Evidence of meeting #60 for Status of Women in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was police.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Excuse me for interrupting you, Ms. Lam. What should be implemented to replace the police, then?
Executive Director, Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network
In many instances, for example, in mental health, there are now more initiatives to provide community support, because sex workers are the best defenders of the rights and safety of other sex workers. When sex workers are not criminalized, they can protect each other and monitor the safety measures to see if anyone is taking power from other sex workers and if people are working safely.
There are a lot of initiatives that can provide results to their communities, particularly the sex worker community, to develop support for each other—
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Thank you very much, Ms. Lam.
Ms. Wesley, welcome back.
You mentioned labour standards. How would putting labour standards in place, especially for sex workers, keep trafficking away?
Executive Director, Stella, l'amie de Maimie
To be clear, we are not necessarily asking for specific standards. Decriminalization would provide us with access to the same standards as other workers.
If you work in a community organization or for government, for example, and you don't get paid, you are protected by labour standards, you can file a complaint and there is a process. When you're in a criminal environment, the only option you have is the police, who will shut down your workplace and seize the money you're owed anyway. That's when the violence can escalate. That's why there's violence in any criminalized industry. People have to brace themselves and be wary of everyone around them.
So, labour standards and other related programs, such as employment insurance, would ensure our ability to use administrative levers rather than repressive ones.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Do you really think this would eradicate the problem?
Executive Director, Stella, l'amie de Maimie
Talking about eradicating violence in that environment is like talking about eradicating sexual or spousal violence. It's hard to believe something so extreme, because it has much deeper roots, and violence against women is everywhere in society.
However, labour standards would completely alter the situation, in the same way that they have reduced the use of children in mining and all sorts of other abuses. For us, as a women's movement, this is the way forward. In New Zealand, there are very concrete examples of what that entails.
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Thank you, Ms. Wesley.
Ms. Sinclaire, thank you for being here today. Do you speak French?
Conservative
Dominique Vien Conservative Bellechasse—Les Etchemins—Lévis, QC
Ms. Sinclaire, what would you like to see in our report? As parliamentarians, what could we put in a report that would make a difference? You know the industry well, you are a law student, you are a thinker, and obviously you have a broad view of this industry.
Madam Chair, I don't know if she has enough time to respond.
Conservative
Member, Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition
I would make a big recommendation not to follow other countries that are making sex trafficking or anti-trafficking laws, specifically the United States, which has a digital initiative through two pieces of law called FOSTA/SESTA, aimed at the digital spheres. These have made incredible differences in the lives of sex workers in a negative way.
They have taken down access to safe ways to communicate on the Internet. When those services launched in each city, you saw drops in murders of sex workers. Now that it has been repealed—it's been five years—the legislation has been used once to prove trafficking yet it has caused people to actually be murdered.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Thanks so much, Kate.
We'll now move to Anita Vandenbeld.
Anita, you have five minutes.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I have only five minutes and I have a question for each of you, so I'll ask you to keep your answers short.
I'd like to start with you, Ms. Lam, particularly on the prohibition on foreign nationals to engage in consensual sex work. This is something many of us didn't even know existed until this study.
Could you give us your recommendation about what we can do about that? Is it to just completely eliminate that from our immigration law?
Executive Director, Butterfly: Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network
Yes, remove any immigration law that prohibits people from working in sex work and related industries. Also, do not put the immigration prohibition on people's work permits. This is very important. We just want you guys to support and eliminate it as soon as possible.
The other thing we know as a generalization is that different people say that it is also very important to protect migrants from exploitation and violence.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Thank you, and thank you for making it short.
Ms. Wesley, you alluded very quickly to a very long...sexworklawreform.com and a constitutional challenge and decriminalization.
Could you, in one minute, give us the key recommendation? What is it that we need to do, as legislators?
Executive Director, Stella, l'amie de Maimie
It is the full removal of any mention of sex work from the Criminal Code, so full decriminalization—not legalization but full decriminalization—and the removal of the immigration policies.
