While on the street corner being trafficked, I've received questionnaires by Maggie's about which terminology would be appropriate to use. Nearly all of us were against the term “sex worker”, because we felt that it led people to believe that we were there for sex, when in fact we were there for money. The money was our number one motivating factor, whereas for the people who were buying sex, they were there for sex, power, and control.
I ran a court diversion program for seven and a half years. I was a counsellor and program manager of a court diversion program, which is what led Bridget and me to start our coalition. We didn't believe that women should be criminalized in having to be forced to go to support.... I believed in my program. My program was good. We were able to get some stats through our intake process, which were also submitted in another committee as evidence for the Bedford challenge. Eighty-five per cent of the people who came through our program indicated that they had been trafficked at some point during their duration in the sex trade. Eighty-five per cent reported that.