Evidence of meeting #7 for Justice and Human Rights in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was prostitution.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Co-coordinator, Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Hopefully, you'll be able to finish it in some of the questions.
Next, from Defend Dignity, we have Glendyne Gerrard, for five minutes, please.
Glendyne Gerrard Director, Defend Dignity
Thank you.
I'm Glendyne Gerrard, the co-founder and director of Defend Dignity, a national organization that works to end all forms of sexual exploitation in Canada.
I'm coming to you from the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Thank you for the privilege to speak to you today.
Defend Dignity is strongly supportive of PCEPA and its objectives. We agree that denouncing and prohibiting the demand for prostitution, and denouncing and prohibiting the profiting from another's exploitation by third parties, are needed in order to deter prostitution and stop its harms.
As part of our work, we have educated over 10,000 people across Canada about sexual exploitation. We remind them that prostitution cannot exist without buyers. We champion gender equality and look for ways to dismantle patriarchal attitudes that fuel the demand to buy sex.
We are also researching the attitudes of sex buyers, as found on a Canadian online escort review board, to better understand the men who buy. These boards are online forums where sex buyers review and rate those they purchase for sex.
Our analysis of comments from a Canadian sex buyers review board has found that the most commonly searched-for term is “young”. Buyers prefer young sellers. One reviewer stated, “More money doesn't mean more services, that’s just the price of admission to enter a young hot girl’s booty.”
The second most searched term is in reference to a woman's body size. Some reviewers score women's body parts out of 10.
Third, racism and racist stereotypes are rampant on the review board. Discussing the pictures on one sellers website, one buyer said, “I wonder when I don’t get a bum shot too, particularly for an ebony lady.”
Lastly, transwomen experience greater violence. In a discussion about prostituted transwomen, one buyer said, “I think we all have the right to choose who we are with sexually. Not disclosing, especially in advertisement, is deception in my opinion and can lead to dangerous situations. I don’t condone violence, but it is just a reality.”
Our organization also has a group of men who respond to online ads for sex and engage with buyers at the point of purchase, giving them information on the potential harms of their decision to purchase, and sexual addiction resources should they want those.
Our research findings and our engagement with sex buyers revealed that their attitudes and actions can be harmful. Male sex buyers believe that men are entitled to paid sexual access to primarily women’s bodies, and this payment entitles them to do what they want. Our laws are a teacher, helping to shape our culture. The purchasing offence must be kept in place to deter these harmful attitudes and behaviours.
Defend Dignity also provides financial aid through our support fund to individuals in the sex industry, or those who are seeking to leave it. To date, the fund has had 291 applicants, and almost $200,000 has been provided in funding. Common needs are debt repayment, as pimps and traffickers often rack up exorbitant credit card or cellphone debt; trauma counselling; housing; dental and educational needs. Applications come from across Canada through 80 service providers, law enforcement, and support agencies.
The applicants are representative of the large number of individuals in the sex industry who are there not by choice, and who need the protection of this legislation. They are a key reason why we support PCEPA. We owe them much thanks for the information gleaned from their intake forms, and the letters they included with their applications.
You have a brief by Mikhaela Gray, who conducted an analysis of the data from the 2021 spring submissions to our fund. Her brief provides a summary of her findings. There were 53 applications analyzed, with the goal of better understanding the diverse experiences of individuals impacted by the sex industry. This analysis has been peer-reviewed and is about to be published in an academic journal.
I want to highlight two significant findings from this research. The 53 applicants described their experience in diverse ways, such as prostitution, escorting, survival sex, and trafficking. Fully 96% of the women reported experiencing third party involvement or trafficking at some point during their time in the industry, and 36% experienced third party involvement from gangs or organized crime.
Regardless of how an individual described their involvement in the industry, there was fluidity of choice, exploitation, and coercion expressed in all of their experiences. For example, nine women described their experience as independent, yet six of those also said that a trafficker was involved at some point. Of the 34 who said they were in prostitution, 26 also said they were trafficked.
The research found that individuals may self-identify their experience in different ways. Their involvement cannot be adequately conveyed in single-use terminology. Many described how boundaries were crossed. They were continually put in situations that they did not desire to engage in.
Director, Defend Dignity
Lastly, of the 19 who disclosed their age when they entered the sex industry, 12 were minors. One was just two years old when she was first sold for sex.
