It's certainly not just a problem in Montreal. I can speak personally at the very least for all of Quebec. We end up working with people and newcomers to Canada who are all over Quebec.
As I mentioned during my initial remarks, actually in recent years it's become less and less of an exclusively urban phenomenon because so many trans sex workers fear constant surveillance by police, and it has driven many of the people I work with at ASTTeQ into suburban or exurban circumstances where there are fewer community supports. When I say “fewer community supports” I mean trans community supports and community supports for migrants and people from their cultural communities. That kind of isolation has really contributed to violence and the danger they experience at work. It's made it very difficult for newcomers to Canada to realize the dreams they had when they came here to live safely as who they are in accordance with the gender identity they have.
For many of them it's quite a shock because they have been told, they've been promised as asylum seekers, as refugees, what have you, that Canada is a place where transpeople can live without constant fear of violence. Then they come to Canada and they experience extremely unsafe working conditions. They have no recourse to any kind of legal solutions for any violence they might experience at work. They have constant police surveillance and the police are profiling them for being trans, profiling them for being migrants and are constantly threatening criminal charges that could undo their immigration status and send them back to the countries they had to flee.