Cred: Safe Space Website
SafeSpace London is a local organization that supports sex workers, women, and gender non-conforming individuals in crises. Currently, the group along with 24 other members make up the The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform. The alliance is currently launching a constitutional challenge against several amendments that came to life after the enactment of Bill C-36. Board member with SafeSpace London, Melissa Lukings, describes what Bill C-36 is.
“So in 2013, the Bedford case happened and the Supreme Court decided the current laws of sex work infringed upon the constitutional provisions under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and Bill C-36 was a response to that. Unfortunately, it ended up criminalizing for the first time ever sex work and related activities, so transactions, things like that. Third party material benefits, advertising, purchasing, and selling, so these are things it criminalized for the first time ever in Canadian history. Since then we’ve been trying to change that because the laws are horrific for real life actual sex workers.”
Bill C-36 changed sex work in Canada significantly. Lukings mentions how various workers in the industry who worked before and after the bill was enacted, found work considerably more dangerous since it came into effect in 2014. One example she provided was that it forces sex workers to move their activities to the dark web, making it considerably more dangerous.
Sections of the Criminal Code the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform are challenging include:
213 (1) Impeding Traffic
213 (1.1) Public Communication
286.1 (1) Purchasing
286.2 (1) Material Benefits
286.3 (1) Recruiting
286.4 Advertising Provision
The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform is following through with a constitutional challenge currently. Lukings describes why this is so important.
“These provisions within the Criminal Code violate sex workers constitutional rights to personal autonomy, life, liberty, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. Bill C-36 was supposed to help actual women and sex workers, and that it was going to assist in denouncing and deterring human trafficking. It had all these nice ideas behind it but in effect it didn’t. Sex workers have actually been worse off since 2014.
A study earlier this year conducted by UBC’s Centre for Gender & Sexual Health Equity (CGSHE) and the University of Ottawa’s Department of Criminology, found 30% of sex workers fear calling the police to report violent or dangerous occurrence. The study found current federal laws as the primary factor contributing to this.
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