The legislation is well named when it speaks of protecting our communities and our children. Based on the findings of this research, we urge you to uphold all provisions related to third party involvement.
Director, Defend Dignity
These laws are essential. Thank you for keeping them in place.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you.
We will begin our first round with Mr. Morrison.
You have six minutes, please.
Conservative
Rob Morrison Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses this afternoon.
I'll start with you, Ms. Heinz. I want to really thank you for coming today. It's so important for the committee to hear from someone with your background, having lived the life that you did. I feel so sorry for what happened.
I guess what I would like to hear is how you could see PCEPA improved so that maybe we would be able to help more individuals not be brought into the sex trade. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little bit, especially from your background.
As an Individual
Thank you so much for that question.
I really want to highlight what Glendyne said, that it is just part of the culture. It is part of our patriarchal culture here, especially in Canada. We view ourselves as this very progressive nation, and in many ways we are, but we are falling short tremendously on gender equality and sex-based equality.
I really think the law is sound. I think the only area that really needs some tweaking, perhaps, is section 213. We know that our most vulnerable sex sellers who are on the streets, who are dealing with complex health issues, untreated mental health, intergenerational trauma and addiction, are the ones who are being targeted by that provision of PCEPA.
I really feel...and, please, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't say exactly what the answer is, but I can say that there is harm happening to women. In that regard, we are still targeting them in some facet. We need to completely remove all of the barriers they face. That includes expunging all records of any historical or current convictions that have been placed upon sex sellers, and also just highlighting where the harm is coming from. Again, that is from the culture and from patriarchy within our masculinity.
I really think we have wonderful men in Canada who are doing great things, but we have a social rot here as well that is taking over. We're seeing it heavily. Sex work ideology is infiltrating every single facet of Canadian women's lives. We can't walk down the street without being procured for sex. I'm jogging in my neighbourhood, with my children in a stroller, and men are pulling up and harassing me. At times I'm even with my husband. It's no holds barred.
It just feels like we're going to be thrown to the wolves and it's going to be open season on us. We really have to work on changing the narrative. Women deserve better than to be purchasable commodities for sexual consumption.
Conservative
Rob Morrison Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you.
What would you say to people who are saying that we should strike down PCEPA and not have it all? What would you say to those people?
As an Individual
I think it's a very short-sighted vision. When we look at it from a very, very micro lens, to some people it might make sense: “She says she wants to sell sex, and who are we to infringe upon personal freedoms?” But we need to start looking at the collective good, and especially the collective good of womanhood here in Canada. Again, we know that many of us are being subjugated to male depravity, essentially.
It's very, very hard. It's very defeating. I think we need to take the zoom-out perspective and recognize the activity for what it is, which is coercive sexual access. It is not work. We have to look at where the lines between agency and submission exist. I really don't think many of us are operating with a lot of agency. I know I wasn't. Sure, I didn't have a gun put to my head. I didn't have a pimp or a trafficker. But poverty was my pimp. That's the case for so many women. Because we are so reliant on that, because materially we are subjugated in Canadian society, we lean with our abusers. We side with our abusers. We smile in the face of our abusers as they abuse us, because we need that money. It's not fair to do to women.
So yes, this is a huge problem. It is a multi-faceted problem. We need to tackle it from all different angles. There is so much work to be done. We can't just abandon women, put a green light on exploitation, and think that the problem will somehow solve itself. It won't.
Conservative
Rob Morrison Conservative Kootenay—Columbia, BC
Thank you so much.
Ms. Gerrard, I was really intrigued with your report on trying to get a better understanding of the sex trade and the different reasons and rationale. Your time was cut a little bit short. I know you were rushed a bit.
I wonder if you could expand a little bit on some of the research you're doing. It would be quite valuable.
Director, Defend Dignity
Thank you for the question.
The research we've undertaken is meant to help us understand the full impact of the sex industry. Some of the questions we framed our research around were these: What factors led an individual to engage in the sex industry? How does the involvement in the sex industry impact an individual's emotional, mental and physical well-being, regardless of how they personally identified their experience? What was the involvement of third parties? I highlighted that to you. Was it a friend, gangs or a trafficker? What was the third party involvement? What enables an individual to choose to exit the industry and/or stay out of the industry?
