Justice Committee on March 4th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

You have one minute.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Really quickly, many of our witnesses so far have been describing, number one, that PCEPA is not enforced or in place equally across the country and in various provinces it's being applied differently.

I'll ask the Peers Victoria Resources Society, but, if there's time, someone else can jump in.

Could you give some feedback on the relationship between yourselves, those that you're serving and local law authorities, the police? Do you have any recommendations on how those relationships could be improved?

[Sophia Ciavarella]

I could speak to that.

We have a unique working relationship with the Victoria Police Department that's very collaborative. They've agreed not to enforce the PCEP Act in our community, which allows for a lot of safety for our sex workers. We have a police liaison program which allows sex workers to safely interact with a police member who knows the community and understands stigma, and they're reporting violence instead of just going to dispatch and getting whatever random officer there is.

We would highly recommend a liaison officer for all communities.

[Rob Moore, Conservative, Fundy Royal, NB]

Thank you for that suggestion.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Mr. Moore.

Next we'll go to Ms. Dhillon for six minutes.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start with Ms. Clamen.

You spoke a bit about New Zealand in your opening statement. I'm very curious to know if reporting rates for human trafficking have gone up in New Zealand. We often say that if sex workers weren't afraid of being arrested they would be more likely to report trafficking when they see it. I just was wondering if you had a bit of knowledge about the situation in New Zealand, since you brought it up in your testimony.

[Jenn Clamen]

I can't speak specifically to the TIP report that has come out of New Zealand most recently and how it's being connected with trafficking, but I can say that since decriminalization was implemented in New Zealand in 2003, sex workers have a lot more freedom to report violence in the workplace and to have some kind of recourse when they experience violence.

We've heard stories, for example, of sex workers who have been able to officially, through courts or tribunals, report sexual harassment from people working in their workplace or from bosses. I remember one news piece of a sex worker who was successful in that case. We also know sex workers are more able to work together in public spaces, which is really important.

The interesting thing about New Zealand is there are a ton of studies, which I submitted to the Library of Parliament so you can read them if you're interested, and a lot of those studies actually demonstrate how much more safe sex workers are able to feel and how many more safety measures they're able to implement.

It's important to look to those studies. It's not a perfect model by any means, predominantly because migrant workers are still criminalized and that allows for a lot of anti-trafficking rhetoric and policy and might impact on the way those trafficking numbers look in a TIP report, because migrant sex workers are still not able. The immigration laws are not necessarily changed.

In Canada, what we asked for, along with the removal of sex work from criminal laws, is the removal of the IRPR regulation that doesn't allow migrant sex workers to work in the sex industry.

There's a ton of research, peer-reviewed research, that I'd be very happy to send your way. As I said, I have submitted them to the Library of Parliament and hopefully they will be considered for the report you produce.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Yes, please, if you can, submit it to the committee.

I have a follow-up question.

Can you please go into a bit more detail about how decriminalization or legalization would allow sex workers to ensure they have the protection of law enforcement and prevent trafficking as well as other crimes?

[Jenn Clamen]

Sure. We would most definitely not say that legalization would do that. A legalized industry we can, in a very loose way, just for comprehension, compare it to the way marijuana was legalized in Canada, where the government actually controls the where, how and when it can happen, which is most definitely not a decriminalized system.

In a decriminalized system, sex workers would not have the threat of law enforcement, CBSA or other industries, in their face all the time. We can't take for granted that law is an instruction to law enforcement and police officers and an invitation to be in the lives of sex workers all the time, whether they're claiming it's for protection or claiming it's for other reasons. They're invited in, and it's a non-invitation. Sex workers aren't welcoming police into their lives.

The removal of that makes a really big difference around how sex workers can organize their work. The member groups in our alliance, as you just heard both from Maggie's and Peers, have been speaking very eloquently to the safety mechanisms that sex workers can put in place without having to look behind their backs all the time. That's not even to speak of all the safety mechanisms that clients, who are criminalized in every context at every moment, can put into place.

Decriminalization really allows there to be a focus on work. When there are instances of exploitation and violence that exist, we can recognize those for what they are. But when you paint the entire industry as violent, you're not able to actually address the violence that occurs because everything is violent all the time, and so that goes unnoticed.

In our view and our experience, what this would mean is that when there are instances of something that would meet the threshold of human trafficking or that meets the threshold of other crimes against sex workers, other violence against sex workers, that would be more easily detectable, but also sex workers might eventually have more confidence in reporting to law enforcement. That relationship is historically filled with strife, mistrust and abuse. That relationship takes time, and police in the way they apply the laws are going to need to learn how to create those relationships. In a decriminalized industry, there's at least the possibility for sex workers who want to access those systems to consider doing so.

Does that answer your question?

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

Yes, it does.

Very quickly, you mentioned something in your opening statement. You said that PCEPA is not feminist.

