The current laws, because they criminalize clients, make it more difficult for sex workers to negotiate the consensual interaction they will have with their clients. That can mean that they make it more difficult to negotiate safer sex measures such as condom use. They can make it more difficult.
They also make it more difficult for them to communicate with their clients generally and use various safety measures that sex workers typically use. For example, some indoor workers might ask clients to provide some identification or some sort of proof of who they are [Technical difficulty—Editor]. Maybe they'd send it to someone they work with. All of that would be very difficult under the current laws because it provides documentation. The client might be very reluctant to provide identification in order to do something that is criminalized under these laws, which, of course, makes it more difficult to ensure sex workers' safety.
They also make it difficult for sex workers to be able to report to the police or in general. In the two examples I gave from my research, they made it difficult for sex workers to trust the police. The police are charged with enacting a law that criminalizes, that is steeped in and is based on a legal framework that seeks to eradicate the work they do. All of that makes it very difficult for them to trust the police, especially when situations occur like the one with Chief Smyth in Winnipeg denying that sex workers exist, in his opinion.