Thirdly, at Maggie's, where many of our service users struggle already to meet their material needs, the pandemic and the exclusion from the Canadian emergency response benefit put them at even further disadvantage. Due to the lack of government response, we took aid into our own hands and established a mutual aid fund, which received donations totalling over $100,000 that we disbursed to sex workers across the industry who are now struggling to provide for their very basic needs.
While Maggie's has received international praise for establishing one of the biggest mutual aid funds in North America, we continually remind the public that we should never have needed to do this. The creation of a mutual aid fund was the last resort to the government failing vulnerable communities, despite already having heard from countless advocacy groups, including sex workers themselves—receiving thousands of pages of empirical evidence across social service and legal fields—that decriminalization is the first step to an equitable existence for sex workers, and that sex workers are labourers who are entitled to access government support and labour protections just as any other worker.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly, when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, numerous other community services raised barriers and began to serve fewer people. Meal programs closed, shelters were overcapacity and many organizations stopped taking new referrals. Almost all community services moved from in-person conversations to virtual or telephone conversations with clients.
We saw an explosion of need in our community. In the sex work community, there is newly created job insecurity. Our community is being further stigmatized due to the government's handling of the pandemic, and without evidence, ordering the closing of safer spaces to work, such as adult entertainment facilities.