Thank you for the invitation to present today. I'm here on behalf of Asian Women for Equality. Members of our group have lived experience of being in prostitution, and our members also have many years of working on the front lines of supporting women.
One of our goals is to advance sex, race and economic equality for women in Canada. These rights are promised to us by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This promise is plainly referenced in the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. These rights are especially important to women who are racialized and colonized.
The sex industry is not a homogeneous group. There are the exploiters and there are the exploited. The exploiter side is composed of sex buyers, pimps and the the media platforms that support the sex buyers and pimps to connect with each other. These people are overwhelmingly men, and they have a vested, parasitic interest in growing prostitution as an industry. For these people, the sex industry is safe, and it's lucrative.
Then we have the exploited. The vast majority of women who are in prostitution would leave if they had any other way to support themselves and their families. Asian-themed massage parlours operate in every major Canadian town. The women in these venues are tremendously vulnerable to rape and other violence from sex buyers and pimps. In fact, it is their job to give men a racist sexual experience.
Now I am going to tell you why we think the act is valuable.
We support the act. The act is sophisticated. It recognizes the differences between the exploiters and the exploited, and it treats them differently. The exploiters are criminalized, and the exploited are not. The act is the only law that targets the sex buyer. You might hear opinions that a human trafficking law is enough, but that law focuses on only the traffickers. A human trafficking law gives a free pass to the man who buys sex from a trafficked woman. The advertising platforms that helped him find her also get a free pass. The act is valuable because it criminalizes the advertising of prostitution. It empowers police to interrupt the Internet platforms that package, brand and market prostitution. These platforms are crucial to growing the customer base for the sex industry and for normalizing sex buying. It is a billion-dollar industry to make racism and inequality sexy.
I'm going to move on to our recommendations.
We recommend striking section 213 of the Criminal Code from the act. It criminalizes women if they are prostituted close to a school, a playground or a daycare. We argued against this section in 2014, and we're telling you again: Keep your focus on the exploiters, and stop punishing women for being exploited in public view.
Expunge the criminal records of women charged or convicted of prostitution under the old laws. Charging them is a mistake that leaves women permanently criminalized.
We want you to show political will and leadership to enforce the law. When our justice system interferes with prostitution, it also disrupts human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering and other organized crime. We're not a law-and-order organization, but we still want you to make Canada less welcoming to organized crime, whether it be by Asian, European or homegrown criminal gangs.
We advise granting permanent resident status to trafficked women. Doing so will diminish the power that pimps and traffickers have over women, because women will have the same legal protections and entitlements that are enjoyed by the exploiters.
A weakness of the act is that it tries to address inequality through criminal law. There needs to be a bigger-picture approach for women to successfully exit prostitution and also to avoid recruitment altogether. We recommend making the social safety net stronger and doing this by providing everyone with a guaranteed livable income, otherwise known as a basic income. Having this would make a life-changing difference for millions of women.
The act is the only tool that allows Canada to stop sex buyers. It is one of the only tools that allow police to interfere with sex trafficking. It is the only tool we have to prevent Internet platforms from exponentially increasing the number of men who are pimps and sex buyers. If you strike down this act or repeal this act, pimps and sex buyers will have free rein to exploit and traffic.
Striking down this act will intensify the racism and sexism that's directed at all women, because they are inherent to prostitution, and this will move us further away from the equality women are promised by the charter.