Status of Women Committee on April 20th, 2023

[Sandra Wesley]

Thank you very much.

The point I was trying to make earlier is that, while I'm sure a lot of other witnesses have told you about this conflation of sex work and trafficking, there's also a conflation of all kinds of violence against sex workers and trafficking.

Trafficking should have a very narrow definition that involves forced labour and very specific things. What is happening now is that any kind of violence against sex workers and any kinds of bad working conditions now get put under this umbrella of “trafficking”.

We're not saying that violence doesn't exist. Actually, we are desperate for help to end that violence. We know that in every other industry when we have bad working conditions, we unionize. We see outside here in Ottawa the government workers who are unionized and who are fighting for their rights. As sex workers, we should have the same rights. If we don't have those basic rights as workers, then it just doesn't make any sense to start talking about when we might be trafficked or not trafficked, because we don't even have the legitimacy to work and to create good working conditions for ourselves.

What I'm interested in—and what I think a lot of people on this committee are interested in—is figuring out how to avoid more serial killers going after sex workers and how we avoid exploiters and abusers hearing the message that the government is sending them, and that is to say, “Sex workers are a good victim for you because you will not be caught, and you can be violent against sex workers because we also want to eradicate them. If you want to exploit someone's labour, you had better do it in the sex industry, because they don't have rights and they will be more afraid of the police than they are afraid of you.”

It's really important to stop conflating sex work and trafficking. It's also very important to stop conflating violence against sex workers and violence against women in general and trafficking.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much for clarifying that.

I heard you say in the last couple of minutes that trafficking should include forced labour in its definition. Of course, before coming into the study, that's what I believed trafficking was. If we were to change the definition and create legislation, or remove or fix the legislation that currently exists around trafficking, what are some specific recommendations you would make in terms of the actual definition that you would use? Then we'll get into the rights of sex workers in my next question.

[Sandra Wesley]

The first thing, obviously, would be to repeal immigration provisions that cause migrant sex workers, regardless of their type of work, to be deported. That's the very first and immediate thing that can be done. The other thing is really more than changing trafficking laws. It's removing sex work laws that are almost word for word the same laws that already position all sex work as de facto trafficking. That's what we need first, so we can have an intelligent conversation about trafficking.

The other thing is to stop trying to pass all of these new bills that try to make it so that you don't need a victim. The victim can be screaming in court, and there are cases like this that you can go read. You can read decisions on trafficking cases where the victim is crying and screaming in court, “I'm not trafficked. Leave me alone. I don't want to be here”, yet she's still forced to testify for days and days in very traumatic conditions. We need to give up this idea that we're so traumatized we need to be forced to be identified as victims. That's really the first step. Once we have a coherent definition of sex work as work, then I think the concept of trafficking becomes much more evident.

Finally, we need to stop giving a different standard to sex workers. Most workers work because we live under capitalism and you need to make money to pay your bills. No one is going into fast food restaurants asking employees if they really feel empowered, if it's a choice, if they're forced to go to work today. We assume that people have to work. We even have unemployment that says you have to take any decent work that you can find with no questions asked. We need to have the same standard for sex workers. We're not trafficked just because we hate our job. We can hate our job and still decide to go do it, because that's how we pay our bills, and there's a lot more nuance to that. Bringing it to the same rational conversation as other forms of work is really where solutions start to emerge and where a conversation on trafficking....

A final little point is that human trafficking is not the same thing as sex trafficking. Human trafficking is this concept of selling humans. Sex trafficking is selling sex, just like drug trafficking is selling drugs and gun trafficking is selling guns. Conflating those two terms and mixing them is one of the ways by which people conflate sex work and trafficking and create other language that is new and very concerning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 45 seconds left, Emmanuella.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, guys.

Thank you very much, Sandra.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

You have 45 seconds left.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I thought you said five.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

No, I said 45 seconds. Go for it.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I have a follow-up question, Sandra. You mentioned earlier that a big part of why we're doing the study is that women who are in sex work are often not treated well by people who are employing them, for example, and it's because there are no rights because it's not a recognized form of work by the government. I'm wondering if you have any specific recommendations on some of the basic things that should be included if ever there were to be a definition of sex work and what would be allowed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Emmanuella, you took 40 seconds to ask the question. I have about maybe 10 seconds, and then we can do some writing on that one as well.

[Sandra Wesley]

At sexworklawreform.com, we have 80 pages of law reform recommendations about sex work that go into great detail. We are currently in a constitutional challenge against the Government of Canada. All of that is available, and also our arguments and the government's arguments, which I encourage you to read to understand the violence of what it is to defend sex work criminalization.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

We're now going to move it over to Louise Chabot.

