Status of Women Committee on April 20th, 2023

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 60 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House Order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of the witnesses and members.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference.... I'm looking to see what faces I see here. It looks like we have no amateurs.

Ms. Lam, we're going to make sure you know what's going on there. It's nice to see you online, Ms. Lam.

If you're in the room, make sure there's interpretation. You have your headpiece, so English, French and the floor are available. On Zoom, you have your choice of English, French or the floor for interpretation as well. If you wish to speak, please just raise your hand. On Zoom, please use the “raise hand” function. In accordance with the committee's routine motion concerning connection tests for witnesses, I am informing the committee that all witnesses appearing virtually have completed the required tests.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted on Tuesday, February 1, 2022, the committee will resume its study of the human trafficking of women, girls and gender-diverse people.

Before we welcome our witnesses, I would like to provide this trigger warning. I know we have some different people in the room today, so you guys are really going to find out what we really do here. All the hard stuff is done here in this room. We will be discussing experiences related to abuse. This may be triggering to viewers, members or staff with similar experiences. If you feel distressed or if you need help, please advise the clerk or just alert us to what's going on.

Now I would like to welcome our panellists for today.

From Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network, we have Elene Lam, who is online there. From the Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition, welcome to Kate Sinclaire. From Stella, l'amie de Maimie, we have Sandra Wesley, who is the executive director.

I would like to welcome you by giving you each five minutes to start. I will be passing the first five minutes over to Elene, online.

Elene, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Elene Lam, Executive Director, Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network]

Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Elene Lam. I am the executive director of Butterfly, which is an Asian and migrant sex workers support network.

We are the community-led organization that organizes and provides support for over 5,000 Asian and migrant sex workers across Canada. I have been working on human rights and anti-trafficking issues for over 20 years internationally and 10 years in Canada.

Today, we would like to share the voices of Asian and migrant sex workers and let you know how the current anti-trafficking policies do not help trafficked victims but victimize and traumatize sex workers, migrants, and racialized and gender-diverse people.

I would like to give you an example of the experience of a worker.

A member of Butterfly had been living in Canada for 15 years. She came as a caregiver, but she was not able to get her PR because her abusive boss rejected to do her immigration papers with her. She became undocumented after her spouse sponsorship was rejected. She started working in the sex industry.

One day, a few police officers broke her door to her apartment. She was handcuffed and forced to stand at the corner of the wall. She was treated like a murderer. She was asked if she was being controlled or whether anyone helped her. Confusingly, the police told her that they had come to protect her. She was asked if she was safe. She told the police that she was safe before they came. The police called CBSA and arrested her. Police seized her phones and $10,000, which was all the money that she had earned and saved in Canada. She was working in the sex industry not only because she was in poverty, but because it was also the way she resisted and fought against poverty.

During the interview by the law enforcement, she told them about her experience of being robbed, assaulted and almost killed. However, they did not care. Her friend was also arrested because they were suspected of working together as organized crime. Both of them were deported.

This is only one of the stories of what has happened to a Butterfly member.

Over 300 members of Butterfly have reported experiencing harassment, charges, arrests, imprisonment and deportation. Even if a migrant has a work permit, they will lose their immigration status when they work in the sex industry. Many workers and their families are framed as traffickers and are being arrested when they help other workers to communicate or work safely. Hundreds of Asian massage parlours were shut down because of the anti-trafficking campaign. The Asian women lost their work, their way of living and their dignity.

This is obviously not the solution to the problem. The rescue approach has been adopted by Canada and many countries, but this is not working. The current system, which is aimed at ending sex work, is not working. It has, particularly, pushed migrant and racialized sex workers underground, promoted discrimination and hate against sex workers and increased their vulnerability to violence and exploitation. They are not able to seek help. Instead of protection, this is harming the people. More of the same is not useful.

