Evidence of meeting #9 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.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Cooper often asks questions that I think are good questions, even though we are often looking for different answers.
I want to go back to his question about the official stats, and I want to go to our actual experts who have appeared as expert witnesses in court cases, Dr. Krüsi and Dr. Goldenberg.
What is your comment on the argument that the stats showed reductions after PCEPA?
Assistant Professor, Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity
I would agree with the statement that was made around concern around the bias and the folks who are represented in those numbers. As was previously mentioned, our study involved 10 years of evidence and is a community-based study. We have sex workers on our team, sex workers collecting data, sex workers informing all aspects of the project and community advisory activities. We worked really hard with the community to make sure that the research was representative of the experiences of the diversity of sex workers who operate across different types of venues in metro Vancouver.
Our statistics show a very different trend from what was presented by Statistics Canada. I would urge the committee to look at both, and in particular consider the rigour of our evidence, that it is peer-reviewed and the Statistics Canada research is not, to the best of my knowledge. These are studies that have been published in some of the most prestigious medical journals. Expert reviewers from all around the world look at the evidence and ensure it is rigorous. We feel very confident in the quality of our data and who it represents.
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity
I just want to add that Statistics Canada does not capture people who do not report violence. Our data does capture that, and I think that is very important.
We found that only 26% of sex workers who experienced violence reported it under PCEPA. From qualitative research, we know the reasons for that. It is because of the continued criminalization. Sex workers are worried, even mentally, with their safety in mind. They're worried to report violence to police because they're worried that their reports will be used later on against them in enforcement efforts. In the context of continued structural stigma, sex workers feel that their violence reporting is not being taken seriously and that, because of the assumption that sex work is inherently dangerous, it's getting minimized.
In the context of immigration concerns, it's a huge barrier for people who have unstable immigration status to go forward and report violence.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you, Ms. Krüsi.
I want to thank all the panellists for an excellent panel. You were very clear and precise. I think the questions brought out a lot of great answers.
You can probably disconnect, or the clerk will have you disconnect, and the next panel will come on.
Juris Doctor, Author and Researcher, As an Individual
Can we stay to watch?
Juris Doctor, Author and Researcher, As an Individual
I'll just mute myself and watch. Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
On the next panel, we have Naomi Sayers, a lawyer, as an individual. We also have Kelsey Smith, a neuroscience and mental health student at Carleton University. We have Cherry Smiley from Women's Studies Online.
Each of you will have five minutes. As you'll notice, I will give you a cue card when you have 30 seconds left, and then questions will occur after.
We will try to end this at about 2:35 eastern standard time for some housekeeping.
We'll go over to you, Ms. Naomi Sayers, please.
Naomi Sayers Lawyer, As an Individual
Thank you, Mr. Chair and committee, for inviting me here today.
I'll keep it to five minutes. I have condensed speaking notes. I did send my brief Wednesday evening. I'll be highlighting some key points for everyone today.
When I refer to some terms here today, I simply mean them in their legal sense as opposed to in a stigmatizing way.
Conservative
Rob Moore Conservative Fundy Royal, NB
Mr. Chair, I have a concern. We have a panel here, a full panel, and we have one-hour sessions. I heard you mention 35 minutes, which would cut short what we're able to hear from these panellists.
People are taking the time to be on this panel. The expectation we had, when the notice went out, was that we would have one hour with this panel. Thirty-five minutes aren't going to cut it when you look at the discussion we just had on the last panel. I would like to hear from these witnesses in a fulsome way.
I don't mean to cut into anyone's time, but I just heard you say 35 minutes when we're scheduled for an hour.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Mr. Moore, I brought this up at the beginning of the session. There's some housekeeping afterward.
I can push it and stretch it. If our colleagues are willing to stay on a few minutes longer, maybe I can take this to 2:45 p.m., and then we could do the housekeeping in the last 15-20 minutes. I don't expect it to be long. I brought it up at the beginning. You may not have been on the—
Conservative
Rob Moore Conservative Fundy Royal, NB
Mr. Chair, we don't have any committee business scheduled, and housekeeping usually takes maybe five minutes.
