Thank you, Elene.
My name is Sandra Ka Hon Chu. I'm co-executive director of the HIV Legal Network.
I have two main points to add about Bill S-224. First, the removal of the threat to safety requirement will capture cases where no exploitation exists. Proponents of this bill describe difficulties obtaining direct evidence from a potential complainant, but the test today is already an objective one and does not require a complainant's testimony. Removing this requirement merely gives more power to police and prosecutors to define, and often wrongly define, violence and exploitation for communities. In the case of sex work, violence and exploitation are assumed. For example, Professor Roots has documented how police pressure sex workers to take on the trafficking victim label despite their rejection of this label. Without the threat to safety requirement, determinations of coercion or exploitation are made through biased perspectives of sex work.
Second, as Elene described, the amendments risk capturing all third parties in sex work, including those who provide supportive services to sex workers. Butterfly and the HIV Legal Network have been consistently told by law enforcement that any third party involvement of sex workers suggests exploitation that warrants investigation. However, researchers have documented how police and prosecutors insist that pimping is a major problem, focusing their attention on young, poor, racialized men, and particularly Black men, despite sex workers' more nuanced accounts of third parties as protectors and intimate partners. As Elene mentioned, many sex workers also take on third party roles. Migrant, Asian and other racialized communities rely on family members and community for work support, but they are often swept up in anti-trafficking efforts.
Butterfly members have been charged with third party sex work offences for merely assisting with client communication, scheduling, advertising and screening. While the punishments for third party sex work conviction are already severe, third parties convicted of human trafficking are subject to a four-year mandatory minimum sentence, which could result in the removal of status and deportation for those who are not Canadian citizens.
If you truly wish to support people at risk of exploitation and abuse, you must listen to sex workers and reject Bill S-224 in its entirety; fully decriminalize sex work by removing all sex work-specific criminal offences; remove immigration regulations that prohibit migrants from working in sex work; stop surveillance, raids, detention and deportation of sex workers; support non-carceral forms of safety, such as decent work, health care and housing for all; and invest in grassroots communities so that they can support each other.
Thank you.