Justice committee  Certainly. The harms I see directly from this law are quite clear, not just to a person who's exercising sex work but potentially to the people they're enlisting. There should be exceptions, even within PCEPA, so that people are not charged because they're acting in a supporting capacity.

Justice committee  If they're pushed into dark corners, then they have no recourse for safety, so when I talk about harm, that's the harm I'm talking about. There's obviously a whole human scale imbalance though. There are many harms happening.

Justice committee  I don't know if I'll have a chance to answer both, but definitely in relation to your second question, consent in law is sort of the turning point or what helps us distinguish. If someone is consenting—if they're not coerced, if they're not forced physically, if they're not drugged, if they're not sort of “dragged into it”—but of their own consent choosing to do something, that seems to be a big distinguishing factor.

Justice committee  Certainly.

Justice committee  I'll answer the last part first. Yes, it has had a disproportionate impact. SWAN unfortunately hasn't been able to be here for technical reasons. I would probably guess that they would be talking about the disproportionate impact it has on immigrant sex workers as well, who are in precarious positions because of fear of being removed from this jurisdiction.

Justice committee  Certainly. To answer the first part of your question, I think you can look at any law and pick and choose which ones may be the most neutral or most valuable. I think, from a fundamental theoretical position, when you say that you want to repeal the whole thing, it's because the process or framework itself is failing to recognize some of the issues.

Justice committee  Aboriginal Legal Services, as an example, have always accepted clients and met them where they're at. In terms of trying to find resolutions, a good life solution for any individual is to meet them where they're at. Embracing diversity and understanding people have lived choices as adults that within law....

Justice committee  Thank you for that opportunity. I understand the need to have the committee. For people who have worked in this area for a number of years, on various fronts, it's not a lot of time. I shared with the committee the three calls to justice of the national inquiry and a couple of them from the Pivot report.

Justice committee  Certainly. It's a position I took when I talked to the committee in 2014. I said that we need to not conflate, using the word conflate to understand...there may be connections, there may be pathways, between sex work and human trafficking, but you can't just assume that if someone is autonomously working in the sex industry, they have been trafficked there.

Justice committee  If we're looking at it as a statistical game, then you're going to see that there's been an increase since I made my submissions in 2014, particularly of indigenous women and female youth within our penal and criminal justice systems. The number of those who are tied to sex-related offences has decreased post Bedford, because there aren't as many charges, but then there are connections within the community.

Justice committee  Certainly. Let me start with the recommendations first, and go to your first question, and I can undertake to pinpoint those in a follow-up note to the clerk if I don't get to address them today. I would point to six points in Pivot's evaluation of Canada's sex work laws and what we need to do.

Justice committee  Yes, it would be part of my narrative in relation to two things, the recommendations that I would make and a reference in terms of the recommendations that we're supporting. Much like your former set of panellists, I talk about the conflation between human trafficking and sex work, and the need for clear definitions and understanding.

Justice committee  Certainly. There is an awareness of the amount of sexual exploitation geographically, but if we're being fair and honest, we actually don't know those numbers with 100% certainty. The pervasive issues around the enforcement of Canada's current Criminal Code, even prior to PCEPA's trafficking provisions, were that it was largely not being enforced.

Justice committee  Good afternoon, and thank you for inviting me to present to the committee. My name is Christa Big Canoe, and I'm the legal advocacy director of Aboriginal Legal Services. It is our position that the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act is an end-demand legislation that is not effective, that it is not creating positive change, and that it increases harms and opportunities for violence against sex workers.

Justice committee  Mr. Chairman, if I may answer the member's question, thank you for asking it, because I think the committee needs to recognize that an exit strategy does not have to tie to criminality or to the Criminal Code or to police enforcement. It's often situated with the best agencies, or aboriginal agencies, or agencies that are familiar with the organizations and the communities, so that's one means.