Public forum coming up with Victoria Police Chief Jamie Graham, Sept. 7, from 7-9 p.m.  at Canada West University, 950 Kings Rd. The topic: "Families, Mental Illness and Police Involvement." Sounds like required viewing if you've ever wondered how police deal with people in an acute phase of their mental illness when they get a complaint.

 If you follow the news, you'll know that a significant number of people in Canada and elsewhere end up killed by police in conflicts that occur due to somebody's mental illness. Often the person's family has even phoned in the initial complaint as a way of getting help for their loved one. Too often, it goes very badly - witness the tragic story unfolding in Pickering, Ont. right now. We all know police have a tough job to do, but there has to be a better way.

Sadly, I can't make this Sept. 7 forum, but I hope to send somebody in my stead to report back. Register at  250-384-4225 or admin.bcss@shaw.ca. The forum is being hosted by the local chapter of the B.C. Schizophrenia Society. 

I'm going to be writing about the "camping" problems on Pandora boulevard this Friday - did a quick search on Google News around homelessness and discovered this story out of Australia, which now puts its homeless population at 105,000. Can't imagine what Canada's figure would be if we ever added everything up, seeing as B.C. has at least 15,000 people living homeless even by conservative estimates. The one thing that seems to unite all the western, democratic countries these days is a staggering rise in homelessness over the last couple orf decades.

I always wondered how funerals for poor people got paid for, and now we know, at least in Toronto. Haven't been able to find B.C.'s rules yet, but here's a related story from 2008 about the same issue in Quebec. Looks like prices have risen significantly in less than two years if you compare the figures from these two stories.

Creating prey for the next Pickton

Our sex-work laws kill people.

We had a reminder of that just last week, when Willie Pickton’s murderous ways were news again. Only the streets can provide so many potential victims to a predator like him, and it’s our ineffective and dangerous laws around sex work that create those streets.

Then last Friday, the Vancouver Police Department released the report that we all knew had to come - one that detailed the tragic inability of B.C.’s police forces to act on years of tips that women were being killed at Pickton’s farm. I’ve watched our conflicted attitude around the sex industry for too long to be surprised by the public’s muted response to that damning report.

We talk a good game about how much concern we have for the women who Pickton and his ilk prey on. But our actions tell a different story every time. It’s beyond ironic that even as the shameful story of B.C.’s missing women returns to the headlines, the federal government is introducing much tougher penalties that can only increase risks for sex workers.

We light candles for dead women without a moment’s thought for the appalling working conditions that primed them as targets for murder. We lament the Pickton legacy without giving one hoot for the people who we continue to banish to the fringes. The hypocrisy is unbearable sometimes.

I was working with sex workers at PEERS Victoria when Pickton was on trial. Media outlets from across Canada called me frequently to ask what I thought, and whether anything was changing for sex workers now that there had been so much publicity about the hard life of a street-entrenched sex worker.

How can anything change when our laws remain resolutely the same? Working outdoors and alone in the middle of the night would be a dangerous business no matter what product is being sold. As long as we continue to deny adult sex workers a safer workplace and a place in our communities, nothing changes.

The federal government’s recent decision to ramp up penalties for people convicted of keeping a common bawdyhouse will add significantly to the risks. People convicted of operating a brothel will now face a mandatory jail sentence of at least five years (compared to a maximum of two years under the previous law). 

The Department of Justice says the change is needed to fight organized crime. Unfortunately, the tougher penalties will also ensnare many, many independent sex workers and small business people operating thousands of escort agencies, massage parlours and bathhouses across Canada.

Perhaps there are still some people who believe that closing down brothels will eliminate the sex trade. I’m not one of them.

The commercial sex industry thrives in every country of the world, courtesy of a rock-solid customer base and a strong profit motive. A crackdown on indoor venues won’t stop prostitution, it will merely push sex workers deeper into the shadows and closer to the streets.

How is it that we can mourn the Pickton murders so eloquently, yet do nothing to address the real issues for sex workers?

We have erected monuments to murdered women. Lit a few thousand candles in their memory. Spent a small fortune on bringing Pickton to justice.  But we haven’t done a thing to reduce the risks for  Canada’s sex workers, who apparently hold our interest only when they’re dead.

Our laws are as conflicted as we are. The sale of sex is legal in Canada but anywhere that it happens is by definition illegal, because a bawdyhouse is wherever a sex worker regularly conducts business. You can sell sex through a newspaper ad, but risk arrest if caught soliciting customers in a public place.

The last time our country’s police forces cracked down hard on indoor sex venues was in the 1970s. The result was a notable rise in street prostitution and an even more notable increase in assaults and murders involving sex workers.

Can we possibly be here again? That would be the biggest tragedy of all - to have learned nothing from the deaths and suffering of so many women and their families.

Not everybody shares my opinion on the sex industry, of course. But I think even the nay-sayers want laws that work. Our laws are all but useless in preventing the sale of sex, but frighteningly effective at increasing the misery and danger for those in the industry.

Canada has poorly considered law, random enforcement and a strong undercurrent of moral judgment when it comes to sex work. It’s a lethal combination.

More jail time for people with the audacity to want to work indoors certainly won’t change that. Neither will tears and candlelight vigils.

Very worrying stuff going on around the changes to Canada's bawdyhouse laws. By lumping bawdyhouses in with other "signature activities" of organized crime, the federal government will dramatically increase jail term for people convicted of operating a bawdyhouse - from a maximum two years to a mandatory minimum sentence of at least five years.

 Seeing as the law has already defined a bawdyhouse as anywhere that a sex worker routinely does business with her clients, that sets the stage for a crackdown on indoor sex work. And as we learned in the last crackdown in the 1970s, that in turn sets the stage for an increase in street prostitution and a rise in violent crimes against sex workers.

Here's the press release and the backgrounder on the issue released by the Department of Justice in early August. I'll be writing about this in my Friday column.