That's why we need a new way to address the issue. That's why we are here today. For many marginalized, Black, indigenous, migrant and sex workers, police are the major sources of violence and a pipeline to prisons and deportation. Instead of asking people to trust the police, we should develop an alternative so that people can access support and help from the people they already trust.

The “rights not rescue” approach must be adopted to respect the agency of the people. Empower people to protect themselves and their community so that they can access safety and leave an exploitative situation.

Here are the solutions: Remove all of the laws against sex workers and migrants so they can protect themselves without fear or criminalization, and remove the immigration ban from people working in the sex industry. We do not need trafficking-specific funding. Support people's access to housing, income, labour rights and status so they can leave the violent situations. Support communities to build safety measures and power so that they can support themselves in their communities.

I want to emphasize that the root cause of migrant exploitation is the lack of permanent residency. This is why we continue to fight, with many migrant organizations, for the regularization of all undocumented people and permanent resident status for all migrants, students, refugees and families. We are disappointed that migrant worker-led organizations like Migrant Workers Alliance for Change are still not invited to speak.

Butterfly has done a lot of research, and many scholars have done a lot of research about the harm of anti-trafficking. I'd be happy to answer more questions and provide more information on how this system is not working and what the alternatives could be to make people safe and protect them in difficult situations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much. I don't know if you timed yourself at home, but somehow you were almost right on the dot. Way to go.

I'm now going to pass the floor over to Kate Sinclaire.

Kate, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Kate Sinclaire, Member, Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition]

Thank you.

My name is Kate Sinclaire. I'm currently studying law here in Ottawa, and I'm a member of the Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition. We're a group of sex workers, activists, allies and researchers back in my home of Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Treaty 1 territory. We have a clear mission to fight exploitation, not sex workers.

We need you to understand that many groups that call themselves anti-trafficking organizations are centred on a goal of “eradicating” sex work—their word. To people among these groups, sex work is inherently dangerous and sex workers are making a conscious choice to do something dangerous, so if we experience violence while we work, we chose it, we asked for it and we even created it. This gets taught to our police, who then use that basis to interact with workers.

We can't keep trying to end abuse by criminalizing and surveilling sex workers. Laws and policies often place the blame for trafficking directly on the sex workers themselves, creating a simultaneous victim and abuser narrative that is impossible to navigate. It encourages law enforcement to drop in on sex workers with “wellness checks” and empowers raids, arrests, deportation and other forms of state violence.

A story that might help to illustrate this comes from my own life working in queer adult film. I was contacted out of the blue by a sex worker I'd never met. She was trying to double-check with me to make sure that she was auditioning with my company. This was the first I'd heard of it, because I don't hold auditions. As it turns out, someone was using my reputation and status as a filmmaker to lure sex workers to a rural address. He was stealing my name to get free sex, which is abuse.

He knew that the system that criminalizes sex workers and their clients actually supported him, and he was right. We realized that we couldn't come forward to report this man to police. The worker was rightfully, from experience, more concerned about being arrested herself, losing her income and losing her kids. That's because laws and attitudes cast the sex worker as both trafficker and trafficked, victim and abuser.

We had his address and we could not do anything, so we did what we could to keep people in the area safe. We posted warnings online and reached out to local sex worker groups. We tried our best to keep others from accepting his pitch, but keep in mind that policing the Internet and physical spaces to eradicate sex work from public view and away from community means that warnings and community initiatives can only go so far. That has only gotten worse in recent years with anti-trafficking legislation in digital spaces. It's getting harder for us to warn people.

If you want to address harm, you need to step back and look at the circumstances that Canada has put in place to put people there—an oppressive immigration system, criminalization of sex work, poverty, access to housing, a race to the bottom in worker rights and minimum wages, poor support for those living with disabilities and police surveillance of marginalized communities. Going forward, think of supports and not more criminalization in a system that is already hostile to women, girls and gender-diverse folks. Do not patronize “deportation and incarceration will save you” attitudes. This may surprise you, but people aren't excited to go to prison for reporting workplace violence.

