Status of Women committee  I can go first, if that's okay, Kate. I really appreciated when Krystal Snider corrected the misinformation you were being fed by the two people who actually don't have experience in the industry but who just have analysis based on their ideology. What Krystal was suggesting is most definitely the case.

Status of Women committee  I can start. I don't know what a trafficker looks like. I don't know if you know what a trafficker looks like. I think it's a ridiculous notion to assume that we could ever know what a trafficker looks like, when all of you are using definitions of trafficking that aren't actually the same.

Status of Women committee  I definitely didn't say not to use the criminal law under any conditions. I most definitely didn't say that. I said that there is too much money being poured into this notion of human trafficking and that there are no supports for people who are actually experiencing violence. That's what I'm trying to say.

Status of Women committee  I most definitely wouldn't say not to.... For violence that people are experiencing, I'm saying not to add additional laws to that and not to lean in on laws that are not helping the situation, like the sex work laws, for example. Those are most definitely not reducing violence against women, and they are most definitely increasing violence against women, so I would repeal those laws.

Status of Women committee  Thanks, Kate. You did a great job of that. I appreciate it. The government has most definitely.... It's all of the governments. There used to be an idea that only the Conservative government was heavily leaning into enforcing law and putting money into law enforcement, but now we have all the governments sort of leaning on law enforcement as a solution to almost every social problem that exists.

Status of Women committee  Our member groups across the country represent the experiences of thousands of sex workers who sell or trade sexual services. Our members have extensive personal expertise in mitigating interpersonal and state violence and labour exploitation. They also have experiences of the impacts of anti-trafficking initiatives.

Justice committee  I would have to take a really good look at the methodology. I'm not clear on what questions were asked in order to create that. I'd encourage all of you to have the same approach when you look at any statistics. One of the things that I think we can suggest by understanding the way concepts are used is that when you look at the concept of trafficking, it very often captures people who are Asian and migrant.

Justice committee  I think Jenny did a great job of responding. The only thing I would add is that when sex work is not treated as a crime, when sex workers are not afraid of the impacts of criminalization on their lives, including but beyond arrest, then sex workers can start to think about having that safety and not having relationships criminalized, not having loss of family, loss of life or loss of income.

Justice committee  Right. When you read the provisions, it doesn't actually say that exploitation needs to occur in order for a third party, for example, to be charged. Just the very relationship or earning a material benefit off the work that a sex worker does is considered a reason for arrest, and the exceptions to the exceptions don't actually leave room to adjust for the actual relationships that sex workers have with third parties.

Justice committee  I understand.

Justice committee  Nothing in PCEPA is protecting sex workers. I need to get that message across very clearly. It particularly needs to be abolished in its entirety because the preamble is based on fiction. It's based on a lie that sex work is exploitative. That is not supported in any empirical evidence, nor has it been supported by the sex workers who have come to this committee who represent thousands of sex workers.

Justice committee  It's a great question. From the perspective of all of our member groups, all of PCEPA is actually very dangerous. The regime itself actually hinges on the criminalization of clients. I think it's important for people to see that to understand how the law actually functions. Regardless of what its intention was when it was written, it actually hinges on the criminalization of clients.

Justice committee  Absolutely. We actually launched a constitutional challenge to all the sex work laws. There are seven applicants. The main applicant is our Alliance, our 25 sex worker rights groups. Then there are five individual sex workers and one third party who is still in an agency. We launched that constitutional challenge just last March.

Justice committee  It's hard to briefly summarize, but I'll do my best. Most definitely, sex workers, like most people, were impacted by COVID. If you consider that people were already living quite a marginalized and surveilled existence, that was heightened in the context of COVID. What that meant for a lot of sex workers, because massage parlours were shut down and strip clubs were shut down, was that a lot of them were out of work.

Justice committee  Of course, sex workers changed the kinds of services that were offered. Sex workers are very adaptable. The difference with COVID as opposed to any other kind of situation where sex workers are stigmatized and not able to access health and safety supports is that sex workers were also scared of COVID the same way that a lot of other people were.