Thank you very much.
My colleague Natasha and I are very pleased to be here representing PEERS Victoria Resource Society, which is located in Victoria, B.C. We'd like to thank those who contributed to our joint presentation based on their experiences in the sex industry.
I am the executive director of PEERS, which has been in operation for close to 20 years. Our key programs include day and night outreach, a drop-in centre, a health clinic, employment and education support. We also prepare and circulate the “bad date” or aggressor sheet in our region.
Our programs collectively serve some 350 to 500 persons per year, depending on funding. Some of our program participants regard themselves as currently in the sex industry, while about a third would identify themselves as no longer in the sex industry but continue to use our services because they require assistance with housing, health care access, and other forms of social support.
I'm also a social scientist affiliated with the University of Victoria. In that capacity, I have conducted research on the social determinants of health in the sex industry for over a decade. Currently, I am conducting a national study of managers of escort agencies and massage businesses as part of a large CIHR-funded study led by Dr. Cecilia Benoit.
I want to begin with a few contextualizing statistics about our region specifically. Over the past 15 years, Dr. Benoit and her colleagues have conducted three large health studies of people in the sex industry. Great care was taken in the methodological design, including reaching a diverse and large sample. Looking across these studies, it was found that the median age of first transaction in the sex industry was the early twenties, with a significant minority of participants reporting selling sexual services before the age of 18. Close to 80% identified as women and just under 20% identified as aboriginal. The mean age at the time of the interview was early to mid-thirties. We did not find an over-representation of ethnic minorities, but rather an under-representation.
The individuals interviewed in these studies, as well as those we work with at PEERS, hold diverse views of the sex industry. That is really an important point: they do hold diverse views of the sex industry informed by a range of experiences. However, most take issue with being characterized fundamentally as victims. As one of our members commented, “Although I feel like I had to become a sex worker to support my little girl, it was still my choice, and if I had to do it over again I would.” Another commented, “When women like myself proclaim they are in the business by choice, but people insist on viewing it as victimization, it insinuates that we are not capable of making decisions for ourselves.” Another commented that “The only thing that pushed me towards escorting was my own curiosity.”
One of the very positive developments we have in our region is with the Victoria police. There are two units—the special victims unit and the community liaison unit—that work with PEERS to reach out to sex workers, to encourage them to report crimes and other concerns.
In preparing this for presentation, one of our police liaison officers informed me that there had not been any trafficking charges in our regions in many years, and few if no prostitution-related charges. Instead, their focus has been on targeting only those who exploit or harm sex workers. For example, there have been six reported incidents of what are commonly referred to as “bad dates” this year, and the persons who committed these crimes—not all of whom were sex buyers, by the way—are the priority for law enforcement, as opposed to sex buyers as a whole.
Below I would like to briefly comment on some specific sections of Bill C-36, although I realize it's been discussed extensively already this week. We agree with others who have detailed why proposed section 286.1 and section 213 will continue to constrain communication between sex buyers and sellers, and we also emphasize the need for sex workers to freely communicate with purchasers in order to assess them, set the terms of service, and obtain key pieces of information. Screening is only one aspect of it. You also have to require information from people, and people have to be willing to give you that information. That's part of establishing security as well.
The evidence of this was carefully considered in Bedford versus Canada, and painstakingly considered, I think. Moreover, section 213 fosters a climate of stigma and discrimination as it identifies people in the sex industry as threats to rather than members of the community. It will predictably be disproportionately applied to street-based sex workers. These individuals do not have the means to pay fines or obtain legal support, and their fear of police is already substantial and more deeply rooted than in prostitution law alone, particularly for those who are substance-dependent, without secure housing, or have been subjected to racial discrimination.
Proposed section 286.4, which criminalizes advertising also potentially impedes workers' ability to communicate for the purposes of safety and security. I won't go into that much because I think it's been covered and we have limited time.
Proposed section 286.1, which criminalizes material benefit from sexual services, places constraints on sex workers who wish to engage with others in assisting them. While we recognize that there are noted exceptions, and they have been discussed this week, this law is nevertheless very problematic, from our point of view, as it potentially places an onus on these parties to prove that they fall within these exceptions.
There was some discussion the other day regarding the meaning of the “no exception” clause in proposed subsection 286.2(5), which seems to suggest there is no form of material benefit permissible within a commercial enterprise. I'm hoping for a little more clarification today as this section—