Thank you, members of the committee, for giving me the chance to testify today.
I work as the coordinator of ASTTeQ, a community group in Montreal by and for transpeople.
Since 1998, ASTTeQ has offered services, accompaniment, legal information and peer support, particularly to transwomen who are homeless, migrants, and those living with HIV and/or sex workers. ASTTeQ is the only organization primarily devoted to working with trans sex workers in Quebec and, as far as I know, in all of Canada. ASTTeQ's work with sex workers is funded by the federal government.
The sex workers I work with every day are not asking us for help to leave sex work. They want to continue doing sex work for diverse reasons, some in order to attain economic self-sufficiency or to support their families; some to supplement social service payments, which aren't enough to make rent; some because they experience transphobic or racist discrimination in legal labour sectors; and some because their immigration status prevents them from working in other jobs.
The women who frequent ASTTeQ are asking us, rather, for help responding to problems caused by the criminalization of their work. They come to us because their landlords are threatening them with eviction after finding out they do sex work from home. They come to us because constant police surveillance in their spaces has left them with criminal charges, which could lead to incarceration in a men's prison or could imperil their immigration status. Many of the women ASTTeQ work with are newcomers to Canada who have come in search of a life safe from anti-trans hatred, discrimination and violence, yet PCEPA has denied many of these women the life they were promised by forcing them into unsafe working conditions and by exposing them to the harms of constant police presence.
PCEPA has not and will not eliminate sex work in Canada's trans communities. Instead, it has simply made sex work less safe. The majority of the transpeople who frequent ASTTeQ experience poverty and live in precarious circumstances, and PCEPA has made their lives even more precarious by pushing them into dangerous, unlivable, working conditions. They cannot work together with other members of their community for safety or develop collective measures to screen clients. The threat of police and criminal charges has forced them to work in isolation, far from the city centre, where there are no community resources. Even for those who are never charged with a criminal offence, the constant threat of criminalization forecloses their possibilities in life and prevents them from creating even basic forms of stability and safety for themselves.
ASTTeQ recently conducted research for a qualitative study commissioned by the Department of Justice Canada on a wide range of serious legal problems faced by trans, two-spirit and non-binary people in Canada. The content of the report has been approved by the Department of Justice, and it is awaiting translation before publication. Our research found the following:
For many participants, the criminalization of sex work obstructed their access to stable income, safer working conditions, trans community supports, and/or gender affirmation. Several participants explicitly identified the current criminal legislative framework related to sex work as a source of unsafe work conditions or of fear (e.g., fear of contact with law enforcement, repercussions on other aspects of their lives such as their immigration status, housing, and income taxes).
One of the aims of PCEPA was to reduce violence and exploitation in the context of sex work. In this, too, it has utterly failed. Many of the trans sex workers in our study avoided police contact at all costs, including after being assaulted at work, because contact with the police and being known to the police as a sex worker created a cycle of worsening legal problems for them, such as criminal inadmissibility within the immigration system, increased barriers to housing and employment and escalating criminal charges exacerbated by constant and sometimes violent encounters with the police. Improved police training or access to legal resources would not resolve these women's legal problems, because PCEPA itself has caused these problems. It's PCEPA that gives police the power to enter their homes and workplaces.
In recent years, the federal government has made numerous efforts to expand basic rights and protections for transpeople, but these rights and protections are totally inaccessible to the poor and marginalized transpeople I work with and will be until PCEPA is repealed and sex work is decriminalized in Canada.
Thank you.