Canadian Sex Workers Testify Against Bill C-36 in Senate Hearing

OTTAWA—As an onerous piece of legislation titled Bill C-36 makes its way through the Canadian Parliament that, if passed into law would erase all of the gains for Canadian sex workers that were provisionally realized as a result of last year's Supreme Court ruling in Canada v Bedford, sex workers opposed to the bill sponsored by Minister of Justice Peter Gordon MacKay, a member of the Conservative Caucus, have been appearing at a Senate hearing this week to argue against its passage and bring whatever pressure they can muster to bear. Thursday, according to The Star, a male sex worker named Maxime Durocher addressed the senators, telling them in no uncertain terms, "I don’t need to be saved, and all my friends who are in the sex work industry don’t need to be saved." He was accompanied by Tyler Megarry, an outreach worker with Montreal-based sex workers support group, RÉZO, who testified, “Our clients, men and women, are not perverts or criminals, and we are not victims. What we need is to be part of society just like everybody else: have law enforcement on our side.” Per The Star, "Both echoed the advice of several other groups advocating for current female sex workers: Bill C-36 will make life harder for male and female sex workers by scaring away good clients, and rushing communications with sketchy ones — meaning the work will become riskier, with little motivation to go to police." Wednesday, another sex worker appeared at the hearing, causing a major ruckus that got her thrown out. According to the National Post, "Terri-Jean Bedford, who calls herself “the most famous dominatrix in Canada,” threatened to expose politicians who supposedly avail themselves of the world’s oldest profession." Addressing the hearing, Belford threatened, "If this law passes I’m going to make you guys forget about Mike Duffy, because I’ve got more information and more proof on politicians in this country than you can shake a stick at, I promise." The Post reports that Belford, one of three sex workers who had successfully challenged earlier anti-prostitution laws, was later tossed out of Senate hearings "after exhausting the patience of Conservative committee chair Sen. Bob Runciman." The following is a summary of Bill C-36, courtesy of openparliament.ca. This enactment amends the Criminal Code to, among other things, (a) create an offence that prohibits purchasing sexual services or communicating in any place for that purpose; (b) create an offence that prohibits receiving a material benefit that derived from the commission of an offence referred to in paragraph (a); (c) create an offence that prohibits the advertisement of sexual services offered for sale and to authorize the courts to order the seizure of materials containing such advertisements and their removal from the Internet; (d) modernize the offence that prohibits the procurement of persons for the purpose of prostitution; (e) create an offence that prohibits communicating — for the purpose of selling sexual services — in a public place, or in any place open to public view, that is or is next to a place where persons under the age of 18 can reasonably be expected to be present; (f) ensure consistency between prostitution offences and the existing human trafficking offences; and (g) specify that, for the purposes of certain offences, a weapon includes anything used, designed to be use or intended for use in binding or tying up a person against their will. The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts. The current status of Bill C-36 can be found here. The complete text of Bill C-36 can be found here.