We are individuals, academics, and organizations coming together to express our opposition to Bill S-224. Its proposed amendments to the human trafficking offence will intensify the criminalization of sex workers, racialized people, and migrants under the guise of fighting human trafficking. It also has damaging, wide-reaching implications that extend to workers beyond the sex industry.
You can still sign on here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfpZen_ggdhzmpe5yiUL37n1Llba3Sm8AOZjzuc5UM5kEIo7A/viewform
In the last few decades, groups that are anti-sex work, racist, and anti-migrant have weaponized anti-human trafficking campaigns and policies to promote their agenda. While claiming to combat human trafficking, they advocate for the criminalization of all sex work, including increased policing and prosecution of Black, Indigenous, racialized, migrants, sex workers, and their communities. Bill S-224 is another example of this criminalization that functions to further erase and silence sex workers speaking to their experiences.
When anti-sex work groups, policymakers, and law enforcement wrongly equate sex work with sexual exploitation and human trafficking, sex workers — particularly Black, Indigenous, racialized and migrants — become the targets. Raids of sex industry workplaces have ballooned with increases in anti-human trafficking funding, initiatives, and policies. In the last two years, thousands of sex workers in Canada have been harassed, investigated, racially profiled, evicted, detained, deported, and incarcerated by law enforcement in the name of anti-human trafficking initiatives. Instead of being protected, their privacy, rights, autonomy, and safety are violated and under the false guise of “protection” sex workers are cast as victims, their voices and experiences erased.
Bill S-224 will make it easier for courts to convict people without evidence of exploitation and without proving a “threat to safety”. This will exacerbate the conflation of sex work and sexual exploitation, casting the net of criminalization far too wide and further endangering sex workers and their support networks. While Bill S-224 further erases the experiences and perspectives of sex workers by conflating sex work with sexual exploitation and human trafficking, it will also lead to the further criminalization of Black sex workers, who are already disproportionately targeted, policed and identified as perpetrators of violence, traffickers and aggressors through racist policing strategies. Third parties associated with sex workers — such as family members or employers who advertise services, translate, or screen clients for safety — are already criminalized under current laws. If Bill S-224 passes, these essential support figures will risk human trafficking charges and up to 14 years in prison. Without their networks, sex workers will be pushed underground into dangerous and vulnerable conditions.
Many other industries will feel the effects of this Bill as well. By drastically expanding the definition of exploitation, many situations could lead to a trafficking charge. Meaningfully addressing labour exploitation and abuse requires a clearer understanding of the underlying issues. These harms are rooted in unfair labour, gender, and class relations and a web of discriminatory laws and policies, and should be addressed through labour protections — not by casting the net of criminalization even wider.
We urge the government to reject Bill S-224 and adopt a human rights-based approach to the violence and exploitation faced by the communities that centres labour rights, migrant rights, and sex workers’ rights. Effective strategies must address structural barriers that lead to exploitation and abuse, including poverty, precarious immigration status, and lack of access to affordable housing, healthcare, and social services- particularly the barriers racialized communities, migrants and LGBTQ2s+ communities experience in accessing these vital resources.
We urgent the federal government to:
- Reject Bill S-224 in its entirety.
- Fully decriminalize sex work by removing all sex work specific criminal offences.
- Remove immigration regulations prohibiting migrants from working in the sex industry.
- Stop surveillance, raids, detention, and deportations of all sex workers, including the disproportionate targeting of queer and trans, Black, Indigenous, racialized and migrant sex workers.
- Support non-carceral forms of safety such as decent work, healthcare, and housing for all.
- Ensure full and permanent immigration status for all in Canada, without exception.
- Invest in grassroots communities so they can support each other.
The following organizations have signed the statement as well as committed to stand in solidarity and fight against Bill S-224:
Aangen: A Community Service Organization
AESHA Project – University of British Columbia
Action Canada for Sexual Health and Rights
Action Santé Travesti(e)s et Transsexuel(le)s du Québec
AIDS Committee of Ottawa
ANSWER Society
Asian Canadian Labour Alliance
Asian Community AIDS Services (ACAS)
AWCCA Program at George Brown College
Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic
BC Civil Liberties Association
Bureau Of Power And Light
Butterfly (Asian and Migrant Sex Workers Support Network)
BWSS Battered Women’s Support Services
Canadian Labour Congress
Canadian Women’s Foundation
Centre for Gender and Sexual Health Equity – University of British Columbia
Centre for Spanish Speaking Peoples
Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic
Coalition des organismes communautaires québécois de lutte contre le sida
Collaborative Community Solutions
COCQ-SIDA
Cooperativo Da Vida
Decent Work and Health Network
DisAbled Women’s Network of Canada||Réseau d’action des femmes handicapées du Canada
Downsview Community Legal Services
Egale Canada
Elizabeth Fry Toronto
Embrave: Agency to End Violence
Émissaire
Eri Maestro/Migrante Canada
Family Service Toronto
Filipinas of HamOnt
Friends of Chinatown Toronto
Hamilton Asian Alliance
Hamilton Social Medicine Response Team (HAMSMaRT)
Healing For Everybody
HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario (HALCO)
HIV Legal Network
Hope 24/7
IAVGO Community Legal Clinic
Independent Jewish Voices – Toronto and York Region Chapter
International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific
Jane Finch Action Against Poverty
Justice fo Migrant Workers (J4MW)
Justice for Workers
Justice for Workers Guelph
JusticeTrans
Kareem Ibrahim Law
La Dauphine
Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington
Maggie’s SWAP
Migrant Sex Workers Project
Migrant Workers Alliance for Change
Mississauga Community Legal Services
Muslim alliance for sexual and gender diversity MASGD
No Pride in Policing Coalition
No More Silence
OCASI | Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants
Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres (OCRCC)
OPIRG Toronto
PACE society
Parkdale Community Legal Services
Peterborough AIDS Resource Network
Pivot Legal Society
Policing-Free Schools
Pozitive Pathways Community Service
Queer Ontario
Red Umbrella Sweden
RÉZO
S4 Collective
Safe Harbour Outreach Project (SHOP)
Safe Works Access Program (SWAP) – St. John’s
Sex Professionals of Canada
Sex Work Population Project
Sex Workers Advisory Network of Sudbury
Sex Workers’ Action Network of Waterloo Region
Shift (SafeLink Alberta)
Showing Up for Racial Justice – Toronto
Showing Up for Racial Justice Saskatoon – Treaty Six
SJSWC Margaurites Place
Society of Queer Momentum
South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario
South Asian Women’s Centre
SRHR Hubs
St. John’s Status of Women Council
Safe Harbour Outreach Project
St. John’s Women’s Centre
Social Planning Toronto
Stella, l’amie de Maimie
Stepping Stone Association
Streetworks
Students for Queer Liberation
Sudbury Workers Education and Advocacy Centre
Sustainable Mississauga
SWAN Waterloo Region
SWAP Hamilton
SWAPY Yukon
Table des organismes communautaires montréalais de lutte contre le VIH/sida (TOMS)
The 519
The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies
Transnational Law and Racial Justice Network
Trellis HIV & Community Care
University of British Columbia – Division of Social Medicine
Vivimos Juntxs, Comemos Juntxs
West Coast LEAF
Wisdom2Action
Women’s Centre for Social Justice, o/a WomenatthecentrE
Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF)
Women’s Shelters Canada | Hébergement femmes Canada
Work Safe Twerk Safe
Workers’ Action Centre
York University Critical Trafficking and Sex Work Studies Cluster
Yukon Status of Women Council
YWCA Toronto