We're here today to hear from witnesses. We didn't have any housekeeping scheduled. I'd like to hear from witnesses. If you can minimize, hopefully, whatever housekeeping there is so it wouldn't take more than three or four minutes, we can maximize our witness time.
Liberal
Lawyer, As an Individual
Thank you.
I had 41 seconds on my clock.
I think it's important to acknowledge we're all here today because we all agree that protecting victims and survivors of violence is important. It is very clear, however, that we disagree on the best route to take in terms of ending violence against women and girls, particularly indigenous women and girls.
I think it is also important to recognize, whether we are talking about the New Zealand model or the Nordic model, that we are talking about the regulation of prostitution. PCEPA also assumes to target prostitution or full-service sex work. While the DOJ attempts to target other kinds of sex work, we have heard very little about the impact of PCEPA on other kinds of sex work, like stripping.
I speak today from lived experience, having worked in various parts of Canada and in some states. I have experience as an escort in an agency, as an independent and as a stripper.
I think a personal story is helpful to understand my experiences as a sex worker.
When I first started speaking out about my experiences as a sex worker, I took a lot of risk in doing so. The first risk is that now I'm out forever as someone who has done sex work. There is no taking that back.
The second risk is that oftentimes people have used my sex work experiences to silence me. I have had semi-nude and nude photos and my sex-working identity linked to my real identity by those who do not agree with me. This is often called being outed or the outing of the sex worker. The risks are very real. They are a loss of privacy, safety and security. I live in fear today that these images can and will be used against me to further target my privacy, safety and security.
When this outing happened, I called the police. I had little to no recourse and no charges were laid. The police did not know how handle this complaint, nor did they have any knowledge about the harms it had caused me. I felt very alone and isolated.
Today, I am a lawyer. I contrast that with a recent experience I had as a lawyer.
I was in the middle of a bail hearing. In that bail hearing I received an email from an individual who had been saving my selfies—there was nothing sexual about them—over the course of about two years. They sent them to me, along with a very sexually explicit email. I felt violated. I continued to do my job as a defence lawyer, but by the end of the hearing I sat around near the end of court waiting for a guard to appear. I asked if I could speak to him. We went to the room to discuss privately and I immediately broke down crying. I showed him the email and he took it very seriously. He took detailed notes and let me know that the police would follow up with me. They did. I had to hire my own investigator. I hired one who works with sex workers because I had a sense this might be a former client. We couldn't find any other identifying information other than that the person likely lived in the States.
The only difference between those two events is that I was a lawyer. Suddenly resources were whipped up and I was believed, with all the harms affirmed and acknowledged.
I share this story to contrast how, for those who may identify as a current or former sex worker, the idea of justice is very much out of reach. PCEPA also contributes to this.
With this being said, I'd like to draw your attention to the part of my brief under the heading of “Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis“. I think similar discussions are happening here today about data and who benefits and who doesn't benefit, but Bedford was clear that the analysis into charter infringement does not consider how many people are saved by a likely charter non-compliant bill or law. How much a population benefits is of no concern to the charter analysis, nor how well a law achieves its objectives.
It seems from the comments from the government branch tasked with proposing and drafting this legislative response to Bedford...at all material times knew or ought to have known that the legislation was or is not compliant with the spirit and intent of Bedford. It also appears that this committee is imputing that this data and ancillary benefits matter to how well PCEPA achieves its objectives and how much a population benefits. Bedford made it clear that this does not matter in a section 7 charter analysis.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you, Ms. Sayers.
Next, we have Ms. Kelsey Smith from Carleton University.
Kelsey Smith Neuroscience and Mental Health Student, Carleton University, As an Individual
Thank you for having me today. I'm here to talk to you about my lived experience with human trafficking.
I was born to teenage parents, and growing up with parents who are still growing up themselves comes with its own form of challenges. Up until my parents divorced, I was a good student who, for the most part, kept out of trouble. Once my parents split, the tides changed. I went into grade 4 at a new school with a teacher who made a point to pick on me. I was also now competing for my parents' attention with their dating lives.
