Thank you.

Our alliance is made up of 25 sex worker rights groups across the country, led predominantly by sex workers living the impacts of PCEPA and who serve thousands of sex workers through front-line services and advocacy.

I'll use my time today to dispel some of the myths, misinformation and unfounded statements that the committee has heard over the past three weeks. My intention in doing that is to redirect your attention to rigorous empirical research that you need to complete your task of studying the impacts of PCEPA.

One such myth is this erroneous division between exploited survivors on the one hand and independent sex workers or entrepreneurs on the other. All witnesses, including sex workers, are presenting evidence about people who sell or trade sex in difficult circumstances, most with limited options, yet a false divide is being created, as if people's experiences fall within one of two categories: people who have agency and don't experience abuses and those who do experience abuses and don't have agency.

Many sex workers do experience exploitation and violence. Sex workers across the country, if not the world, recognize that this is due in part to the impacts of criminalization. Recognizing the harmful impacts of criminalization doesn't mean you're abandoning one group over the other. Rather, it means you're recognizing how criminalization functions and particularly how it negatively impacts the most marginalized sex workers living and working in the most difficult conditions. Criminalization is a tool that encourages social and racial profiling. It is an absolute deterrent to anyone reporting violence, abuse or exploitation.

Supporters of PCEPA claim that the average age of entry is 12 to 14 years old. This is a discredited claim. Young people do experience abuses, both in and out of the sex industry, but massage parlours, strip clubs and agencies are not rife with 12- and 13-year-olds. This is not the average age that people start to sell or trade sex.

Misinformation about the average age of entry is what researcher John Lowman calls a “cornerstone of prohibitionist rhetoric”. He says that “treating prostitutes as children makes it much easier for prohibitionists to argue that [women] should be saved from [ourselves].”

Discredited claims about the age of entry are circulated by people who support criminalization and PCEPA. The most recent empirical research paints a very different picture. A 2018 study by Cecilia Benoit indicates 24 years of age as the average age of entry. A 2011 study by van der Meulen found it to be 20. A 2007 study by O'Doherty found it to be 23 years of age.

Supporters of PCEPA claim that it addresses violence against sex workers. None of the PCEPA offences, including the client and third party offences, require any element of exploitation or coercion. Empirical evidence confirms that criminalizing any aspect of sex work forces people currently working in the industry to forgo security measures and endure poor working conditions to avoid detection. PCEPA fosters exploitation and violence.

Proponents of PCEPA claim that it's an equality model. A legal regime that relies on the surveillance, profiling, detention and arrest of marginalized and racialized communities cannot claim to be an equality or a feminist model. A legal regime that criminalizes and seeks to eradicate an income-generating activity predominantly exercised by marginalized women cannot claim to be an equality or feminist model. Equality means that everybody receives the benefit of human rights protections. Substantive equality means that there's a recognition that criminal law, and PCEPA in particular, disproportionately targets racialized, Black, Asian and indigenous communities. PCEPA encourages the uninvited presence of law enforcement into the lives of these sex workers and has grave consequences.

The last myth that you've heard—but you've heard more than this—is that the law is not harming sex workers, but it's that sex workers are misunderstanding the law. Sex workers know that PCEPA is designed to criminalize their work and eradicate them and their means of survival. The criminalization of sex work produces real risks and impacts on how sex workers organize their lives.

The harms of criminalization go beyond arrest. They create barriers to accessing health, social, legal or police services. They foster isolation and limit who sex workers can reach out to for support. They create a risk of eviction and of child apprehension. The dangers of PCEPA and police that sex workers speak of are most definitely real. They are not a figment of sex workers' imaginations and definitely not an instruction from an imaginary pimp.

Empirical evidence matters. This review needs to prioritize empirical evidence and the experiences of people working under PCEPA. The preamble is based on complete fiction that sex work is inherently exploitative. It reproduces stigma that increases targeted violence against sex workers.

Verify the unfounded claims made to you these past couple of weeks around age of entry, the number of women who have agency or the alleged failure of the New Zealand model. There are no methodologically sound sources for these claims.

At what point do sex workers, people currently working in the industry, get to be experts of their own lives?

Thank you.

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