On June 16, Bill C-36, or the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, passed its second reading in the House of Commons. The legislation which was proposed by Conservative Justice Minister Peter Mackay moves forward despite protests by sex workers and ally groups in cities nationwide.

Among these groups are the Canadian Alliance for Sex Worker Law Reform and the Winnipeg Working Group. Shawna Ferris, sex worker ally and representative of both groups denounces the bill.

"I don't think any of us could have anticipated a set of laws that are quite as terrible as the ones that have been proposed," Ferris says, relaying that the sex workers she allies with across the country feel "utterly betrayed, abandoned, and attacked by the government."

Bill C-36 is the Conservative Government's response to a unanimous ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Bedford case this past December. The Court ruled that Canada's existing laws surrounding prostitution violate the Charter rights of sex workers by imposing "dangerous conditions on prostitution" and by "preventing sex workers from taking steps to protect themselves from the risks," as stated in Canada v. Bedford.

Instead of striking down the laws immediately, the Court gave Parliament one year to form new legislation. Sex workers and ally groups hold that if passed, the bill will further endanger prostitutes.

"[Bill C-36] re-criminalizes what would have been decriminalized had the Supreme Court decision stood and been used as a guideline by the government," Ferris says. She addresses the criminalization of communication for the purposes of prostitution, stating that this law is "a major cause of violence, especially for outdoor workers."

Groups protesting the bill warn that if passed, these laws will not stop prostitution, they will only push it further underground.

"Sex workers will try to protect their clients - because they're trying to protect their income," Ferris explains. "In order to avoid being targeted by police they move to less well-lit areas, often industrial areas that are quite deserted at night."

When prostitution is criminalized, sex workers - especially street-based workers who are the most marginalized - are made more vulnerable. "What we saw in the Robert Pickton case in BC is sex workers getting into cars and then engaging in negotiations - and as we saw in that case, once you're in the car it's too late," stresses Ferris.

From being able to negotiate and assess clients in a public space, to working in pairs in familiar, populated areas; the strategies sex workers use to protect themselves will make them easy targets for police surveillance and will therefore be sacrificed.

Failure to consent meaningfully with sex workers and allies about what makes them unsafe has resulted in a situation where misinformation, myths and stigmas are guiding much of political and public opinion.

"You have a lot of really uninformed people organizing against sex workers in this context," Ferris says.

She echoes an argument of many sex workers and allies. There are already laws that target people who try to sexually exploit, or traffic, or try to assault or who assault people or attempt to have sex with children. So having laws that are specific to sex work doubles the number of laws in the book and treats sex workers as though they are somehow separate from the rest of society.”

Ferris sums up the collective concern. “It’s easy for those of us who don’t work in sex work to assume that sex workers are a particular group of people that we never interact with, but these are people who live in our neighbourhoods, in our cities. These are citizens who should have the same rights to protection under the law and the Charter of Rights and Freeedoms as the rest of us do.”

<Winnipeg Working Group and the canadian Alliancefor Sex Work Law Reform are made up of individual and organized sex workers and allies who want to reform Canadian law surrounding sex work.

Published in Volume 68, Number 28 of The Uniter (July 2, 2014)