Good afternoon, and thank you for the opportunity to address you today.
My name is Kara Gillies. I have 30 years' experience in multiple areas of the sex trade.
Today I am representing the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, a coalition of organizations across Canada working for law reform that supports the rights and safety of people who sell or trade sex, including safety from exploitation and trafficking.
Our members' experiences and both anecdotal and academic evidence lead us to conclude that the anti-sex work laws and the application of anti-trafficking measures harm all of us in the sex trade, whether we are there because it is our first choice, because of coercion or, as is the case for most of us, because we are simply looking for a viable way to support ourselves and our families.
Far from being protective, the anti-sex work laws and the end-demand model they represent actually facilitate trafficking by pushing people away from police and social services and into a clandestine underground.
In addition, the laws against managerial involvement in sex work divest sex workers of protective services such as screening and safe workspaces, the charter right to which was recognized by the Supreme Court in the Bedford decision. These same laws prevent sex workers from ensuring that our safety and rights are upheld when we do work for other people, because they exclude us from labour and human rights protections. These laws are also significant barriers to trafficking prevention. People who work with sex workers are well placed to detect and report trafficking, but simply don't do so because of fear of criminal prosecution.
The end-demand model and consequent criminalization of purchasing sexual services has had an equally terrible impact on trafficking prevention. Before PCEPA, clients were one of the best sources of information about abuse of sex workers. As opposed to other industries where trafficked people can be held in complete isolation, sex work by its nature requires private contact with people, i.e., clients, outside the inner circle. However, clients are no longer coming forward because they fear criminalization.
The argument that the demand for paid consensual sex fuels trafficking in the sex trade is akin to saying that the demand for better infrastructure, fresh produce, or new clothing fuels the trafficking that exists in the construction, agriculture, and garment industries. This is untrue. Trafficking is not caused by a demand for a service or product. It is caused by systemic, including legal, conditions that permit exploitation to occur in various labour and social environments.
The alliance does not oppose the current Criminal Code definition of trafficking and believes that a fear for one's safety or that of others is a reasonable measure of exploitation. It is our assessment that the low conviction rate is a reflection of the broad misapplication of the law to any abusive third party involvement in sex work, including those that simply don't meet the legal or conceptual standard of trafficking, and should not be addressed as such.
We are opposed to amending the definition of exploitation to include the concept of vulnerability, because we know that the ideological stance that labels all of us as inherently abused will make us targets of harmful anti-trafficking initiatives. To that point, the application of anti-trafficking laws and related measures actually harms the very people that they aim to protect. The heightened policing of sex workers that has become a routine part of anti-trafficking pushes us yet further underground, especially when we know that those around us are at risk of prosecution under anti-sex work laws.
Workers, our workspaces, and our ads are routinely surveilled, and we are subject to invasive investigation techniques, such as those of Operation Northern Spotlight. These leave us shaken. They interfere with our livelihood, and they foster further distrust in the police.
It is true that a small number of genuine trafficking cases are identified through these means, but I ask, at what cost? Imagine for a moment if these same techniques were used in relation to women experiencing intimate partner violence, which we know is a tremendous problem in this country. I have no doubt that if four or five uniformed police officers knocked on the doors of married women's homes, demanded to see identification, ran women's names through police databases, asked a series of deeply personal questions about their relationships, and then asked multiple times if they were being abused., chances are that some abuse would be uncovered, and some women would escape domestic violence. But at what cost would that be to all those women whose privacy, sense of security, and rights were violated, including the privacy and rights of those who were experiencing abuse? It would never be accepted, and we should not accept it as treatment of women who happen to be in the sex trade, even in the important fight against human trafficking.
Certain communities of sex workers are disproportionately targeted and impacted by anti-trafficking campaigns. Asian workers face racial profiling. Migrant workers are subjected to raids, detention, and deportation. Indigenous women continue to be over-policed and under-protected by law enforcement that remains racist and colonial in its practices.
Currently, pretty much any abuse of indigenous, migrant, or youth sex workers is uncritically addressed as trafficking. Not only is this generally untrue, but it is ineffective at preventing abuse because it ignores the differing structural contexts that inform why and how specific communities sell or trade sex and then experience violence. Instead, we need to address systemic issues like poverty and inequality, as well as the impacts of colonization on indigenous women, restrictive immigration policies on migrant women, and failed youth protection systems on young people, as key examples.
Overall, the harms of the anti-sex work laws and the anti-trafficking laws are the result of a singular ideological positioning that sex work is inherently a form of exploitation. The PCEPA explicitly reflects this opinion. This opinion has led to the current state where all sex work can be, and often is, considered trafficking. This conflation of sex work and trafficking means that any of us working in the sex trade can be the target of harmful anti-trafficking initiatives at any time. Also, when sex work is considered itself a form of violence, when actual violence occurs it's considered expected and is sadly condoned. Further, the conflation of sex work and trafficking creates confusion about what exactly we're discussing when we attempt to address trafficking, and then it leads to ineffective policies and practices.
Regardless of differing philosophies on the nature and value of prostitution, women's lives and safety should not be jeopardized through harmful laws. Laws should be based on evidence, not ideology, and they must uphold charter rights. Thus, all criminal provisions against sex work should be repealed as part of a genuine effective battle against trafficking. At the same time, state and societal resources should be directed toward anti-poverty, anti-colonization, and gender and racial equality measures.
I'm now going to turn it over to my colleague Lanna to provide some more insight.