We have a few recommendations for other things, like unemployment and not forcing people to do sex work. That's basic stuff that we will need to think about.
Then we have recommendations for provincial realms of law and how that would then happen.
In our constitutional challenge, we need the government to stop defending these laws in court and not force us to go all the way to the Supreme Court. Also stop sending representatives of the federal government to say that identifying 34 murdered sex workers over a period of four years is a reasonable number of sex workers to be murdered under this legislation. This is the actual argument that your government is making in court right now.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
Okay. We'll take a look, as a committee, at some of those other recommendations as well. Thank you for that.
Ms. Sinclaire, first of all, thank you for coming back. I know you were interrupted before.
I'm mortified by the story you told when you first started about a predator and not being able to even get any recourse to report this predator.
Other than decriminalization, other than making sure that consensual sex work is legal, are there other things the government can do to protect people who are in this industry?
Member, Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition
Because decriminalization is so central to the issue, this is the trouble. If we don't do decriminalization, then we're still going to experience the police enforcing the violence. We can say to talk to the police and get them to be gentle and understand, but the reality is.... I've heard some folks come to this committee and say, “No, it's only clients who are criminalized.” We have lists of folks who have been charged under trafficking, as trafficking themselves and that sort of thing, so sex workers are charged with trafficking themselves.
These are the laws that people are advancing, because it's in the interest of eradicating sex workers. I think that decriminalization is really where we need to focus, but again, it's working to make sure that wellness checks stop. If police know that these people are working consensually and that sort thing, then let people work.
Also, I would note that sex work, in itself, is consensual. There are a number of ways folks might enter sex work, and people might think that they wouldn't make that decision themselves, but we have to remember that there are a lot of factors out in the world that make people make these choices, and we have to respect that for people's survival.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
This one I'll just open up to anybody who has.... I think I have a minute left.
Liberal
Anita Vandenbeld Liberal Ottawa West—Nepean, ON
I have 45 seconds.
Obviously, the illegal forcing and coercing of girls, women and gender-diverse people into sex work, which they themselves did not choose, is something that has to be illegal. Now it is under human trafficking. We have Criminal Code provisions.
What would you do about those provisions?
Executive Director, Stella, l'amie de Maimie
That's why we have laws of general application. Forcing someone to have sex for money, or not money, is sexual assault—period. We need to enforce that, and then the list goes on.
In order to commit a trafficking offence, you need to commit a lot of other offences. Those are sufficient in most cases. It's actually quite insulting to a lot of victims when sometimes they've gone through extreme violence and the only charge is human trafficking, or the only charge is pimping, and not every act of violence. If we start prosecuting those, we'll start seeing the repression that we need against that type of violence.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Karen Vecchio
Awesome. Thank you so much.
We're now going to pass it over, for two and a half minutes, to Louise.
Louise, you have the floor.
Bloc
Louise Chabot Bloc Thérèse-De Blainville, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Wesley, do many women seek support from your organization because they are victims? I use the word “victims” because they've been subjected to, not chosen, a form of violence like human trafficking. We know the situation in Montreal. Quebec does not really have an action plan regarding the trafficking of women or girls. Is your organization called upon to support these women and girls?
Executive Director, Stella, l'amie de Maimie
Yes, absolutely. That's at the core of what we do, it's why we exist. We recognize that there is violence and we want to help women. There isn't necessarily a connection between how the person got into the sex trade and the violence they experience there. When a person is in an abusive situation, where someone is forcing them to do something or taking their money, they will usually come to us, and we will support them. Rarely does the person go to the police. Generally, they will seek other solutions to escape from the violent person and distance themselves. Often they will continue to work in the sex industry, but under different working conditions.
Of course, we work with many, many women who want to do something else, whether their experience in the industry is positive or negative. These women face great barriers. The stigma associated with sex work follows them throughout their lives, regardless of whether they identify as victims or sex workers. If they are known to have ever had sex for money, they lose their children, their spouse, their family. Those are the main areas we work on with people who are trying to get out of such situations. The repercussions of this stigma are often greater than the violence they've experienced.