Sex workers who work in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, British Columbia have faced some of the most extreme violence in Canadian\u00a0history:\u00a0Robert\u00a0Pickton,\u00a0Donald Bakker,\u00a0and others have preyed on female identified sex workers here for decades.\u202f\u202fSo why are the sex workers in this part of Canada more vulnerable\u00a0than in any other part of the Country?\u00a0What makes Vancouver different?<\/p>\n
The difference cannot be attributed to Canada\u2019s sex work laws that\u00a0conspire\u00a0to force sex workers to work on the street in isolated locations to avoid the police \u2013 as that applies to all sex workers across Canada. The difference is the sheer number of injection drug using sex workers that live and work in the DTES. As Canadians,\u00a0we are letting this community of vulnerable workers down in two very tangible ways with these two recent pieces of legislation:<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Respect for Communities Act (C-2), and the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (C-36).<\/p>\n
Bill\u00a0C-2, a Conservative bill that became law this past summer, outlines a new, extremely prohibitive framework for setting up new supervised injection\u00a0facilities (SIF) across the country, and will also make it difficult for the only existing SIF, Insite in Vancouver, to meet these requirements and remain open. Street based sex workers in DTES have benefitted from the health and safety services provided by\u00a0Insite\u00a0over the last 12 years. This new legislation does not directly impact all sex workers in Canada, but it creates a huge disservice to the street based sex workers who also inject drugs.<\/p>\n
Bill C-36, a Conservative\u00a0bill that\u00a0became law in November 2014, is one that continues to criminalize the buying of sex\u00a0between two consenting adults, but NOT the selling of sex.\u202f In a June 5th<\/sup>\u00a02014 CBC News interview, Katrina Pacey from the Pivot Legal Society, referring to Bill C-36, stated that, \u201cThis is not the \u201cNordic\u201d approach, nor is it a Canadian variation on the \u201cNordic\u201d approach. It is an unconstitutional variation of our broken laws that impose more danger, more crimination, and fewer safe options, contrary to the requirement of the Supreme Court of Canada to address these dangerous and ineffective laws.\u201d<\/p>\n As a nurse at Insite, a female sex worker once confided in me that there was concern\u00a0about a violent john in the area.\u00a0Due to this risk, she\u00a0had arranged for someone to \u2018spot\u2019 for her (\u2018spotting\u2019 is the act of looking out for someone\u2019s safety\u00a0who is engaging in sex work). But Bill C-36 actually considers \u2018spotting\u2019\u00a0a criminal act in itself, as it\u00a0equates this activity\u00a0to being employed by a sex worker, and as such serves to criminalize those who are only wanting to help keep people safe from harm.<\/p>\n So what are the consequences of both of these bills?<\/p>\n Addressing C-2, the research shows that many more lives would be saved from overdose and disease with\u00a0increased SIF\u2019s, but those benefits are being dismissed. And even for people who\u00a0believe that treatment is the only\u00a0option for people who use drugs (PWUD), a well-known fact is that, once you are dead,\u00a0you can no longer receive treatment.<\/p>\n With\u00a0C-36 we are continuing to criminalize all activities around sex work except for the\u00a0actual act of selling sex.\u00a0Working indoors would\u00a0undoubtedly\u00a0be safer, especially if there were other sex workers working together in the same facility, perhaps with a body guard.\u00a0But they are unable to\u00a0do so\u00a0due to\u00a0the current law prohibiting sex workers to employee staff and work indoors as a regulated business.\u00a0As such,\u00a0sex workers\u00a0often choose to work in remote,\u00a0isolated areas outside and alone because they do not want to\u00a0be targeted by law enforcement.<\/p>\n Bills C-2 and\u00a0C-36 only serve to maintain an environment where vulnerable Canadians\u00a0are at risk from physical harm, disease\u00a0and death. Harm reduction facilities like Insite provide heath and safety services that have been proven, through extensive documentation, to save lives, which is precisely what health care and human rights legislation should be designed to achieve. Bill C-2 and C-36 however, do not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sex workers who work in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver, British Columbia have faced some of the most extreme violence in Canadian\u00a0history:\u00a0Robert\u00a0Pickton,\u00a0Donald Bakker,\u00a0and others have preyed on female identified sex workers here for decades.\u202f\u202fSo why are the sex workers in this part of Canada more vulnerable\u00a0than in any other part of the Country?\u00a0What makes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":3160,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harm-reduction","category-overdose"],"acf":[],"mb":[],"yoast_head":"\n