Thank you.

My name is Amber Lindstrom. I'm program coordinator and peer support worker at SafeSpace London, a collective by, with and for sex workers, allies, women and non-binary folks in London, Ontario, that's been operating since 2009. Many of our community members experience intersectional marginalization, including street-based sex workers, indigenous, racialized, trans and queer sex workers, sex workers experiencing housing instability or homelessness, and sex workers who use substances.

In London there is an entrenched anti-sex work lobby pervading social services, law enforcement and politics. London is an example of what happens when PCEPA is enforced. The experiences of our community within this criminalized environment show that not only does PCEPA not protect sex workers, but it actively harms us.

PCEPA hasn't reduced demand for sexual services in our area; however, it has forced sex work further underground, leaving no time for street-based workers to talk to the client ahead of time about condom use, payment or the location of services, because both client and worker are rushed due to fear of legal interference. It results in increased violence, because workers now have to work alone in secluded places and clients' cars due to the criminalization of their work. We have heard repeated stories of workers being driven to the outskirts of the city to evade police, only to be assaulted and left stranded.

Sex workers deserve safe working conditions and criminalizing any aspect of our work takes away that security. As one sex worker accessing the Space wanted to share with you today, “It's real work. If it was decriminalized we could have safe places for workers to work, and [we] would be able to charge higher wages. Like the workers on the street right now, with how it is, [we] can't, with how it is right now”.

Under PCEPA, government funding has also been given predominantly to anti-sex work organizations. This results in folks who actively engage in sex work not being allowed in many shelters and facing barriers to accessing community resources. This is something we see frequently in London. Unless sex workers conform and say that they're exploited or trafficked and willing to leave sex work, they are not allowed to access some shelters and programs.

As one sex worker who accesses said, “We're kind of actually considered a plague, ok, to other shelters.... They'd say 'no' [you do not fit the criteria for an 'abused woman']. You're a working girl—you're not allowed in here'. And I thought, 'Well, where the hell am I supposed to go?'” This narrative that you do not fit is a symptom of the stigmatizing, criminalized environment of PCEPA.

Sex workers in London also experience stigma and barriers when accessing health care and social services. We see medical staff refusing street-based sex workers adequate treatment and sex workers being flagged in social work systems. The stigma perpetuated by PCEPA also magnifies the harms done to workers who are members of already marginalized communities.

At SafeSpace, we offer services like peer support, harm reduction services and system navigation to help address the systemic harms of this law, but we do not have the resources available to us to provide the full scope of support needed when harm, surveillance and stigma are being perpetrated at all levels of care in society by the directives of PCEPA.

It is not safe for people who do sex work to report to police under PCEPA. Instead, workers create our own in-community “bad date” reporting systems. At SafeSpace, that includes a bad date reporting line and a bad date information flyer.

We experience ongoing reports of police harassment and assault, and when workers attempt to report incidents, police have instead found a way to charge them using PCEPA, like through “blocking traffic” charges, third party charges or saying that they're working in an illegal area.

PCEPA also magnifies systemic racism at the hands of police. As one indigenous sex worker wanted us to share about the law, “They don't care about us. Like we're people too. There are like 6 or 8 (indigenous) workers missing right now [in London] and they don't care. I don't see posters, I don't see posts, I don't see police combing.”

This is a problem of systemic marginalization by PCEPA. More police training will not help. The police are guided by PCEPA to criminalize and eliminate sex work, an undeniable facet of which is the elimination of us as sex workers. If you want sex workers to have a better relationship with the legal system, the first step will always be full decriminalization of sex work.

PCEPA claims to protect the dignity and equality of all Canadians; however, it perpetrates real harms against the people it claims to help by surrounding sex work with criminal consequences and conflating trafficking with sex work. PCEPA gives society the message that the government wants us eradicated—that sex workers and our jobs are affronts to society. Sex workers are not a threat to your communities; we are members of your communities.

PCEPA does not encourage sex workers to leave sex work. Instead, it gives us this message, “Stop and obey or we will make this so difficult and dangerous that you die.” And that has been happening: This law has been marginalizing and killing us.

Sex workers are impacted by this law every day, and it's essential that our voices and perspectives are centred in this discussion. We are asking you to fully repeal PCEPA and decriminalize sex work.

Thank you.

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