Sex workers have been supporting our communities while criminalized for a long time. We're often the first to see when something is wrong, but if we get arrested, are exposed to further surveillance or are even just written off when we come forward, it will not work. Start with decriminalization of sex work, immigration status for migrant sex workers, affordable housing, a guaranteed basic livable income so that people can make choices about the work they do, and comprehensive and inclusive education systems that don't shame women's sexuality. We have the laws around trafficking. We have the laws. If they're not working or being used, we need to analyze why and not make new laws that will just uphold the status quo.

I'll wrap up with another story. This comes from an indigenous sex worker in the Prairies. These are their words: “When I was a youth, I was houseless and participated in survival street sex work. Having been a sex worker is something I've always been open about in my writing, activism and scholarship. I'm not ashamed because I am describing a common experience for Indigenous Prairie youth. Anti-sex work rhetoric is anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, whorephobic, transmisogynist, and classist, no matter how you try to dress it up in the aesthetics of resistance and decoloniality. To circulate anti-sex-work rhetoric is to have Indigenous blood on your hands. The only place I found support to survive was in the streets. The violent force that 'pushed me into sex work' was Canada and Canadians.”

We as SWWAC remind you to fight exploitation, not sex workers. Together we can make a safer world for everyone, but not if you're trying to eradicate us.

Thank you very much. I do welcome any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much.

You guys are really timed out very well today. It's unbelievable.

We're going to invite Sandra.

You have five minutes.

[Sandra Wesley, Executive Director, Stella, l'amie de Maimie]

Hi. I'm Sandra Wesley. I'm the executive director of Stella, l'amie de Maimie. We're an organization by and for sex workers based in Montreal.

While we do advocacy, our primary mandate is to provide services to sex workers. We make on average 5,000 to 8,000 contacts with sex workers in every possible sphere of the sex industry in Montreal. We're also accountable to our sex-working community, which is large, diverse and complex.

We have a policy at Stella and in most sex workers' rights organizations that we don't tell personal stories. We can identify as sex workers, but we owe it our ourselves, to our self-respect and to our community to not give you our horror stories to be used against us, to not make you cry, to not focus on emotions. For one thing, those are always used against us, but we also have something called a charter, which promises us that we have rights regardless of public opinion. We shouldn't have to give you drama in order for you to listen to us, and you shouldn't take our more dry focus on human rights as somehow indicating that we're denying there is violence or that we're not giving you what you want to hear.

The first point I want to make is that trafficking as a concept is absolutely useless to address violence against women and violence against sex workers. It is an ideology. For most of the 20th century, the term commonly used was “white slavery”, or in French traite des Blanches, and it was only when that became so obviously racist that the language started to change a little bit.

This is entirely about the racist notion of racialized men coming after pure, innocent, white women, and it hasn't changed since. Using the word “trafficking” is a deliberate strategy of a movement that aims to eradicate the entire sex industry, because in this day and age just saying we hate sex workers and we want to eradicate them doesn't work the same way.

You don't necessarily have to take my word for it. I invite you to refer to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights report on trafficking from a few years ago—I believe in 2018 or maybe 2019. Chapter 2 of that report very clearly lays out that there are two types of witnesses. They heard from people who believed that all sex work is trafficking and they heard from sex workers who had a more nuanced perspective. Obviously, your colleagues at the time chose to ignore sex workers and just take wholesale everything that was said by people who aim to eradicate sex work.

It's your job to look at the evidence, to reject witnesses who have an ideology that is explicitly stated and to question what you're hearing.

I heard in previous meetings of this committee absolutely outrageous things being said, including that having 12-year-olds is somehow common in the sex industry. There is no evidence to support that. If you look at every single sex work location in this country that is raided over and over, 12-year-old girls are not commonly found in the sex industry. That is absolutely false. The average age of entry into sex work is not 14. That is absurd. If you have fourth grade math you should be able to understand that. We are tired of constantly having to fight against absolutely absurd things when what we say is not heard.

