Status of Women committee  Yes. It's really important to note that, with kids in care, I think the whole care system is inherently flawed, and there's a lot of deflecting that happens. We just say, “Oh, it's trafficking; it's traffickers”. There's a reason folks are ending up in bad situations. As you sai

Status of Women committee  I don't speak it enough.

Status of Women committee  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 inc

Status of Women committee  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

Status of Women committee  Yes, very much. Going to the stories that I spoke about earlier even, there are spaces where people who aren't experiencing criminalization would be able to seek some kind of help, whereas in these situations.... I tell stories to get my points across. For me, there was an expe

Status of Women committee  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 hav

Status of Women committee  In general, we can start with how sex workers are operating consensually. There can be a number of different factors that influence that consent, as I was talking about with the story I presented about the indigenous sex worker. There are conditions that make people have to make

Status of Women committee  Can you hear me now? Excellent.

Status of Women committee  It's very important to understand that people make their choices for different reasons. Just because it's a choice that someone else wouldn't make doesn't automatically make it trafficking.

Status of Women committee  The distinction between the two, again, is that generally folks in sex work are choosing to be there. It's a consensual occupation. Again, the reasons that people come to sex work might be varied. It might not be the choice that everyone would make, but we have to remember that t

Status of Women committee  Yes. I was just going to talk specifically about law enforcement and especially about anti-trafficking training programs that keep these conflation definitions going. In Winnipeg we have the Joy Smith Foundation, which is well funded and educates our police on trafficking. That

Status of Women committee  It's really important to know that the data is false because, as mentioned previously, a lot of this data includes people who are consensually working in sex work. A lot of the anti-trafficking groups specifically conflate the two so that it seems like it's a bigger problem than

Status of Women committee  That documentary, I think, is really important, because it does give the mike to workers. There were anti-trafficking groups involved in it who spoke, and it really exposed just how biased all of their data is. It's really important to listen to the workers.

Status of Women committee  That works. I think there have been promises to work on the decriminalization of sex work and there have been promises to offer safe spaces for migrant workers, and we haven't seen any of that. We instead saw a consultation with the justice committee around the current sex work

Status of Women committee  Thank you very much for having me here. My name is Kate Sinclaire. I am currently studying law here in Ottawa. I'm a member of the Sex Workers of Winnipeg Action Coalition. SWWAC is a group of sex workers, activists, allies and researchers and is based back in my home town of Wi