Evidence of meeting #39 for Justice and Human Rights in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was c-36.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Pierre Jacob NDP Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Very well.
You can speak to my next question, time permitting.
You said you were against Bill C-36 because it would result in more neglect and violence for sex workers and give rise to alienation and inequality, among other things.
I would like you and your colleagues to tell us how Bill C-36 would affect you if it came into force tomorrow morning.
Member, Prostitutes Involved, Empowered, Cogent - Edmonton
If it were passed tomorrow morning, I believe that I and all of the very—whether educated or uneducated—brilliant women I work with, and have worked with in the past, would definitely be at a huge disadvantage.
We would not be able to advertise as clearly as we need to, to ensure our safety. We would not be able to work together in the manner that we do and that I want to see increased. I believe we would very much be forced more out into the streets, into more dangerous areas—not underground, as someone here said, but definitely we would be struggling to maintain our balance and our safety, which we've tried to get with the current laws.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Thank you, Monsieur Jacob.
The next question goes to the Conservative Party, and I'm taking it.
Professor, just focusing in on this from strictly a social science perspective, I have some questions about your methodologies in the study. You presented some overview today, and I think you're presenting more.
If I understood you correctly, you have surveyed or interviewed about 3,000 buyers, and that's really where your focus has been. Is that correct?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
It's the focus I've spoken of today. I have also participated in, as either a co-investigator or as an assistant, at least another nine projects around the sex industry in general.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Since buyers are part of this change in Bill C-36, that's what I want to focus on. You say they were interviewed or surveyed. What's the breakdown? How many were interviewed in person, and how many were surveyed?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
I've done hundreds of hours of ethnographic observation in various virtual and physical spaces over the course of time.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
That doesn't mean anything to me. How many men—I'll say men, although there might be women in there too—did you survey, did you actually send a piece of paper saying, “I understand you're a john, and we're trying to understand why you're buying sex from these individuals”? How many did you survey, and how many did you have in front of you interviewing?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Right. In the two projects that I referred to today, there were 50 in-depth interviews and a total of 2,004 surveys.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Just from a social science perspective, how do you know in a survey whether or not the person is telling you the truth, or the whole truth, and how do you do it in an interview? What are your methods such that as a social scientist you can guarantee this committee that those people are likely telling the truth?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
There's no way that anybody studying any portion of the sex industry can guarantee the truth of any account, whether it be a sex worker, sex buyer, manager, owner, operator, policeman, lawyer, or politician. What we can do is construct our instruments in such a way that we phrase questions that are not leading and that do not result in bias, that do not result in response bias, in social desirability bias. This is much easier in self-administered surveys, which can provide a degree of privacy and confidentiality than in person.
With regard to the in-person interviews, the reason I do phenomenological interviews, often lasting seven or eight hours in length, is that through the length of conversation, some of those walls come down.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Come down. Sure.
Is there a control group, as in any other scientific method, that you've put against it?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
We've done that in the past. In my first study, in 1996, we compared people who purchased sex with members of the general population, males and females. We found very few statistically significant differences.
Subsequently, I have focused specifically on getting at individuals in the sex industry so that we can compare among and between buyers, sellers, intimate partners, and so on and so forth.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
As I recall—you can tell me if I'm wrong, because I may have missed it—I think when you were asked a question about violence, you had different degrees of violence in your survey. There's physical violence, and obviously there are laws against that, and then there are others, whether it's verbal and so on.
Did you tell the committee that something like 25% identified that there's physical violence? Did I hear that correctly?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
No.
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
In terms of their instigation of physical violence, less than 5% have presented physical violence in varying forms. We measure violence in about 20 or 25 different ways, reflecting a continuum, everything from just arguments and verbal discussions all the way up to violent abuse—assault, robbery, and sexual assault.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Maybe you just can't do this, but for somebody to tell me that they treat these people with respect and I'm doing it for self-gratification, or whatever the issue.... For you to study that, though, you don't follow up with the actual person they bought the service from to find out if that person was telling you the truth or if they were violent—whether physically or verbally or any other way—if they refused to pay, all those other things.
There's no way for you to know whether what they're saying as buyers of sexual services is actually what they do when they're behind closed doors in a consensual adult situation. Does your study show that?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Yes. Our most recent study is a 360-degree view of the sex industry, where we've looked at sex workers, sex buyers, the intimate partners of sex workers, managers, owners, operators, and regulators—
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Are they matched, where the buyer tells you who they're buying from and you can interview both of them?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
At this juncture, especially under the current legal regime, it would be impossible in Canada.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Mike Wallace
Okay.
Finally, because a lot of the discussion is about the treatment of the opposite sex, do most of your surveys ask whether they're in a relationship, whether it's marriage or boyfriend/girlfriend? Do you find out if they have other relationships other than with those whom they're buying sex from? Do they give you permission to talk to them about how they are treated?
Research Associate, Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, As an Individual
Absolutely. I look at all the range of demographics, including their non-commercial relationships and aspects of their gender and sexuality. No, we don't match up with people who do have non-commercial partners. People who have non-commercial partners are represented in a variety of different ways. There are those who are married, there are those who are common law, have regular sexual partners, and so on and so forth. At this juncture, again, also due to the current legal regime, we don't—can't—match that up.
A lot of the times what we have to do in order to elicit participation and guarantee the confidentiality and privacy that we do, in order to get the participants, we have to respect their identities and say we can't reveal these to anybody.