Certainly research in Canada and around the world and sex worker advocacy agencies across Canada are expressing considerable concerns about how the bill is likely to drive sex work underground.
I spoke about how just one very small factor, which is the few unethical police officers in every region, can undermine the capacity to even implement such a bill because they themselves are undermining the relationship between sex workers and police.
The confusion around what the restrictions are on sex workers is huge, so for people who are engaged in that kind of work to support themselves, I think we've created a very complex situation for them to try to navigate.
Certainly when we look at a country like New Zealand we see that when there is consultation with the marginalized women affected by a certain law, the law that is created then tends to decrease violence against that group. In over 10 years in New Zealand we've seen how that kind of consultation with peer-to-peer groups, as well as with business and government, has exponentially decreased violence there and increased reporting of things like exploitation, human trafficking, exploitation of youth, and that kind of thing.
Here, with the law in place, people are going to be more reluctant to go to police, which means that when sex workers witness human trafficking or exploitation of youth, where they were already reluctant to go to police under the previous law, they're going to be even more reluctant because they will be uncertain about what the implications are for themselves. So I think that's certainly a concern.
I know it was well intentioned.