Tiohtià:ke (Montreal, Unceded Indigenous Territory, where we recognize the Kanien’kehà:ka Nation as custodian of the lands and waters), October 7, 2022 – , Sex workers and their allies responded today to the call of the Sex Work Autonomous Committee (SWAC) and rallied in front of the Palais de justice de Montréal to demand the immediate repeal of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act. The rally took place as the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform’s constitutional challenge was wrapping up in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. According to SWAC activists, the current law has a deleterious impact on their lives. Instead, they are calling for the complete and immediate decriminalization of sex work in the colonized territories known as Canada.
Sex workers deserve rights too
“While sex workers and their allies have reminded the government of the urgent need to act over the past few years, the government continues to ignore its responsibilities to protect our safety and fundamental rights,” said Mélina May, a sex worker and SWAC activist. In response to this inaction, the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform launched a constitutional challenge in March 2021. Their arguments were heard during the week of October 3 in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
“Sex workers have been saying for years that these laws are what make our work more dangerous,” explains Melina May. In 2013, in Bedford v. Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled several criminal offences related to sex work unconstitutional. Despite this, in 2014, the government passed the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act which openly aims to eradicate sex work. Since the adoption of this law, sex workers have been experiencing its harmful effects.
A legitimate job
According to Adore Goldman, another SWAC activist, these policies that claim to protect victims of sexual exploitation and trafficking are ineffective: “Consenting sex workers and those who are trafficked are all affected by criminalization. These policies set the stage for more exploitation and stigmatization, not the other way around.” According to the committee, immigration laws, in addition to criminal provisions related to sex work, encourage increased surveillance of migrant workers who may face loss of status, detention and deportation.
“The decriminalization of our work would allow us to have access to labor rights, as is the case in other industries,” says the activist. This status of worker, according to the activist, would allow sex workers to benefit from adequate protections in case of accident and parental leave, but especially to hold employers responsible for the safety of workers in the workplace, and allow sex workers to organize among themselves. “We could denounce situations of harassment and abuse through the legal mechanisms in place,” says Melina May. The SWAC activists reiterate the urgency to decriminalize sex work. “We want to be heard and we want our experiences to be taken into account. We don’t want to wait years for the law to go to the Supreme Court. What we want is to finally be able to work with the means to ensure our safety in our workplaces, and for our rights to be recognized, and for that to happen, we have to start by decriminalizing sex work!”