Those are things we looked at. I can certainly tell you that how the sex industry impacted individuals' physical, emotional and mental well-being was all negative. There are all sorts of quotes I could read you from our research from these 53 individuals. Not one of them was untouched physically, emotionally or mentally. Violence was rampant. All sorts of horrific things happened.
I hope that you caught the fact that out of those 53, the youngest person was only two years old. This individual was trafficked by her family, which is, sadly, a common occurrence.
There are just negative impacts that surfaced throughout this research.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you, Mr. Morrison.
Now we'll go to Madame Brière for six minutes.
Liberal
Élisabeth Brière Liberal Sherbrooke, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My question is for Ms. Matte.
With respect to the situation in New Zealand, the committee members here have heard that in the five years since decriminalization, the number of sex workers has not increased and these individuals' working conditions have improved. What more can you tell us about that?
Co-coordinator, Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle
The war of statistics is always a bit of a strange war. Our women contacts in New Zealand paint a very different picture.
We were talking about indigenous women earlier. In New Zealand, Maori women have even founded an organization to fight the choice their society made. These women say that prostitution has become more normalized in New Zealand society as a whole, including their community, and more and more young Maori girls are being brought into prostitution.
New Zealand is the only country in the world that has opted for full decriminalization. As I said earlier, the problem is that totally decriminalizing prostitution makes the harms and consequences of prostitution on women in general, and particularly indigenous and racialized women, completely invisible. Based on the data I have, international human trafficking has increased because more men in New Zealand want to buy sex and the country has seen a rise in sex tourism.
Montreal is already recognized as a hub when it comes to human trafficking for sexual exploitation, among other things. We can all imagine what it would become if Canada chose to fully decriminalize prostitution.
We urge you, I urge you, to stop looking at prostitution from the perspective of needing to improve the conditions for engaging in prostitution. You need to look at why prostitution exists, at the impact of prostitution on safety, dignity and equality for all women.
You currently have an enormous responsibility. You hold in your hands the opportunity to decide that the way we look at prostitution in Canada will be tied into equality for all women. What you've heard so far, especially the very powerful lobby that wants to succeed in totally decriminalizing prostitution in Canada, are the stories of those who are willing to talk about it. However, that means the majority of other women and girls who are brought into prostitution, primarily due to poverty, as Ms. Heinz said, are not being heard.
We have just emerged from a pandemic and we're not quite out of it yet. More Canadian women are living in poverty today than in 2020. Do we know to what extent poverty will push women into prostitution?
Clearly, we have a global industry that feeds on that poverty as well as social and economic inequalities, and they are just awaiting a decision like this. Some of you will unfortunately defend the idea that we need to do away with these laws because they stop people from purchasing sexual services. We stick our heads in the sand and believe we have no role to play in dismantling this patriarchal practice.
Liberal
Élisabeth Brière Liberal Sherbrooke, QC
Thank you.
On your website, you state that the Canadian law marked a paradigm shift by both condemning the purchase of sexual services and decriminalizing those working in prostitution.
Considering what you have just told me, how does that play out on the ground in concrete terms? What changes could be made to the law to strengthen it?
Co-coordinator, Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle
In our view, the most fundamental change that came with the 2014 legislation was that it made the purchasing offence a crime against the person. We therefore recognized that prostitution was not a transaction between consenting adults. That's the most important thing.
The problem right now is that we're only looking at one section of the Criminal Code. However, the purpose and inspiration for the Canadian law are rooted in a model that covers both preventing entry into prostitution and ensuring prevention among little boys. They don't come into the world thinking that they can buy sex from other people, they learn that. They aren't born aspiring to be pimps one day, they learn that. Unfortunately, right now, they are learning it in everything they see around them.
We spoke earlier about culture, the media and normalization in general. That's what we need to fight first and foremost. We can focus on the sections of the Criminal Code, but we believe that no one should be criminalized, no matter where they are, when they are in a sexually exploitative situation. That should be perfectly clear. The world's most successful models have not tolerated women being criminalized in any way. I say women because it's mostly women who are involved.
Co-coordinator, Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle
Other than that, we need...
Co-coordinator, Concertation des luttes contre l'exploitation sexuelle
...to ensure that they have access to prevention programs. If they get out of prostitution, they need access to support programs. You can't have one without the other.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Sorry, I have to interrupt. I hope you will be able to carry on in one of the future questions.
We have Mr. Fortin for six minutes.