Canada’s Sex Work Legislation Must Change

Evania Pietrangelo-Porco

This essay is part of a series.

In Part 1 of this series, I provided a historical overview of Canada’s sex work legislation. In Part 2, I compared The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, or Bill C-36 (2014), with its predecessor, Bill C-49 (1985), ultimately arguing that both Bills are nearly identical. Now, for the final article of this series, I assert a need for change. I outline the historical and contemporary consequences of Bill C-49 and C-36 and why Canada’s sex work legislation must change.

To fully understand the consequences of the parallels between Bills C- 36 and C- 49, I need to talk about Indigenous women. Indigenous women, cis and trans, are overrepresented in Canada’s outdoor sex trade.^[1]

The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls’ final report, Reclaiming Power and Place, thoroughly examines the root causes of Canada’s MMIWG2S crisis. These causes include social and economic marginalization, legal and individual racism, supposed addiction, and intergenerational trauma.^[2] Indigenous Peoples, which the Inquiry makes clear, are not more inclined to violent outbursts, crime, childhood abuse, poverty, homelessness, lack of resources and education, and addiction. Canada’s racist and sexist colonial legacy (past and present) directly equates Indigeneity with these stereotypes.^[3]

This legacy normalizes the idea of all Indigenous Peoples, especially Indigenous women, as violent, poor, uneducated, and prone to addiction. Canada’s colonialism exacerbates existing conditions that have forced many into precarious social and economic situations- circumstances where sex work has offered support and respite.^[4]

Historical views of Indigenous women as “sexually available” equate all Indigenous women and femme persons as sex workers and have been used to justify violence against them.^[5] In a deadly intersection of anti-Indigenous racism and whorephobia, all Indigenous women become unrapable, unmurderable, and, ultimately, disposable.

These ideas are significant factors informing Canada’s increasing number of missing and murdered sex working and non-sex working sisters, brothers, and gender-non-conforming kin. Without looking at colonialism, you cannot fully understand Canada’s laws, sex work legislation, or the number of intersecting issues informing Bill C-49 and C-36. Likewise, you cannot fully understand why so many were/remain forsaken, “wouldn’t be pissed on if they were on fire,” why Canada’s sex work laws have/are dangerous, and why these laws should change.^[6]

Bill C-49 was a death warrant. Although it impacted sex workers across the entire country, this legislation helped create what is known as the “killing fields” of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. C-49 led to the most prolific and horrendous serial killings in Canadian history. C-49’s ambiguous definition of “public space” meant that any space could be deemed “public.” So, outdoor sex workers had to act quickly. They had to screen clients in mere moments. They had to write down potential bad date license plates at lightning speed. Sex workers also had to move further and further away from well-populated areas to avoid police surveillance. In short, it isolated the already isolated.

These conditions allowed a serial killer (who shall remain nameless because naming is power) to thrive for nearly 20 years. These conditions allowed and continue to allow predators to thrive. R. P. was charged with the murders of 26 women, although he claimed to have killed 49. The DNA (to name only a handful) of Dawn Cray, Sarah de Vries, Sereena Abotsway, Diana Melnick, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Brenda Wolfe, Georgina Papin, and Marnie Frey were found on his farm. Most of the women on the farm were sex workers, and half were of Indigenous descent.

Bill C-36, likewise, criminalizes street-based sex work in that it makes solicitation illegal in any area where people under 18 may be present- making it illegal to solicit almost everywhere.^[7] Street-based workers will, therefore, be unable to screen clients, negotiate transactional terms, and be pushed further into isolated areas.^[8] The “…most visible and marginalized sex workers will continue to be over-policed and under-protected by the laws in Bill C-36…”^[9] C-36 has once again made Vancouver a killing field as many Indigenous women, girls, femme folks, and 2-Spirit persons continue to go missing from the city’s Downtown Eastside. This is the consequence of upholding the unconstitutional laws sex workers fought so hard to (unsuccessfully) repeal.^[10]

Canada’s current sex work legislation needs to change for, as far as I see it, three reasons.

First, based on the initial challenges put forward by Bedford, Canada failed to change the law by December 2014. Bedford challenged the provisions on keeping a bawdy house, living off the avails of prostitution, and sexual solicitation in public. Considering Bill C-36 became a veritable crusade against child prostitution and sex trafficking, and the solicitation provisions didn’t change, a case can be made that sex work has been legal in Canada since 2014.

Second, and most importantly, people are dying. Sex workers’ lives are directly at risk because of C-36.

Third, Bill C-36 is a solemn reminder that only the illusion of change has occurred. The PCEPA is a reiteration of previous legal and social cycles. These cycles will only continue if we do not change Canada’s laws.

Evania Pietrangelo-Porco is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at York University. Her work primarily focuses on Vancouver and Toronto’s on-street sex trade from the 1970s to the 2010s.

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^[1] Lauren Sampson, “‘The Obscenities of this Country’: Canada v. Bedford and the Reform of Canadian Prostitution Laws,” Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy 22, no. 137 (2014): 161. doi: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1292&context=djglp and Zoë Goodall, “United by the Problem, Divided by the Solution: How the Issue of Indigenous Women in Prostitution Was Represented at the Deliberations on Canada’s Bill C-36,” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 11, vol. 31 (2019): 236-237. Doi: https://www.powerottawa.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Goodall-united-by-the-problem-2019.pdf

^[2] National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry Into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Volume 1a, 2021, 17, 44, and 324, https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Final_Report_Vol_1a-1.pdf

^[3] Reclaiming Power and Place, 2021, 276, 565, and 630.

^[4] Reclaiming Power and Place, 2021, 565 and 630.

^[5] Reclaiming Power and Place, 2021, 73 and 276.

^[6] Wally T. Oppal, Forsaken: The Report of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry, [Victoria, B.C.]: Missing Women Commission, 2012,  https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/law-crime-and-justice/about-bc-justice-system/inquiries/forsaken-es.pdf and Jason Gratl, “‘Wouldn’t Piss on Them If They Were on Fire’: How Discrimination Against Sex Workers, Drug Users and Aboriginal Women Enabled a Serial Killer: Report of Independent Counsel to the Commissioner of the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry,” [Vancouver, B.C.]: Gratl & Company, 2012, https://www.scribd.com/document/103641727/Independent-Counsel-Report-to-Commissioner-of-Inquiry-August-16-2012?irclickid=QgD0VASc2xyPTdqVHvQPgw4zUkCyHUX7Ez2JyE0&irgwc=1&irpid=10078&sharedid=huffpost.com&utm_campaign=Scribd_affiliate_pdm_acquisition_Skimbit+Ltd.&utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=impact

^[7] Artuso, “Sex workers urge premiers not to enforce new prostitution law,”2014.

^[8] Ibid.

^[9] Ibid.

^[10] Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform,  “Our Constitutional Challenge to PCEPA,” accessed November 6, 2024, https://sexworklawreform.com/our-constitutional-challenge-to-pcepa/