Louise, you have six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for their testimony.

Ms. Wesley, Stella has been a recognized organization for over 25 years now, I believe. I think the rights of sex workers are now acknowledged, as well as the fact that they need to be protected.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but on the trafficking of women, you were saying earlier that there are no young girls among sex workers.

That may be, but the International Labour Organization is increasingly looking at the issue of child victims of trafficking. A reported 34% of victims are children. When we talk about trafficking, we're not talking about children who have chosen to be sex workers. We're talking about trafficking. By the way, migrant children are very vulnerable to human trafficking or types of exploitation that can be sexual, labour or panhandling, as well as organ harvesting or being exploited to serve as soldiers.

Human trafficking is a reality. I understand there's a distinction between the sex trade and human trafficking, but do you acknowledge the existence of the things I've raised?

[Sandra Wesley]

Obviously, we're not saying that there isn't abusive behaviour that falls under some of the much narrower definitions of human trafficking. There are situations of extreme abuse that meet those definitions. These situations are very marginal and much rarer than the numbers often show. Moreover, it is quite difficult to trust the numbers, because the definitions are unclear. That includes data from sources that are not reliable.

On the other hand, what we do know, especially if you go back to the human trafficking situation, particularly in Canada, is that underage people are trading sexual services, and they're mostly doing so under very poor conditions. In our communities, we often see LGBT youth who've been expelled from their families, particularly young gay men who find themselves on the street and who have no choice, in order to survive, but to find someone who will pay the rent, someone with whom they will have sex. For many of these young people, the central problem in their lives is not the exchange of sexual services. They will be very vulnerable to abusers who will take advantage of the situation. Ultimately, it's because they don't have a place in society. They have nowhere to live. They don't trust the child welfare system. They have to hide from the police. That's where most of this violence comes from.

Most of the young girls who also end up in these situations come out of the youth centres or end up on the street in difficult situations. Young indigenous girls find themselves in the city without any support.

The exchange of sexual services is rarely the issue for these people. When we talk to them, they tell us that they want to be safe and survive and that the violence they've experienced is a problem. For them, the exchange of sexual services is a solution. They say it's no worse than going out and stealing a bike to survive or begging for money on the street corner than doing anything else when you're truly in trouble.

In my opinion, if you focus on these issues, that's where you'll find solutions as well. The police crackdown on the sex industry, including this endless search for minors, often ends up placing these young people in greater danger and can drive them into deeper hiding. This gives abusers a lot of leeway to target them with impunity.

The issue is not whether or not to deny violence or violence resulting from human trafficking. There are indeed young people who exchange sex in very bad conditions. Rather, it is about examining their reality and asking them what they need.

Police enforcement is not the answer.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

I understand that phenomenon. I was trying to say that human trafficking does indeed exist. I don't know the extent of it in Canada. It would be good to know and to understand the conditions.

Some would say that pandemic-related factors greatly influenced the situation, probably due to poverty among other things. Some of those involved in human trafficking are not sex workers to begin with. They are exploited for all kinds of purposes, including sexual violence during which they are victimized in that sense. It's not the person's choice to begin with. A person is trafficked for a specific purpose. That person ends up being a victim of trafficking.

[Sandra Wesley]

The reason it's possible for people to exploit other people in the sex industry is because the industry is criminalized. It has the same violent dynamics as many other types of violence, but it goes even further because the industry is criminalized.

I often give the example of a nurse who works in a hospital. She may be under the control of someone abusive who might take her entire paycheck, who beats her, who forces her to work overtime. Fairly quickly, she may turn to her co‑workers and ask for help because she is in a difficult situation. This situation will usually stop. She will go to the police and she will be taken seriously.

When you're in a criminalized industry, where everyone has to protect themselves from the police, where the driver, the receptionist, the client can all go to jail, it gives abusers the opportunity to be violent or take advantage of people. That's why it's impossible to separate human trafficking concerns from the decriminalization of sex work. Once decriminalization occurs, then there are levers to stop these types of exploitation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Awesome. Thank you so much.

We're now going to pass it over to Leah Gazan.

Leah, you have the floor for six minutes.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you so much, Chair.

I'm sorry for my laughter and cackle. I just thought that was funny. I actually don't know many people who go to a fast food restaurant and say that they just love their job flipping a burger at two in the morning, but anyway, I apologize for my cackle.

To start off, I want to go back to Madam Lam.

