Justice committee  It's a very reductive simplification of what goes on in the sex industry. It's very unusual to me to think that we could impose a definition of gendered inequality on a population that they would uniformly agree with. I find this infantilizing, and it is actually in opposition to

Justice committee  The starting place for our community partnerships is that we don't have active enforcement of PCEPA in particular. Trafficking legislation would be used where people experience, identify, or have convincing evidence of trafficking. I don't think it's used very much at all. We're

Justice committee  Well, I mean, we live in a context where there hasn't been active criminalization. I would say the sex industry has not changed much at all, in shape or form, over the last 20 years. We have the same number of people we're serving and the same number of agencies in town. In fact,

Justice committee  I'll start. On preventing trafficking and addressing trafficking, we don't have a lot of experience in working with people who identify as being trafficked in the context of the sex industry. In the last year, we've served two people. Both of those individuals came from outside

Justice committee  My name is Rachel Phillips. I'm the Director of Programs at Peers Victoria. I want to tell you a bit about Peers and then more specifically address the issue of sexualized violence. Peers Victoria opened in 1995. We're located on Songhees and Esquimalt territory. About 80% of t