems fairly clearly established from both the reading and the earlier testimony that one way or the other, if anybody is going to advertise prostitution services, sex work services, they're going to have to do it somehow on their own and any third-party involvement risks criminalization or will be criminalized. I find it very hard to figure out exactly what kind of effective advertising that would be.

One of the concerns I have is that some of the advertising that allows somebody to work out of their home or work out of some kind of a fixed location—advertise that fact, screen by way of a phone call, screen visually once a person arrives, and that kind of stuff—is going to be harder because the advertising modalities, the vehicles, the third parties that help create effective advertising will be gone and therefore advertising may push itself back out to the street. I'm not sure exactly.

Mr. Russomanno, earlier you talked about protective expression and you were specifically talking about communicating for screening and how this added provision, which Professor Benedet also brought up, whereby if you're doing it anywhere where anybody under 18 can be expected to be, would get in the way of protective expression.

Do you see the advertising features of this also in light of this idea of protective expression?

Professor Benedet, do you not have any concerns about the prohibition on any kind of a third-party involvement in advertising in what it might do by way of risk factors? You did isolate the communicating in areas where those under 18 are present or expected to be present, but you didn't focus on that.

I want the members of the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform to comment on the advertising.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay, we'll start with Mr. Russomanno.

[Leonardo S. Russomanno]

I'm going to let Ms. London-Weinstein deal with that question.

[Anne London-Weinstein]

One of the concerns is the definition of a public place, and whether the Internet would be encompassed as a public place, as a place where youth are likely to be. It's a public domain. It's online communication. It's a wild, vast universe out there. Arguably it could be interpreted as being a place where young people are anticipated to be and therefore would be barred as a method of advertisement.

From the reading I have done, I understand there are real limitations on advertising, and the advertising under this legislation is going to be of somewhat limited utility because there are real restrictions on where the advertising can take place. In terms of screening—and I'll let the other panellists address the issue of safety—one of the concerns that arises out of the inability to advertise is the inability to screen, which is directly related to section 7 concerns in relation to security of the person.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Okay. Professor.

[Prof. Janine Benedet]

I'm at a bit of a loss here to understand how advertising is really protective expression, in particular how profiting from running ads is protective expression. When I look at the kinds of ads that run in the Georgia Straight, our local free paper in Vancouver, the best estimate I have is from a few years ago. Someone tried to calculate how much they made, and it was at least $50,000 a week from that advertising.

I see advertising that is blatantly racist, and divides women by their ethnic categories and ascribes various kinds of servile categories to them based on race. I see advertising that reduces women to body parts so that they don't look like full human beings. I see a culture of advertising that, frankly, is harassing and demeaning to all Canadian women, but is enormously profitable to the organizations that carry it. I didn't expect to see this advertising provision in this bill, but it's a really important step to say that this kind of profiteering needs to stop.

Even in jurisdictions that have decriminalized prostitution, it varies, but there are often significant restrictions on advertising. We were talking about New Zealand, which doesn't permit the advertising of prostitution on television, on radio, and I don't think on billboards. It does permit it in print, and the advertising is done by the brothels, which are now offering coupons that you can clip for a discount and bring with you to the brothel. I don't see anything protective about that kind of expression, and I don't see what you can do through advertising that once that guy is with you alone in your apartment really makes any difference, whatever it is you've bargained for in advance.

I strongly support this provision and I think what's being done here is a prohibition on advertising and on the advertisers, who are profiting, with a clear exception that we're not going to criminalize prostituted women through the back door through an advertising provision, so they are exempted. I quite like the structure of this, and I think it is quite different from that communicating provision that effectively criminalizes all street prostitution taking place in residential areas and criminalizes the women for that, which I think is really a backwards move.

[Émilie Laliberté]

Ms. Sayers will answer first, followed by me.

[Naomi Sayers]

In reference to third parties in relation to advertising, sometimes sex workers advertise through online sites, and this section makes reference to specific online sites. Sometimes moderators and owners of these sites provide sex workers' only access to valuable bad date list information. Criminalizing their actions would eliminate that access area and potentially extremely valuable safety mechanisms.

[Émilie Laliberté]

In my ads, I don't objectify myself or my body. I describe my personality, and above all, I list the services I want to provide and the prices I charge for those services. I also list the services I do not wish to offer.

Simply by posting my ad, I've been able to pre-negotiate the contract for my services. If I lose the right to advertise online and network with fellow sex workers who also post ads online, I will lose the ability to do reference checks on clients and work indoors. I will have to turn to the streets to find clients. I will have to turn to trafficking rings for clients.

Thank you.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That's precisely what I meant by protective. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mike Wallace]

Thank you for those questions and answers.

Finally, I think, we have Mr. Dechert from the Conservative Party.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I believe, Ms. Laliberté, what you were just describing and what you do is exactly what C-36 would allow. That's certainly my understanding.

[Émilie Laliberté]

Actually it is not, because C-36 would shut down all the websites where I can advertise.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

No, not if you pay for it on commercial terms.

[Émilie Laliberté]

Excuse me...?

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

Not if you pay for it on reasonable commercial terms. In other words, if they are not exploiting you, you can do that. You can set up your own website.

[Émilie Laliberté]

You consider me an exploited person anyway.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

No. I'm saying if you do it yourself, if you pay someone to set up your own website, describe the services you're describing, my understanding is that you will not be criminalized. That advertisement would be allowed.

[Émilie Laliberté]

We'll see that in action.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

We will.

Let me focus on something else. A number of our witnesses have mentioned New Zealand, Mr. Chairman, and some have said they think perhaps it's the ideal model. I think the Criminal Lawyers' Association said that. I believe Professor Lowman said that. The alliance may have said something similar about it.

Ms. Benedet, you have mentioned New Zealand. I want you to tell us what the situation was before they passed their new laws and compare it to the situation now with respect to street prostitution and with respect to indigenous women. Can you tell us what you understand the experience is there?

[Prof. Janine Benedet]

I guess the first thing I would say about comparisons to New Zealand is that it is important to understand.... I think it's useful to look at other jurisdictions, and I'm certainly someone who has asked Canada to look at the experience of Sweden, but New Zealand is a very small geographically isolated country. It's nearest neighbour, Australia, has mostly legalized prostitution. The Canadian experience with the United States right next to us is different, so whatever has happened for good or for ill you have to be a little bit careful about those kinds of analogies.

I can say, even looking at research coming out of the New Zealand government and coming out of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective, which is sort of the most established group supporting the New Zealand model, the general trend is that reported incidents of violence have remained the same. They are lower indoors than on the street, but they have remained the same both prior to the legislation and after. That has not changed.

The number of women on the street in street prostitution in cities like Christchurch has not changed since the legislation was passed, and it's the women on the street who are disproportionately the aboriginal women, the indigenous women.

What has changed—and again the groups supporting the legislation verify this as well—is quite a significant increase in the number of foreign women, now Chinese women, in prostitution in New Zealand. That's estimated to make up about a third of the industry as I understand it, and those women are not legally permitted to engage in prostitution because they are not citizens. The law there requires that you be a citizen in order to engage in prostitution.

[Bob Dechert, Conservative, Mississauga—Erindale, ON]

In the Bedford decision the Supreme Court told us that street prostitution is the most dangerous form of prostitution. Would you agree with that?