The reality is that there has been a massive theory on trafficking for many years in this country. There have been hundreds of millions of dollars poured into it, and the evidence does not support it. It's not because it's so hidden. It's not because the victims are so afraid. We are the victims you claim to be concerned about, and we are here to tell you that this approach is not working. This ideology does not respond to our needs.

There are not two separate groups. We don't have sex workers on one side and victims of trafficking on the other side. Just because we don't choose to use that ideological language to identify does not mean that we are not specifically the women who anti-trafficking experts come to talk to you about. Most of us would be identified as victims of trafficking based on the definitions of anti-sex work advocates.

Parliament decided in 2014 through the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act to set as the objective the eradication of sex workers. That is incompatible with any objective to make sure that we are protected, that our human rights are respected or that we have good working conditions. Ultimately, trafficking is about bad working conditions. It's about forced labour or labour conditions that are so horrible that they meet this definition of trafficking.

When we as a group do not have access to basic labour standards, when we don't have minimum wage, when we don't have any maximum working hours, when we don't have sick pay, vacation pay, maternity leave or access to occupational health and safety, it is impossible to even start to talk about what trafficking could possibly look like in such an industry. Trafficking is a concept that is useful when we are talking about workers who have rights and things that go outside of the norm.

Focusing on trafficking hides the violence that we actually experience. We are telling you there are serial killers who are murdering us and that's not interesting. If we don't phrase it as trafficking, no one cares. We're telling you we are being sexually assaulted and that we are....

Yes, I see that my time is up, but I will finish talking about the violence we're experiencing. Thank you.

We are telling you we are being robbed. We are being—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Excuse me. I'm sorry.

Sandra, with all due respect, I am listening to you. We are all listening to you. The reason we have times is so that all of us can ask these really important questions. Things that you're saying like “no one's listening”, this is so that we can actually ask these questions.

Although I do support that, as chair I will now be moving over to the MPs. We have to respect this. I will respect you, you will respect me, and we'll all get along just perfectly.

Do you have a few more seconds or minutes, may I ask?

[Sandra Wesley]

I can finish in 30 seconds, if you want.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Finish in 30 seconds, please.

[Sandra Wesley]

As I was saying, we have been screaming for years that our employers can rob us with impunity, that our clients can assault and threaten us, and that our landlords can evict us. We are talking about absolutely horrific working conditions. Unless we're willing to phrase it as trafficking and agree that the solution is for us to lose our employment and do something else with our lives, no one actually cares.

The solution is that, if you're concerned about violence against sex workers, don't call it trafficking. Say you're concerned about violence against sex workers, and then you will come to the conclusion that decriminalization is the absolute essential first step that we need.

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Sandra, thank you so much.

We're now going to go to our round of questioning. In each round, each party will have an opportunity.

For the first six minutes, we'll start with Michelle Ferreri.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you so much, Madam Chair.

I really want to thank our witnesses for being here at the status of women committee as we talk about and undertake a study on human trafficking. It's been interesting. Thank you very much for each of your testimonies.

I would like to begin with Ms. Lam.

Ms. Lam, I think there's still a lot of confusion. It's perhaps out of the good intention to try to protect women, but there's still a lot of confusion between sex work and sex trafficking.

I would ask you to help educate people who are watching at home. What is the difference? How do we ensure that our loved ones, family and friends are protected if there is a choice involved in this? What is the difference?

[Elene Lam]

It's just like Sandra described. The terms “human trafficking” or “sex trafficking” are useless and confusing. We hear many anti-sex work organizations call any sex work activity human trafficking.

If we can take out this ideology about how sex work is bad and people should not do sex work, so then we can go and do other kinds of work.... People may have different life conditions, and they need to do sex work. People have different life conditions, so they may want to be a chef in a kitchen. When you ask caregivers whether they want to fly away from their families to take care of the children of others, they will not tell you that this is their ideal work. That doesn't mean we need to criminalize this kind of work.

