Justice Committee on Feb. 8th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Wesley.

Ms. Michaud, thank you.

[Sandra Wesley]

Every time I bring up indigenous women, you cut me off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

I'll let you finish that off first, Ms. Wesley. I don't want to cut you off.

[Sandra Wesley]

That would be nice, yes.

I've been cut off every time I've tried to get to indigenous women, and I think it's just very important to really acknowledge that indigenous women make up a huge percentage of the women we reach at Stella. They are the women we see the most in prison, and they are the women we see dying at the fastest rate. We are constantly having vigils for women who have preventable illnesses they died from because they couldn't access health care. We have been in situations in which one of our outreach workers on the street called 911 for an ambulance for someone who was having a health emergency. The 911 operator asked if it was an indigenous woman, and they sent the police instead.

We have women who are currently missing. We have women who have committed suicide since this law has been put in place. We have women who have been subject to incredible violence, and I think it's very important that we ask ourselves why it is that, as a society, we're starting to accept that the criminal justice system is colonial, racist and violent towards indigenous people. It is part of a genocidal project against indigenous women, but somehow we think that, when it comes to sex work, it's different and all of a sudden the system is helpful. It is not helpful for indigenous women. We need all kinds of other things that are not criminal. We need people who are not police officers in the lives of indigenous women, and we need to stop this unwanted contact with police and this hostility from the system.

I just really want you to consider that, if we actually have a commitment as a country to end the genocide of indigenous women, then we need to have a commitment to making sure that no indigenous woman is targeted by police, either as a criminal or as a potential victim, on the basis of the fact that she is selling sex to make money.

If we are outraged that we have people in our society who are in desperate poverty, who need to do anything they can do to survive, then we need to act on the poverty; we need to act on the exclusion, and we need to act on those things. We do not need to criminalize poverty or to criminalize being indigenous in a city away from your community. Those things should not be crimes, and this law is a way to criminalize being an indigenous woman, especially in an urban setting.

If there's one take-away from this testimony, it is that it's possible to be committed to ending violence against indigenous women and it's possible to have a critical analysis of how indigenous women continue to sell sex and to support the criminalization. Those things are coherent, and they all come together as one package.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Wesley.

I just want to say I did not want to cut you off at the indigenous part. I just have to manage everyone's time and it's a difficult task on my side, but thank you for clarifying that.

[Sandra Wesley]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

It's over to you for the last two and a half minutes, Mr. Garrison.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to return to a question that Mr. Brock posed and said he was going to have you answer, and then of course, we ran out of time. That's the question about whether the statistics show an improvement after this law was brought in, because it seems to me it's equally likely that the statistics show a drop in reporting rather than an actual improvement in conditions. I'd like to know if that's your view of the situation.

[Sandra Wesley]

Yes, absolutely. I had a chance to review in great detail the report that we've been talking about, the statistics. It's very clear to me looking at those statistics that they reflect the reality of what we see, that there's actually a decrease in sex workers reporting violence, and also a decrease in how sex workers might be counted in statistics, because even those who report violence will go to great lengths to avoid being captured in those statistics.

Obviously there are a lot of problems with those statistics, including the lack of understanding and representation of trans women. What those statistics actually show is that people are not reporting and that people are not seeing any sort of improvements in their relationships with police. The idea that violence has decreased because of this law is absurd. The same people who rely on those statistics to argue this will be the people who will come and then tell you that they need hundreds of millions of dollars to spend against this violence, which they see increasing every moment. The reality is that we are the ones actually working every day. We're the sex workers. We're in the industry. There has been no reduction in violence because of this law. There has been an increase in many types of violence, and there are no sex workers in our community who feel that criminalization of their actual work and not of the violence is a useful tool in order to protect them.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I'll ask you one last question. What would you hope to see come out of this study that we're doing?

[Sandra Wesley]

We don't have a lot of confidence in this process because it's not conducive to actually looking at evidence and data. Just from my brief testimony here, I've been told that I'm passionate about five times, which is code for, “Okay, we get it. You're an angry sex worker with emotions,” and it's a way to dismiss what I'm saying as if it's not evidence but opinion or feelings.

We have thousands of pages of evidence and we will submit evidence to you, and I expect every one of you who have our lives in your hands, who stand between us and the ability to maybe work without being murdered, to maybe raise our children without interference from the state, to actually read every page of that evidence that we send you and to come to the conclusion that the only reasonable thing to do at this point is to decriminalize sex work. It is inevitable. It will happen at one point, and we will look back at this time in our country when we decided that instead of encouraging sex workers who had a win at the Supreme Court, we would ignore the Supreme Court and punish them for fighting for their rights. We will look back on this as one of the moments in all of the world's history when a Supreme Court human rights decision was blatantly ignored by a government. You have the power right now to recommend that this law be repealed and to right the wrongs of this law.

One of the slogans that a lot of sex workers use is “only rights can stop the wrongs”, so we're hoping that what will emerge from this is a clear recommendation for human rights, and not that there are people who disagree, and not that more research is needed. The research has been done. It is published. It doesn't matter how many people come and tell you that they don't like sex work, that they think it's wrong and that they think it's exploitation. Are people harmed by this law? The answer is yes. We have a duty. We have a charter. It's outrageous that in 2022, we're still here arguing for this very basic principle and pretending that it's not entirely a moral and ideological argument.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Wesley. I just want to say that even though I have not been a chair for long, I've been a member of many committees. You're very articulate and you're very clear, precise and to the point.

I want to thank both you and Ms. Botting for appearing today. I will guarantee and assure you that your views will be taken into this report, with action forthwith.

I will now thank you and you can be dismissed.

I have a quick point.

You guys can stay on or log off; it doesn't matter.

Can I have the members' consent to move approval of the budget?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

(Motion agreed to)

We will now adjourn. We will see you on Friday.

The meeting is adjourned.