Justice Committee on Feb. 11th, 2022

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thank you, Chair. I want to thank the three participants this afternoon. It's really your expertise that we are looking forward to in order to move forward with this.

My question is going to be for you, Ms. Baptie.

I worked in downtown Vancouver for a little bit. I have a fairly extensive law enforcement background. I know you said you started at 13. We had an Ottawa police officer who came forward on Tuesday. The real concern she was talking about was the age of the girls who are now being targeted for sex work or prostitution. It's almost unbelievable: It's at 11 years old, 10 years old.

Can you give us some of your experience, at least from the downtown core of Vancouver and what's happening in British Columbia.?

[Trisha Baptie]

I don't think it's just the downtown core of Vancouver. The problem is social media, by and large. Now we have ways for predators to access younger and younger people via apps and different websites. There are a lot of young girls who are struggling with very big issues, and those predators know that and they prey on them. It's very intentional.

I was working with a 16-year-old who was living in a $2,500 a month townhouse in Kits. How is she paying for that? We don't know what is happening there.

Yes, it's getting younger. Yes, it's getting more scary, which is why we need to be focusing on the problem, which is the demand. If men weren't demanding these younger and younger girls, they would be able to live in peace.

We also need to talk about what happens to women and girls when they leave. What is the trauma they are living with after they escape from the violence, the rape, the situations they find themselves in.

I was 13. That was a pretty common age back then. I was in a group home. Most of my friends were indigenous—so, racialized. But it's not uncommon. That's what we really need to be getting out. It's not uncommon, and the core of the matter is men demanding it.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Thanks so much.

I want to follow up with your experience, especially in the last five or six years. What do you think we could do, moving forward, to really have an impact, especially in helping our youth before they become so embedded in this criminal life, with our organized crime and gang activity and so on? How do you feel? What would you say to us if we were to do the following so many items, so many things, so that we could have a really good impact?

[Trisha Baptie]

We need to put a lot more into mental health for youth, but I'm actually going to answer that with a two-second story.

I went to Sweden to look at how the law impacted women and communities in Sweden. I went to a high school, because they had been living with the law for eight or nine years and I wanted hear how the law affected how they thought of themselves. I was in a high school with 15- and 16- and 17-year-olds all talking about prostitution, all talking about it as self-harm. They would report their friends if they found out they were doing it, because it's a harmful practice. It's not good for them, not good for society.

Then, I was like, okay, that's great, we understand prostitution is a form of harm for all of society, but what about pornography? How do you feel about that?

They looked at me, and as a North American I couldn't understand it for a minute or two, and they said, we would never date anyone who was involved in any of that, because that's not what they want for themselves. That is the level of self-awareness and self-esteem that I want for our girls here. I want our girls to say, I will not put up with this behaviour, because I am worth more than that.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

I have just one final question. We've had a lot of comments on law enforcement and policing. I just wonder how your relationship is with Vancouver, or I guess metro Vancouver. Do you work with them? Do you find that the liaison people are co-operative with you in helping out?

[Trisha Baptie]

We do have interactions with the liaison people through different coalitions, etc. Vancouver police are very clear that they're not interested in practising this law. They have been very clear that this isn't an issue that they're going to target. It's a bit of the wild, wild west out here, but yes, we do have contact with the liaison officers. They seem to understand what's happening and the point of PCEPA perhaps more than other officers.

[Rob Morrison, Conservative, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Okay.

I want to thank you for the courage to come before this panel and share your stories and what's happened. It will really help us out.

Thank you so much.

[Trisha Baptie]

Thanks for having us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Morrison.

Now we'll go to Madam Diab.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the three of you for coming today. As you know, our work is not easy as parliamentarians, but in this panel here, we're specifically looking at one piece of legislation that was enacted. It has now come up for review.

There has been a lot of talk, and we only started last week with this. We have a number of sessions where we will hear the views and opinions of different people, organizations, etc. We hear a lot about women and girls who are in different sectors of our country—indigenous, Black, racialized, young 13-year-olds, minors. We talk about sex work. We talk about exploitation. We talk about trafficking. I recognize that these are all different scenarios. We have laws for some of these things. I hope we do; whether or not they're applied uniformly across the country is a question for another day. Today, though, we're looking at this specific act that deals with the issue we're dealing with.

Sandra—if you don't mind me calling you Sandra—can you talk to me from your perspective, please, about this specific piece of legislation that we're looking at? What would you do to make it better?

[Sandra Ka Hon Chu]

Yes. Thank you for the question.

I want to quote the Supreme Court of Canada in Bedford. It's a case we intervened in almost 10 years ago. The Supreme Court said at the time that a law that prevents sex workers from taking basic safety precautions is “a law that has lost sight of its purpose”. I think that is what we have here with PCEPA. You heard about the research I've conducted. You've heard from other researchers. There's extensive evidence since the passage of PCEPA that shows the law absolutely prevents sex workers from taking very basic safety precautions, and that has affected their safety. It has fuelled exploitation.

When you conflate sex work with human trafficking, it means that it's all meaningless. What is exploitation when everything is conflated? I often hear also from sex workers that they are often the people who can identify situations of abuse or exploitation within their industry, but when they or their clients or their peers and managers are all criminalized, they will not go to the police. You heard the reporting statistics. It's horrendous how few sex workers, especially indigenous and racialized sex workers and migrant sex workers will go to the police in any circumstance, even in the most violent situations they might experience, because people are preying on them with impunity. They won't go to the police.