I think that's why this committee keeps having so much trouble. It's because the definition of human trafficking is so often being used to convey sex work. The purpose of using this term is to eradicate sex workers. It makes people think that sex work is evil. That's why I think—

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Thank you. I'm sorry if I have to interrupt you. It's just the time. We only have a certain amount of time.

I'm confused. Are you saying there isn't a difference between sex trafficking and sex work, or that you don't want to use that terminology?

[Elene Lam]

We don't need to waste so much energy and time to identify who is being trafficked and who is not. What is human trafficking? We hear stories. It maybe related to domestic violence.

Many in our community.... If I'm a sex worker and take money, I'm seen as human trafficking. That's why, if we take away the term “human trafficking”, we can focus on how women can get the power and have agency to define themselves.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I'm sorry, Ms. Lam. I'm just trying to be succinct here.

What we were studying is that there is a significant difference between someone who chooses.... The Pornhub documentary—I don't know if you've watched it—Money Shot: The Pornhub Story did a really great job. I don't know if you agree or disagree with that. I thought it did a really good job of creating....

We're talking about two very different things. I don't think around this table anyone has any judgment on anyone who chooses to have a healthy choice in escorting, sex work or whatever you want to call it. We're trying to dissect here how to tell the public.... If you have an escort business opening up, that is sex work, as opposed to a child who is online, has been lured and has a pimp who's a guerrilla pimp or a romance pimp, who is manipulating her, using her and taking control of her life. We're trying to dissect the difference. We want to support choice for women who are in a position to do that.

I think what you're saying is a bit confusing for the committee. You're saying there's no such thing as human trafficking.

[Elene Lam]

I'll just say, for example, that when sex work is still criminalized, when sex work is being seen as human trafficking and when sex work is being seen as exploitation, we cannot differentiate the violence. We know very well much gender-based violence is—

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I have trouble with a bit of that, because I went out on a ride-along with—

I'm sorry, Ms. Lam—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I have to—

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

Are we out of time, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

I have to interrupt for just a second. No, we are not out of time.

I know that it's sometimes very difficult virtually, but questioners do have the time. We try to do it as equally as possible, but when the person who is asking the questions interrupts.... Let's try to get back on track. Thanks so much.

[Michelle Ferreri, Conservative, Peterborough—Kawartha, ON]

I want to point out that I went out on a ride-along with one of our human trafficking divisions in my riding of Peterborough—Kawartha.

The police officers were very in tune with who were escorts or sex workers, and they really left them alone. They had a great relationship with them. They knew that they weren't part of a group of vulnerable women who were being used. They knew that there were women who were choosing to do this lifestyle. They were independent. They were entrepreneurs, for a lack of a better term. They weren't being controlled by anyone.

I definitely saw that within the police that I dealt with, as well as when we went to Halifax. I don't know of any police officers who are arresting legitimate entrepreneurs. Again, I'm not understanding what you're saying.

[Elene Lam]

In the current legal system, other third parties, such as those who help other sex workers do advertisements, for example, or who help other people find a workplace, have all become illegal. In that narrative, in that story, and also in the law, they are often framed as human traffickers. That's why I keep saying that we are not able to see the agency of the people, and we are not able to see the actual situations of the people when we call sex work “human trafficking” or when we see sex work as exploitative. That's why we see so many police who keep harassing the sex workers—

[The Chair, Conservative, Karen Vecchio]

Thank you so much, Elene.

We're going pass it over to Emmanuella Lambropoulos, who is also online.

Let's just make sure that both of you get an equal opportunity to speak.

Emmanuella, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I'd like to begin by thanking all of our witnesses for being here to shine some light on this study.

First, I would like to give the opportunity to Sandra to continue what she was saying in her opening remarks. I know that we are on a time limit, and I understand Madam Chair's decision, but I know that you were beginning to speak about the abuse that sex workers do encounter. You can continue with that, and then I'll go ahead and ask my questions.