No cure-all for sex trade

For a time on Tuesday, in the hours after an Ontario judge issued the ruling that struck down the province's prostitution laws, the voices of Canada's sex workers finally rang out on the airwaves and in the headlines.

Now, as many advocates for sex workers celebrate the victory and brace for the federal government's response, a question emerges. If the writing is on the wall for Canada's prostitution laws, what comes next?

If it's true that what goes around comes around, perhaps the answer lies in our past.

In the early 1900s, an enclave of madams set up shop in Point Douglas, creating a community run almost entirely by women, secured by private detectives and usually pointedly ignored by local police. This colourful, rowdy neighbourhood thrived for four years, peaking at 58 brothels before the political tide turned and police shut it down.

It's not exactly what current sex-worker advocacy groups picture, but it's close.

They look to a time when the world's oldest profession has unions, wage standards and health benefits. Winnipeg researcher Kelly Gorkoff ponders brothels where clients are screened and security guards protect the service providers inside.

At Mount Carmel Clinic's Sage House, program manager Tammy Reimer isn't there yet. "Changing a law in a day and thinking all the social constructs that have brought women to street-level sex trade are gone? Racism no longer exists! Poverty, gone! Addictions gone!" Reimer sighs. "A law isn't going to shift those things."

One of the reasons for this is that the face of sex work is diverse. It sometimes looks like an adventurous, passion-seeking soccer mom; other times, it looks like a woman in desperate poverty, pushed into turning tricks to get a fix of the addiction she can't shake alone. To these extremes, the potential fall of Canadian prostitution laws could mean different things. To successful courtesans with a hush-hush condo retreat, it could legitimize their income and foster organization and professionalization; to the approximately 300 marginalized and mostly aboriginal sex workers on Winnipeg's streets, the benefits of decriminalization are muddier.

In 1995, Gorkoff was a research associate on a national study that explored the realities of women in sex work. They found that while policy makers and the public often pushed "saving" women from prostitution, sex workers themselves often had a different view.

"What they're saying is, 'We're OK, (but) we have these addictions issues.' And they needed services that spoke to that, as opposed to focusing on their sex work," says Gorkoff, who supports decriminalization. Toppling laws won't bring those services; legalization isn't a cure-all. In Amsterdam, the legal De Wallen red-light district is rampant with human trafficking.

On the other hand, after New Zealand decriminalized prostitution in 2003, a study found the shift had been smooth and sex workers were more likely to report crimes against them.

Should the laws turn around again, local advocates aren't ready to rush back to the city's old Point Douglas ways or anything else. "Rushing is the scariest word for me," Sage House's Reimer says. "We cannot rush these decisions... I think it has to be done with an enormous amount of thought and an enormous amount of research. (But) ultimately, we've opened up a conversation nationally, and that's a great thing."

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca

The backstory

It took Ontario superior court judge Susan Himel a year to produce the 131-page ruling that trumpeted the need for improved safety in a country where a Coquitlam, B.C., pig farmer quietly murdered woman after woman from the Vancouver streets. "The (danger posed to workers by) the communicating law is simply too high a price to pay for the alleviation of social nuisance," Himel said. "I find that the danger faced by prostitutes greatly outweighs any harm which may be faced by the public."

The federal government is appealing the decision. Should the appeal fail, Ontario's prostitution laws will be overturned and, observers say, other provinces' prostitution laws will tumble like dominoes.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 4, 2010 A12