The first step must be decriminalization. In a situation where the police officers are mandated to eliminate the sex industry and are told by the Parliament of Canada that all sex work is a type of exploitation, there isn't any room to build anything positive with the police.
Once decriminalization takes place and the police no longer have the elimination mandate, we can obviously develop a relationship with the police that may one day be more positive. It will then be possible to really distinguish between violent and non‑violent acts, and between criminal acts and acts that fall under the jurisdiction of other parts of the government.
Right now, this is impossible. You can't ask a police officer to simply enforce the law based on their personal discretion. We're seeing this now. Obviously, the police officers aren't arresting every sex worker, every client and every third party. That would be absurd and would require extreme resources.
We can't have legislation that enables police officers to arrest all these people and then ask these people to trust the police and hope that they will use the legislation only in the situations where it serves a useful purpose and where violence is involved. We really need to take that mandate away from the police. At that point, we can see whether things change.
I think that we must also consider the fact that the relationship between the police and marginalized communities, particularly indigenous and transgender communities, is adversarial and that this extends well beyond the legislation criminalizing sex work.
In Montreal, indigenous women are 12 times more likely to be stopped by the police than white women.