[Jenn Clamen]

Yes.

[Anju Dhillon, Liberal, Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle, QC]

The thing is that sex workers are not just necessarily just women. They are men as well, the LGBTQ community and non-binary. We can't limit the terminology to just feminism.

[Jenn Clamen]

Our feminism isn't necessarily limited only to people who identify as women or.... When we talk about feminism, at least as a sex worker rights movement, we're talking about substantive equality, which goes beyond and across genders.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Dhillon. You're out of time.

Now we'll go to Mr. Fortin for six minutes.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to continue in the same vein and ask Ms. Clamen a question.

Ms. Clamen, I would like you to tell me about the impact on sex workers of the lockdowns that have taken place over the past two years due to the pandemic. Has Bill C‑36 had any influence on the impact of the pandemic or not? How could you summarize the situation for me?

[Jenn Clamen]

It's hard to briefly summarize, but I'll do my best.

Most definitely, sex workers, like most people, were impacted by COVID. If you consider that people were already living quite a marginalized and surveilled existence, that was heightened in the context of COVID. What that meant for a lot of sex workers, because massage parlours were shut down and strip clubs were shut down, was that a lot of them were out of work. Some—not all, and definitely not most—were able to move into online work. That kind of work is not accessible to a lot of sex workers, because you have to have regular connections or access to technology.

Most sex workers were not able to access the financial aid, the CERB. Our alliance spent a lot of time advocating for wages—we contacted Maryam Monsef in particular—to provide financial supports for sex workers, most of whom are living in poverty. That was a really difficult thing to do. A lot of sex worker groups—Maggie's was fantastic at this, and Jenny can speak to it—did excellent mutual aid efforts because, at the end of the day, the government was not very helpful to sex workers living in a COVID context. That financial aid was not available to anybody making their money from criminalized means.

This committee really needs to think beyond this notion of arrest and the harms of PCEPA as arrest, because it goes beyond that. If you think about criminalization as really impacting people's ability to access more mainstream supports or financial supports from the government.... It's a really important thing that you all need to consider, the lack of access that sex workers have to financial supports, as well as medical, legal and social supports because of criminalization.

That's a tiny picture of that, if it helps a bit.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

You say that, because of the pandemic and the lockdowns, a lot of the sex workers were left without jobs, without income. These people were probably not eligible for CERB and any programs that may have been set up to financially assist people who were losing income. As a result, these people suffered an immediate and severe loss of income.

Did this have the consequence of making some clients or behaviours acceptable that would normally have been refused? Did it have that impact on the “basket of services?” I don't know if the use of that term is acceptable. I'd like to hear from you about that impact.

[Jenn Clamen]

Of course, sex workers changed the kinds of services that were offered. Sex workers are very adaptable. The difference with COVID as opposed to any other kind of situation where sex workers are stigmatized and not able to access health and safety supports is that sex workers were also scared of COVID the same way that a lot of other people were. In this context, sex workers—quote, unquote—behaved or proceeded with different cautions as well.

Sex workers are very savvy. People who need money will find ways to make money. Sex workers changed the kinds of services they offered. I saw some people offering types of video services. I saw one very savvy sex worker—but this was just one sex worker out of over 10,000 who work across Canada—offer a two-week quarantine service to spend that much time with a client. I don't know....

Some people only saw their regulars, but a lot of clients were, in the context of COVID, not necessarily as eager because things can be traced back.

Sex work is transient. Some sex workers also had other types of work. Often, sex workers do various types of work. That was something else that sex workers did.

I wouldn't argue that sex workers were offering services they wouldn't necessarily normally offer in the context of COVID, because sex workers' bodies are their working tool. It's really important that sex workers take care of them. Obviously, when in financial distress, sex workers, during COVID or not, might offer services that they wouldn't otherwise offer. That's similar to how some people take other jobs that they wouldn't necessarily when they're not in financial distress.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

In summary, Ms. Clamen, since we don't have much time left...

[Jenn Clamen]

I understand.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

... I would like you to answer a question in a few words.

In your opinion, should Bill C-36, or the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, be abolished in order to legalize prostitution, or should it be retained and improved to better protect sex workers?

[Jenn Clamen]

Nothing in PCEPA is protecting sex workers. I need to get that message across very clearly. It particularly needs to be abolished in its entirety because the preamble is based on fiction. It's based on a lie that sex work is exploitative. That is not supported in any empirical evidence, nor has it been supported by the sex workers who have come to this committee who represent thousands of sex workers.

We would argue that there doesn't need to be specific sex work provisions in order to protect sex workers or address violence against sex workers. A plethora of laws already exists in the Criminal Code that can do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

Thank you, Ms. Clamen and thank you, Mr. Fortin.

[Rhéal Fortin, Bloc, Rivière-du-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Randeep Sarai]

We'll go over to you, Mr. Garrison, for six minutes.