We did research here in Ottawa with POWER, the sex worker rights group, where we looked at what happens here in Ottawa. What we found with the street sweeps is that, first of all, you have to look at the way they police. They lay charges for soliciting, but they also lay charges for a series of other events. What ends up happening, though, is that a sex worker gets taken in and gets held. A client will often get released with a promise to appear, but the sex worker gets held. That means she's actually detained. If she's detained until her bail hearing the next morning, that means she is fingerprinted. There is a record of her detention.
If she gets released, even if she gets charged and say she gets a summary conviction—and I do believe there's a criminal record from that—what ends up happening here in Ottawa and many other cities across Canada is that the sex workers have red zones imposed. These are essentially zones where they're not allowed to go. It becomes, of course, a revolving door. Sex workers breach their red zone conditions and then they become charged with breach of conditions. Breach of conditions is a summary offence, and then they do end up with a criminal record. It goes on like that.
Here in Ottawa we happen to have a very high rate, in fact, I think possibly the highest in Canada, and certainly the highest in Ontario, of breach charges. But the consequences of breaching are very high. Also, I thought it was quite interesting that the police chief spoke a great deal about helping victims, but then towards the end of his conversation he spoke about the need to police and to control the nuisance. That's certainly the mentality, and you do have a lot of over-policing, so sex workers are charged with loitering. They're charged with soliciting. They're charged with a series of different things, which make it very difficult for them to ever get out of the criminal justice system.
I'm not sure if that answers your question.