Bawdy Politics

Opinion by Antonia Zerbisias for The Star, 27 Aug 2010:

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/853114--bawdy-politics-critics-say-new-regulation-endangers-sex-workers-lives

Bawdy Politics: Critics say new regulation endangers sex workers' lives

It's hard to picture Claire Jones in bed with organized crime.

The curvy sex worker, who has been plying her prodigious assets for seven years now, could one day face five years in jail if she works with other "girls'' at her luxury downtown condo.

And she does, at least sometimes.

New regulations announced earlier this month by Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, regulations aimed at strengthening "the ability of law enforcement to fight organized crime,'' put her at risk.

Enacted in the dead of summer without Parliamentary debate, the regulations give government the powers to wiretap, deny bail, and move in on people without the usual safeguards such as warrants.

They affect everything from illegal gaming operations to auto theft rings.

But what Jones worries about is that they also include "the keeping of a common bawdy house.''

That's defined in the Criminal Code of Canada as "a place that is kept or occupied, or resorted to by one or more persons, for the purpose of prostitution or the practice of acts of indecency."

As for what constitutes "organized crime,'' the law says all it takes is three or more people committing serious offences for financial benefit.

So, in the eyes of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government, a trio of prostitutes partying together with their "dates'' are tantamount to The Sopranos, and deserve the same treatment as gun runners or drug gangs. Instead of a maximum two-year term, sex workers could now face "at least five years'' in prison, have all their assets seized and their children taken away.

That despite how prostitution is not illegal in Canada.

What is illegal is keeping that common bawdy house, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living off the avails of the trade, which means that, for example, a sex worker putting her adult child through university is against the law, and would designate that child as a "pimp.''

What independent sex workers who do "in-calls'' are worried about is that the new regulations could push them into the streets, where it's both unclean and unsafe.

And anyway, do you want them on your corner?

Make no mistake. There are so-called bawdy houses all over Toronto.

Says Valerie Scott of Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC), "I laugh when people say they've never met a sex worker. Yes you have. You just don't know it. And if you live in a condominium building, there are one or two sex workers in there. You just don't know it."

All of which makes this new regulation absurd, says Scott, especially since there are many tough laws dealing with the very real problems of human trafficking, child exploitation plus other crimes associated with organized crime.

The new regulations should leave the consenting adult sex workers ? small business operators, in essence?alone.

"Lumping us under organized crime and giving us a five-year prison sentence for working indoors, in safe clean environments, is ridiculous,'' says Jones, which, of course, is not her real name. "We're not trafficking in drugs, we're not trafficking in people, we're providing a service.''

But, to the minority Conservative government, it's all part of law-and-order agenda which includes a $9 billion investment in new prisons.

"This government engages a lot in symbolic politics,'' says lawyer Alan Young, who has been fighting a constitutional challenge on behalf of Ontario members of SPOC, arguing that the current laws put prostitutes at risk. "There are some things the Conservatives do that actually have a dramatic impact on the criminal justice system ? and they may be negative ? but there are a lot of things they do that have very little impact. They simply are being done to send messages that we are the tough old boys from a different moral era.''

Still, the government pushes on with its crusading, crime-fighting image.

Ironically, as reports over the past few weeks have revealed, police forces bungled the Pickton case. Sex workers who had evidence that might have prevented more deaths were discounted, just because they were deemed not credible as witnesses.

"I actually don't think the government cares about sex workers; to them it's just ?oh they're going after organized crime,''' says NDP MP Libby Davies, in whose Vancouver east riding serial killer Robert Pickton picked off his victims. "The whole underpinning of the missing women is that they weren't ever seen as people, they were seen as disposable garbage by everybody.''

In Canada, an average of seven sex workers a year has been reported murdered since 1991. Nobody knows how many have been battered or raped. But it must be a significant number. A recent survey of 200 San Francisco street sex workers showed that 70 per cent had been attacked, an average of 31 assaults per sex worker.

Too often violence goes unreported for fear of arrest.

Jones, a happily married of four with a degree in computer science, moved into the sex trade during the last dot.com bust. She, like other sex workers and just about all the experts on prostitution, say that the safest, and the cleanest, place to work is indoors.

"Where are you going to shower? Where you going to clean? How safe is that?'' she wonders. "Every client has a shower when they come through my door.

"Are you going to do it in the back seat of a car? And where are the used condoms going? You're picking up somebody in the street, how safe that? You have no idea who they are.

"We screen our clients through emails, telephone numbers and, indoors, it's all prebooked , preplanned. The clients are awesome. I've made great money. And I've not had a single bad experience."

"These regulatory changes are just going to drive sex workers more and more into vulnerable situations,'' insists Davies. "The more emphasis there is on an enforcement regime, the more that there's a fear of reporting violence.''

Still, the government pushes on with its crusading crime-fighting image. Which all goes to reinforce Young's case, fought by half a dozen crown attorneys and resulting in some 88,000 pages of evidence. He's out to prove that, with the laws putting sex workers at risk, their human rights are being violated.

A decision by Justice Susan Himel is expected next month.

"It's kind of funny because everything that has happened since the case was argued simply underscores what we're trying to establish,'' notes Young. "The revelation about Pickton underscored that there has to be a safe haven for street workers, whether they take it or not, when you see how inept the police were in responding to the missing women.

"And then you have Harper saying, well we're going to make bawdy house more serious. So his message is, we're not going to let you move indoors to a safer place. There's a real sort of Alice in Wonderland absurdity to what's happening right now in legal and political responses to the sex trade."

What's more, say experts, the new regulations could lead to even more abuses of sex worker rights.

"Yes, I am fearful as to how the police will use these new powers to keep us all ?moral,'" says Dr. Michael Goodyear, assistant professor of medicine at Dalhousie University.

He has conducted extensive research on sex work, both from the legal and health perspectives ? and one of the changes may reduce organized crime, he adds.

"There is actually more evidence to suggest that prohibitions of morals?alcohol, drugs, sex?create an atmosphere facilitating organized crime and violence,'' Goodyear adds. "This was spelled out in the Declaration of Vienna, which Canada refuses to sign.'' As Davies, who was part of a 2006 task force examining the prostitution laws, points out, there's no solid reason to include bawdy houses in the new regulations.

?I asked that they provide me with research and evidence as to why these changes are necessary ? which I know they don't have because they never do,'' she says. ?It's their own political optics.?

But the bottom line is, say the workers, bawdy work may be the only capital crime in Canada.

?I think we have a de facto death penalty in this country for sex workers and it's called the communicating law and the bawdy house law,'' says Scott. ?And I wish the federal government would either decriminalize it or just formalize the death penalty so we know where we stand.''