Répertoire de recherche

Overview
The introduction of the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) on 6 December 2014 fundamentally changed the regulatory landscape surrounding prostitution in Canada. POWER’s Research Repository (RR) is a clearinghouse of research about the implications of this new legal context. To that end the RR below brings together academic and community knowledges with a particular focus on post-PCEPA research. POWER does not endorse the literature in the RR, but aspires to facilitate access to a wide range of community and scholarly knowledge on sex work in Canada. We do so without assuming a position in relation to the ideas or positions taken by authors.

Methodology
For this project we developed a detailed inclusion/exclusion criteria. In brief, entries were only added to the RR below if they were published works (no blogs or news sites) from 2015 forward and were either exclusively or in large part about Canadian sex workers or Canadian sex work laws. Publications that are about trafficking were excluded unless the author was making a comparative analysis and significantly acknowledged the difference between trafficking and sex work. For example, an article about how the discourse on trafficking impacts migrant sex workers’ rights would be included while an article on how trafficking impacts racialized women would not. While trafficking deserves to be studied as rigorously as any other social issue, its conflation with sex work as well as its over-representation in popular culture and scholarship alike requires explicit clarity in how it does and does not appear in POWER’s RR.

Pre-2015 research
Before diving into the RR below we would like to draw your attention to two pre-PCEPA bibliographies. The first, Anglophone Research and Related Work on Prostitution in Canada, was compiled by John Lowman who generously allowed us to post it. It includes research up till 1 January 2012. The second bibliography (2012-2014 inclusive) was compiled by Zoey Jones and is available here. If there are missing reference please advise us and we will gladly add them to the appropriate bibliography.

*last update June 2021*

Books

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Journal Articles

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Book Chapters

2019

2018

  • Organizing on the Corner: Trans Women of Colour and Sex Worker Activism in Toronto in the 1980s and 1990s
    in Marvellous Grounds: Queer of Colour Histories of Toronto (Between the Lines Press)
    Syrus Marcus Ware, Monica Forrester, and Chanelle Gallant
    #transsexworkers, #racializedsexworkers, #activism, #Toronto
    – – –
  • Migrant Sex Work Justice: A Justice-Based Approach to the Anti-Trafficking Movement
    in Marvellous Grounds: Queer of Colour Histories of Toronto (Between the Lines Press)
    Tings Chak, Chanelle Gallant, Elen Lam, and Kate Zen
    #migrantsexworkers, #activism, #Toronto

2017

2015

Dissertations & Theses

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Reports

2022

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Key Legal Cases

On September 28, 2010, Ontario Superior Court Justice Himel ruled (Bedford v. Canada, 2010 ONSC 4264) that key sections of Canada’s three principle prostitution laws (bawdy-house provision, living on the avails of prostitution, and communicating in public) contravened section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and were therefore unconstitutional. Appealed by the Attorneys General of Canada and Ontario, the ruling was partially overturned some 18 months later, on March 26, 2012, by the Ontario Court of Appeal (Canada (AG) v Bedford , [2012] ONCA 186. The appeal court justices accepted that Criminal Code (CC) s 212, was “overbroad and its effects are grossly disproportionate to its objectives” and sought to remedy this by “reading in” the words “in circumstances of exploitation”; they accepted that the bawdy-house law (s 210) was grossly disproportionate and that the word prostitution should be removed from the s 197(1) definition of bawdy-house (as it applies to s 210). However the justices (in a 3-2 split decision) ruled that the law prohibiting communicating in public for the purposes of prostitution (s 213.1) was grossly disproportionate to the legislators’ intent.

On December 20, 2013 the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) (Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford [2013] 3 SCR 1101) reversed the Appeal court decision ruling that all three of the challenged laws were unconstitutional on the basis that they contravene sex workers’ Charter safety and security rights. The decision was stayed for one year to give law makers the opportunity to introduce new laws should they choose to do so. The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA) came into effect on December 6, 2014.

Between the Ontario Superior Court and Supreme Court of Canada decisions the Conservative government of Stephen Harper passed an omnibus crime bill, the Safe Streets and Communities Act, in 2012. This act legislated changes to numerous other acts including the Immigration Refugee Protection Act (IRPA). The change to section 30 of the IRPA included an amendment « to protect foreign nationals who are at risk of being subjected to humiliating or degrading treatment, including sexual exploitation. » Months later this broad language was operationalized through instructions from then-Immigration Minister Jason Kenney to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada staff that explicitly forbid the issuing of work visas to migrant workers involved in any commercial sex industries as well as the banning of migrant workers on open work visas from working in any commercial sex industries. While PCEPA uses the rhetoric of trafficking and exploitation to criminalize all forms of commercial sex, the changes to IRPA and the criminalization of migrant sex workers specifically predates its passing by more than two years.

Beginning in 2016, the newly elected federal government introduced various bills that would repeal the provision criminalizing anal intercourse as part of the Liberal Government’s apology for past state-persecution of gays and lesbians. This included Bill C-32, Bill C-39, and ultimately the omnibus crime Bill C-75. Due to the intervention of gay and lesbian historians, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights unanimously amended C-75 to include the repeal of both vagrancy and the bawdy-house laws. Bill C-75 received royal assent on June 21, 2019 officially ending the use of vagrancy and bawdy-house laws to arrest and charge sex workers and queer bathhouse/party goers alike.

Sex workers once again turned to the courts to engage in strategic litigation in October 2022. Lawyers for the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform argued in front of the Ontario Superior Court in Toronto (CASWLR v. Canada) that Criminal Code sections 213 [communicating in public], 268.1(1) [purchasing sexual services], 286.2(1) [material benefit], 286.3(1) [procuring], and 286.4 [advertising] contravened sex workers’ rights. In particular, they argued that these laws are inconsistent with sex workers’ rights as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to life, liberty, and security (s.7), equality and non-discrimination (s.15). freedom of expression (s.2b), and freedom of association (s. 2d). Disappointingly, on September 18, 2023, Justice Goldstein of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice dismissed the arguments put forth by sex workers and ruled that “PCEPA [The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act] was an explicit response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Bedford (SCC). I find that it is constitutional.” (2023 ONSC 5197, at 10).

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Questions about the Research Repository?  Did we miss something?  Contact RyanConrad<at>cunet.carleton.ca