Good afternoon.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we're gathered here today on the traditional territory of the Algonquin people.
My name is Lisa Steacy. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting Mélanie and me to speak on behalf of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres, which I'll refer to as CASAC to save time.
CASAC is one of the oldest coalitions of sexual assault centres in the world. Founded in 1975, CASAC-member centres continue to provide front-line crisis support and intervention to women from Halifax to Vancouver, in English and French, and in urban and rural communities. CASAC speaks publicly for the thousands of women who tell us their stories on confidential crisis lines.
By providing women across Canada with crisis support, CASAC has accrued unique and intimate knowledge about the causes and consequences of male violence against women, including prostitution. Every one of our public statements on prostitution and male violence against women is informed by the women who call our lines and disclose the previously private violations of rape, battery, incest, and prostitution to front-line workers.
Formerly prostituted women have joined our group in Vancouver, the group in Montreal, the group in Ottawa, and in many other centres to train as volunteers or to work on staff to assist women who are surviving and trying to escape the routine exploitation and violation of prostitution. I'm assured in my conviction and compelled to speak because of these women, as are CASAC members across the country.
I personally have spoken to, met, and can name women who are prostituted on the street and behind the closed doors of escort agencies, massage parlours, and strip clubs and women who advertise themselves online because they bought into the notion that prostitution is a viable, safe, and empowering way to earn the money that they need to put themselves through university. These women have been threatened, raped, and battered by men who purchase sex. They have been threatened, raped, and battered by pimps and procurers. Every single one of them has struggled to endure and survive the day in and day out dangers and violations inherent to prostitution.
In 2001, our members insisted on and passed a resolution that prostitution is a form of male violence against women. In 2005, we further articulated our analysis that prostitution is a harmful practice of sexist and sexual discrimination. It exploits and compounds women's social inequality, the economic inequality of women living in poverty, and the racial inequality of women of colour and aboriginal women.
The government's proposed change to the criminal law offers an opportunity for society, through law, to stand up for and alongside women who insist on more for themselves, and for all women than, being bought and sold in prostitution. The very existence of prostitution not only creates a subclass of women commodified as objects to be bought and sold by men, it sustains the sexual and sexualized inequality of all women.
The definition of “consent” in section 273.1 that follows the sexual assault offences in the Criminal Code provides a useful framework for CASAC to counter the assertion that prostitution is an equal transaction or a sexual activity to which women consent. “Consent” is defined as “a voluntary agreement to engage in the sexual activity in question”. The brutal forces of poverty, violence, and inequality that coerce the vast majority of women into prostitution effectively negate consent.
Bill C-36 rightly situates the criminal offences related to prostitution in the section of the Criminal Code for crimes against the person. The women who call and answer our crisis lines across the country have known for decades that prostitution is not harmful because it is a nuisance or a vice, it is harmful because it is a violation of a person, most often a female one.
CASAC is encouraged that Parliament has drafted a bill that makes it clear that there's a vital role for criminal law to play in condemning and curtailing the continued prostitution of women and girls in Canada. In both the 2001 and 2005 CASAC resolutions, we agreed that criminal law can and should serve to prohibit and denounce male violence against women. Bill C-36 is a necessary response to the demands of women and women's groups that the government recognize that prostitution disproportionately impacts women and undermines their Charter rights to dignity and equality.
The provisions that criminalize the actions of johns precisely target the men who demand unfettered access to women's bodies. The provisions that criminalize the actions of pimps and profiteers accurately target the men who coerce women and girls into prostitution, who capitalize on women's economic and social vulnerability to recruit them into prostitution, and who benefit economically from women and girls remaining in prostitution.
The provisions that apply to johns, pimps, and profiteers are consistent with an understanding of prostitution as a criminal act of male violence against women. However, from our decades of work with women who've experienced rape, wife assault, incest, and sexual harassment, we know that there is a systemic failure at all levels to arrest, charge, and convict men for violence against women using the laws that exist. We must not compound this failure by pardoning men and further abandoning women by decriminalizing prostitution.
Diligent implementation of the proposed laws will be critical if they're to be effective in achieving their stated aims. The federal government has the responsibility to play a crucial leadership role in setting the standards for police and prosecutors across the country in order to ensure enforcement of all laws that criminalize violence against women. Any criminalization of women in prostitution is inconsistent with an analysis of prostitution as violence against women.
We unequivocally oppose the government's proposal to criminalize communication in certain locations in the name of protecting communities. The laws that criminalize johns and pimps apply in all locations, and a further provision that applies to prostituted women in certain locations is entirely unnecessary.
Bill C-36 correctly asserts that prostitution is exploitive, harmful, and violent. The vast majority of women do not freely choose to be in prostitution, so it is therefore inconsistent that women in prostitution can choose the location in which they are prostituted. This provision will likely compound current bias in the delivery of justice in which the most marginalized women—the destitute, the racialized, and the addicted—in street-level prostitution are disproportionately targeted and punished.
The federal government's allocation of $20 million in new funding to programs that assist women who want to leave prostitution is simply not enough. Prostitution, like all forms of violence against women, prevents women's equality. Any lack of equality makes women vulnerable to violence. Working to aid women after sexist violent attack is not enough. We must end the inequality of women and the use men make of it.
All parties and all ministries at all levels of government will need to make a substantive commitment to eradicate the desperate inequality that prostitution exploits and entrenches.
Thank you.