I think the only answer is to fully repeal the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Daphne—if I may call you Daphne—you serve a unique clientele. You talked about newcomers. My heart really goes out to all newcomers, but particularly to those newcomers. You're right that they've come to Canada for a better life.

From your experience and the work that you are involved in within your organization, which you say is probably the only one in Canada doing this, can you please shed a little bit more light on whether this is a Montréal, Québec only phenomenon? Is this across the country?

I'd like to get a little bit more feedback from you, please. What can we do with this act?

[Daphne Barile]

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.

[Lena Metlege Diab, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you so much.

I'll next go to Madame Michaud from the Bloc for six minutes.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for their presence and their testimony.

Ms. Ka Hon Chu, you talked about the Bedford decision and the context in which the act was brought into force. Since that time, lower courts have found that parts of the act were unconstitutional and made it more difficult and less safe for sex workers. You said that, in the end, it didn't change much, because the women continued to work. It did not change their reality. In fact, it affected the way they could do their work.

You started answering the question earlier, but I would like to hear more from you.

What should we do with this law, which we are reviewing today? Should we erase everything and start again, or should we change some parts of it? Are there some provisions that are better than others and that have a reason to be there? Should we decriminalize sex work completely?

In short, what do you think the solutions should be?

This is a debate that divides the general population. I would like to hear what you have to say about it.

[Sandra Ka Hon Chu]

As you know, in the Supreme Court of Canada decision, the court struck down three provisions: living on the avails of prostitution, common bawdy house, and communication.

The PCEPA actually reinscribes those very same provisions, adds the prohibition on purchasing and a prohibition on advertising. Nothing has changed. The harms that the Supreme Court of Canada found almost a decade ago are still happening, as you heard from the research. This means that this current law is still unconstitutional; it will not withstand charter scrutiny. The same harms are occurring, and there are reams of research to prove that.

Even though there's a new legislative objective that says it's claiming to eliminate and discourage sex work to promote reporting, you heard during my presentation that it's not meeting any of those legislative objectives. It's not even rationally connected to this idea of feminism and gender equality when you realize that you're putting sex workers in harm's way and also denying their personhood by stigmatizing them.

Dr. Chevrier, in the last presentation, talked about wanting to make it so dangerous that sex workers would just leave the industry. That is not a feminist model and cannot withstand constitutional scrutiny.

I would say there needs to be a wholesale repeal of PCEPA. There's nothing about it that is.... The law is irredeemable.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you very much.

I would also like to hear from Ms. Barile what we should do with this legislation.

[Daphne Barile]

I agree completely with what Sandra just spoke to. I think that until this law is repealed completely the people that I work with at ASTTeQ will not be safe. They'll not be able to work safely. That does mean the decriminalization of sex work, because it's the threat of criminalization that they live with every day that drives them into unsafe working conditions. Also, then, it's also the actual legal problems that result from the constant presence of police in their lives, and they'll persist as long as PCEPA exists.

When PCEPA is overturned, then we'll be able to see potentially safer working conditions for sex workers in Quebec.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

So I understand that no real legislative change could improve the situation.

Do you think there are other solutions to support women and make sure they are safer while working?

You work with organizations that provide assistance to these women, girls, and people who work in the trade in general or who have it as their chosen profession. What kind of solution could you provide to make them safer?

I would like to hear Ms. Barile's comments.

[Daphne Barile]

Well, I think those resources already do exist, and there are community supports and community organizations. Certainly, in Canada's trans communities, it's the trans sex workers that come to community organizations like ASTTeQ, because they trust that we understand the realities they experience at work. They rely on organizations like ours to help them resolve the problems that they come to us with. If they come to us and they say that they're experiencing unsafe conditions at work, then we refer them to the resources they need or we help to offer legal information that might help them resolve those situations on their own terms.

I think the real solution to issues of unsafe conditions in sex work is sex worker community supports. I think that's one of the most harmful parts of PCEPA: It prevents sex workers from working together, from sharing information about how to work safely and from creating safety measures for each other and looking out for each other. Certainly, in the trans community, that has historically been so important for maintaining trans sex workers' safety. It's the ability to work together, and PCEPA expressly prohibits that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to go to the next questioner.

Mr. Garrison, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all three of the witnesses for being with us today, and in particular Ms. Baptie, for sharing her personal stories with the committee. I know that's never an easy thing to do.

I want to start with Ms. Ka Hon Chu.

I think she raised a very important question about the constitutionality of this law. To me, that relates to the point that people tend to say that the sale of sex is not criminalized in Canada, and Ms. Ka Hon Chu has given some examples where that's simply not true. I wonder if she'd like to expand on that.

[Sandra Ka Hon Chu]

Absolutely: We know that subsection 213(1.1) is a new provision that was introduced under PCEPA that criminalizes public communication in places near children—schoolyards, day cares and parks. There's also the section 213 that was not struck down under the Bedford decision, which is about impeding traffic for the purpose of prostitution. Obviously, sex workers are living in fear of criminality when their peers, their managers and their workplaces are criminalized. That has impacts on their ability to report.

Sex workers also, in many cases, are third parties themselves. Daphne talked about working in collectives and working with other people who provide mutual support and services to one another, and they are caught under that net of criminality. In the research I did, we talked to sex workers who've been charged under third party offences—the material benefit or the advertising or the procuring ones—because they were providing that service to another sex worker. They're absolutely still criminalized under the new laws.

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

I know the work your organization has done in the fight against HIV. I'd like to give you a chance to make the connection here—which I think a lot of people here haven't made—as to how this bill actually has a negative impact on the fight against HIV.