You spoke about needing an alternative to police. I'm actually trying to put forward an initiative for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls, which is a red dress alert. I'm saying that the oversight needs to be separate from police.

Here's why: We were just in Halifax. I wasn't shocked, but I think it was broader than I thought. They talked about customers. In terms of sex work customers, they found, in a study of sex work, that 50% were law enforcement and 38.9% were professionals such as doctors and lawyers, so that's part of the judiciary. Landlords and employers were 38.9%, which wasn't surprising. Political, spiritual and cultural leaders—so I'd say political is part of that—were 27.8% in terms of consumers.

That makes sense to me in that you can't have people overseeing your protection objectively if they're your customers. Is that one of the reasons why?

[Elene Lam]

I think we need to differentiate clients who are giving money and are actually an important support system for sex workers from the perpetrators. They pretend to be clients to harm the community.

Because sex work is criminalized, we see lots of law enforcement, including police bylaw enforcement officers, will put themselves in the position of a client to take advantage of the sex worker by not paying or threatening to arrest them if they don't co-operate. I don't know the studies, but it's very clear that this is the experience. Clients can be anyone, but if we see all the clients as bad clients, we cannot differentiate the clients.

That's why, in the sex worker law reform, we also recommend decriminalizing sex work, so we can differentiate who the sex workers are, give income and support to the sex workers, but also see how those people are harming our sex workers. Then law enforcement actually—

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

I'm sorry. I have limited time here.

I appreciate that. Certainly I hear, in the city of Winnipeg, about threats from people in positions of authority. People in power threaten that either you do this or they'll arrest you or whatever it is.

That brings me to another point. I want to move over to Madam Sinclaire.

My whole theory is that, when you make people illegal—any person, but today we're talking about sex workers—you place them at risk. I think we've heard lots of examples about how when something illegal happens, there's nowhere for them to go because they're illegal.

Do you agree with that? Can you expand on that a little bit?

[Kate Sinclaire]

Yes, very much. Going to the stories that I spoke about earlier even, there are spaces where people who aren't experiencing criminalization would be able to seek some kind of help, whereas in these situations....

I tell stories to get my points across. For me, there was an experience of stalking that I experienced because of anti-trafficking laws that make me have to publish my address where I keep my records. That's available to the public, so of course people have shown up trying to find my office and that sort of thing. I reached out to the police at one point when it got really spooky and they replied to me months later. They said that of course this guy was interested. They said, “What did you expect? You work in a dangerous field”. There was no follow-up. There was nothing else.

It really limits our ability to seek help.

With wellness checks, we've had members of SWWAC share their stories with us about having police check in. I understand that in Halifax and with ride-alongs, the red carpet is rolled out for you, but realistically, these wellness checks have ended up with sex workers finding out via information and privacy act requests that they have had notes of prostitution written on their records. Now they can't go to the states. They can't travel. They have committed no crime, but this is somehow on their record permanently.

[Leah Gazan, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Adding on to that.... I know that you're from Winnipeg and that you're familiar with some of the issues we're dealing with there.

We had the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls that came out. We know that the child welfare system—and I think we heard an example today from Madam Wesley—is a pipeline to becoming murdered or missing. There were also very clear calls for justice in the national inquiry related to sex work.

One of the things I've been pushing—please, agree or disagree with me—is that there's a very clear difference between child sexual exploitation.... We've normalized sexual exploitation in this country when we call an 11-year-old a sex worker. They're not. They're a sexually exploited child.

Would you agree...? I've run out of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

We've gone quite a bit over time.

What I will do is add a bit, because she.... Hold that in your thoughts in our next round. We'll come back to Leah, and then we'll be able to ask that, because we have gone quite a bit over. I'll make sure that the time works out.

Dominique, you're back. We're doing five minutes, with two lots of two and a half minutes.

[Dominique Vien, Conservative, Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.

I'll start with you, Ms. Elene Lam. You said that the police were one of the main sources of problems related to the topic this committee is studying. In the same breath, you said that we should find an alternative.

What exactly did you mean by that?

[Elene Lam]

At Butterfly, over 60% of our members have reported that they have experienced different kinds of violence from police and law enforcement. Because the police system is designed to end sex work and it is designed to police many racialized and migrant people, if you give them the mission to help other workers, particularly migrant sex workers, it doesn't work.

That's why I think, in this committee and on many occasions, we hear people say the victim is too afraid to speak and too afraid to report, but it's not true. The victim keeps telling you that the police are not someone they trust. The police are not someone they want to go to, so that's why—