I ended up living with my mother and stepfather, and it didn't seem to matter what I did; I was always labelled as wrong and a liar. The more I acted out, the less anyone seemed to care. After some time, I got what I wanted and I moved in with my father, but he had already moved on to have more children and a new marriage. My rebellious pattern of behaviour was not welcome in his home.
After some time, I moved in with my grandmother and went to a new high school in the city. In that first week of high school, I met a group of girls. At the beginning, I was mocked for being the least experienced in the group. I started experimenting with drugs, and about a week into school, I was already skipping all of my classes. My new-found friends would brag about their initiation into gangs. They introduced me to drugs, smoking and alcohol abuse. We weren't just partying on weekends; it was every day.
One fall day, it all came to a screeching halt. I'll never forget the first time I was trafficked. Some of my friends picked me up at my house on a Saturday morning. Immediately after, I threw up and I was met with mockery. As time went on, I accepted my new fate and one day, when I was sitting with a few girls, there were a bunch of drugs and a gun on the table in front of me. One of the girls picked up the gun and pointed it at my head and asked if I thought anybody would care if I died, because now I was just a prostitute.
That Christmas, I woke up in a drug house to people banging on the door looking for their fix. The next few months were a blur. I was addicted to drugs and constantly on the move. The last weekend I was trafficked, I was beaten pretty badly, but I was put back to work. Not one person cared that I had two black eyes and a broken nose, or that my lips were so swollen and bruised that I couldn't close my mouth. I was no longer seen as a person. I was just a shell.
The next time I went home to get cleaned up, there were police officers and a social worker waiting to take me to a group home. At that moment, I didn't feel like I was being saved. I was terrified. I was going out of the city and only the staff knew my history. I got a fresh start, with rules, stability and people who cared about me, and then I thrived.
Years later, I learned that not only the group home, but my family was told that I was involved in prostitution. I was groomed to believe that I was making a choice at 14 years old. There was no justice. I didn't get to take action with the people who sold me or the people who bought me. I wasn't really given an option and I didn't feel protected.
I am one of the lucky ones who can stand before you now and tell you that my life couldn't be more different. I survived. It took me years to reconcile the fact that I was trafficked. Those years of self-discovery were wrapped in trauma, but I found my worth and I am now a mother of two beautiful daughters. As much as it is my job to fiercely protect them, I wonder whose job it is to protect the girls like me, who were lost without anyone to advocate for them.
Our lives our valuable. I very strongly feel like none of us would put our money in the bank without a security system, so why would you allow our lives to be stolen from us without repercussions?
I guess I didn't fill my five minutes.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Thank you, Ms. Smith.
Next is Ms. Smiley from Women's Studies Online, for five minutes.
Cherry Smiley Women’s Studies Online
I'm going to make three points. The first point is about the construction of knowledge. The second is about the source of harm in prostitution. The third is what I learned from doing research for three months in New Zealand.
Our default way of thinking about the world is patriarchal. Unless we've sought out feminist theories and are constantly working to unlearn the lies we've been taught, this is the frame we use to understand the world. This means that the majority of you use a patriarchal framework to understand prostitution.
Prior to 1983, men in Canada could rape their wives without penalty, because Canada had decided that men—husbands—were entitled to sex acts and that women—wives—were obligated to provide those sex acts. Rape in marriage was criminalized because feminists fought for it to be. Feminists knew that men weren't entitled to sex acts and that women weren't obligated to provide those sex acts.
I'm going to show you a little thing here. Here's one way to think about social issues. At the base, we have foundational values and beliefs. These foundational values influence our vision and what strategies we use to make change. If we look at an example of prostitution versus sex work, we can see the very different—
Bloc
Rhéal Fortin Bloc Rivière-du-Nord, QC
A point of order, Mr. Chair.
I want to hear from the witness, and I'm quite happy with her presentation, but I would like it to be noted that the document she's referring to is not translated into French. According to our rules of procedure, we should have a version in both official languages, but I understand that we do not.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
Correct. We do not, Mr. Fortin. You are right. But she is going along with it, and I think translation is coming—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Randeep Sarai
If you could submit that slide, Ms. Smiley, we could have that translated.