Thank you for giving us the time to speak. I want to speak a little bit about Thrive and Blue Door.
Thrive is the umbrella organization under which Blue Door falls. We provide street-based outreach, needle exchange, an education program for young people who haven't finished school, and a number of other services around housing and mental health.
Blue Door is one of our programs. It's an exiting program. Those programs look different all across the country, so I can only speak to what our current experience is in the model we're using.
I think it's really important to highlight that at Thrive we understand that the issue of the sex trade and exiting can be one that is complex and very specific to each individual. Within Blue Door, participants only need the desire to make a change in their lives. They're often self-referred, not professionally referred. They're folks who are choosing to not earn money the way they are currently.
Folks who are part of Blue Door are engaged in a range of sex trade activities. Some are no longer involved in the sex trade and others are navigating and balancing the need to work in the sex trade with their desire to have a different kind of life.
It's important to emphasize that within Blue Door we understand that choices are not made in a vacuum but rather within the community and the context and experiences that one has had. A choice that is made out of financial duress and social inequity needs to be considered constrained at best.
However, for all participants in our program, there is a common theme. Folks in Blue Door identify as having some form of trauma. People over the age of 18 in the program were all groomed and exploited prior to their 18th birthday. Some speak very openly about moving between the sex trade as a choice and the sex trade as a form of exploitation, noting that they are not often the same thing together.
What is clear is that the risk of exploitation of people is greatly increased when taking into account factors related to poverty, mental health, and addiction. Family breakdown and a lack of connection and belonging further increase that risk. The demand within the sex trade for young women in particular puts adolescents at high risk for being groomed and lured by men who promote themselves as boyfriends or father figures and by women who pose as sisters and family.
In recognizing that choices made by people involved in the sex trade are constrained, Blue Door emphasizes the need for the creation of community and connection. Concrete supports for participants have been put in place to broaden the options that are available for people who come to Blue Door. This includes the choice to be involved in therapy, group activities, education, and employment counselling.
People who come to Blue Door are able to pick and choose the level of support they require. We've supported women to complete their GED, to apply to post-secondary, to access counselling, and to navigate child protection services, housing, and other similar things. People can participate in all the groups or no groups. It's really about what the person needs, not what we as a program might define that they need. We don't believe that people need to be saved. We do believe that they need to be heard and that they need to be supported.
We cannot hope to change the reality of exploitation for people if the significant systemic inequities that exist in our society are not addressed. Systems do need to do a better job at protecting children, ensuring that education is a right that all people receive, and recognizing that the selling of the bodies of children is child abuse. It's not adolescent sex work.
In working with exploited people as well as those who are exploiters, we have come to understand that the paths that lead to the experiences of both are not that different. Those who exploit others are also people who have experienced long-term inequity within the education and justice systems, as well as systemic poverty and access to resources.
One of the most stressful parts of this work, oddly enough, is not the support of survivors. It's the tense political tightrope that we're all walking in trying to respect the experiences and voices of people within the sex trade. The debate between legalization and decriminalization for sellers, purchasers, and suppliers has become so inflamed that the voices of many people impacted have been drowned out. Many times, individuals who are currently in the sex trade are are pitted against the survivor community or vice versa.
In looking at the research into the sex trade, one can find evidence that supports almost any position one wishes to take, from the wholesale support of legalization of the sex trade to decriminalization models. However, one thing is clear, and that's that the experience of trauma among sex workers is a common theme. It is important to remember that the voices of the most vulnerable people are often the quietest. People experiencing exploitation have the least access to channels of advocacy, and it's often not until there's significant healing that their stories are heard.
Decisions that are made from a legislative perspective must take into account the stories of survivors to ensure a maximum guarantee of safety for everyone. The contexts in which people end up in the sex trade, regardless of whether it is a choice or exploitation, are often the same. A lack of resources, education, or housing, along with childhood abuse, neglect, toxic stress, and colonialism, all at an intersection with mental health and addiction issues can lead people to the sex trade. If we want to provide protection for people at risk of exploitation, we must consider those factors that put them at risk in the first place.