Search for the truth on sex work

 

So many untruths are being bandied about as the Tories try to railroad uncertain Canadians into accepting new prostitution laws that will criminalize even more of the industry.
    I know from my own circle of friends - at least the ones who aren't sex workers themselves - that it's almost like people are frightened to rethink what they think they know about the sex industry. Yet there is so much exceptional research out there that challenges this fuzzy belief that to be a sex worker is to be a helpless, trafficked victim dragged into the business by a man who will beat you if you don't comply.
    But surely the public's instinct to want to avoid thinking about an industry they find unpleasant hardly outweighs the rights of tens of thousands of other Canadians to a safer workplace and some respect and dignity. In other words, get informed, people.
    And here are some excellent research papers and relevant info to help get you started:

• London School of Economics study on incidence of violent pimps, or any pimps at all, in the lives of U.S. sex workers
• Multi-project Canadian study into sex work funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research
• Straight-up information on "third parties" in the Canadian sex industry put together by the Montreal sex-work group Stella
• Opinion pieces, blog posts and research by Canadian sociology professor Fran Shaver
• Prostitution research from SFU criminology professor John Lowman
• A 2010 study of adult Canadian buyers
• Reality about managers in the industry from the CIHR research project
• Editorial in The Economist
• PEERS Victoria web site with connections to informed, well-researched resources about sex work, management of sex work, clients and more
• Researchers question findings of a Norwegian study of how new and punitive laws are working to control the sex industry

Lest we forget: A tally of police shootings and taser deaths of Canadians with severe mental illness

     I am haunted by the 2013 police shooting death of Sammy Yatim, and the words of Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair this month that the recommendations that came out of the investigation of the 18-year-old's death won't be "left to gather dust." If only we could believe that.
     Blair has said versions of that before, in past years when Toronto police killed some other person with mental illness. The case of Sammy Yatim was particularly tragic, what with him being a young man alone on an empty streetcar when he was first shot nine times by the police and then tasered as he lay dying on the floor.  (See the enhanced YouTube video of his death taken by a passerby here.)
    But he's hardly the only sad story.
     One night last week I went looking for every archived news story I could find on fatal police shootings of people with mental illness, and found at least 36 such shootings in Canada since 1988.
     And at least half of the 21 known deaths of Canadians after being tasered by police have also involved people with mental illness. (Must be careful with the wording here, as Taser International continues to assert that tasers don't kill people, just tasers when combined with cocaine use or that new-fangled thing we call "excited delirium," which I imagine we would all experience when about to be shot or tasered by police).
    There's nothing wrong with the recommendations issued in the wake of Yatim's death.  But when you go back through most of the news coverage of those other 36 shootings, you will note a striking similarity. And yet, ill people who desperately need help continue to be killed instead.
     While the Yatim case is a clear exception, I don't mean to lay all the blame at the door of police officers. They've got tough jobs at the best of times, and our country's decision in the 1980s to cut loose people with serious mental illness is clearly the root of much of the problem. We have left police to manage those with severe and chronic illnesses, which has to be just about as nutty of a societal approach as any you'd see.
     But here we are, with no sign that we're serious as a society about doing anything to correct that terrible decision. And people  - well, men, more specifically, as only one death has involved a woman - continue to die at the hands of police instead of receiving the medical and community help they so urgently need. A man gets shot, an angst-ridden community who briefly cares wrings its hands, a report is issued recommending this, that and the other, and soon enough it's all forgotten until the next shooting. In fact, another man with mental illness has already been killed by Montreal police in the year since Sammy Yatim died.
     There is power in speaking a name. So here they are, by name, to be remembered as those whose deaths once led to similar recommendations as those for teenager Sammy Yatim. Some were implemented, others weren't. And the country rolled on, each shooting treated like a surprising one-off instead of the latest indicator of a disastrously failed mental-health system.
    Lest we forget.

Fatally shot by police:

2014 – Alain Magloire, Montreal

2013 – Michael McIsaac, Durham

2013 – Sammy Yatim, Toronto

2013 – Steve Mesic, Hamilton

2012 - Farshad Mohammadi, Montreal

2012 - Michael Eligon, Toronto

2011- Mario Hamel, Toronto

2010 – Reyal Jardine, Toronto

2010 - Sylvia Klbingaitis, Toronto (sole woman)

2007 – Paul Boyd, Vancouver

2009 – Jeff Hughes, Vancouver

2008  - Byron Debassige, Toronto

2007 – Unnamed man, Vancouver

2004 – Martin Ostopovich, Spruce Grove 

2004 – Joe Pagnotta, Langford

2004 – O’Brien Christopher-Reid, Toronto

2004  - Magencia Camaso, Saanich

2004 – Antonio Bellon, Toronto

2003 – Unnamed man, Vancouver

2000 = Darryl Power, Newfoundland

2000 – Norman Reid, Newfoundland

1997 – Edmund Yu, Toronto

2000 - Frank Hutterer, Ottawa 

2000 - Otto Vass, Vancouver

1999 – Unnamed man, Langley

1999 - Unnamed man, Vancouver

1997 – Thomas Alcorn, Vancouver

1997 – Unnamed man, Vancouver

1996 – Charles Albert Wilson, Vancouver

1996 – Wayne Williams, Toronto

1996 – Tommy Barnett, Toronto

1994 – Albert Moses, Toronto

1992 – Dominic Sabatino, Toronto

1988 – Lester Donaldson, Toronto

Fatally tasered and confirmed to have a mental illness:

2013 – Donald Menard, Montreal

2010 – Aron Firman, Collingwood, Ont

2007 – Howard Hyde, Nova Scotia

2007 – Claudio Castagnetta, Quebec City

2006 – Jason Doan, Red Deer

2005 – Kevin Geldart, Moncton

2005 – Alesandro Fiacco, Edmonton

2004 – Samuel Truscott, Kingston

2004 – Ronald Perry, Edmonton

2004 – Roman Andreichikov, Vancouver

2004 – Robert Bagnell, Vancouver (opinions divided as to whether he had mental health issues)

May your life be simple and your reservoir full

   

   This is how life almost off the grid can affect you in a mere 13 days: It’s thundering rain this afternoon at our borrowed beach house in the Discovery Islands, and my first thought when it started to fall was, “This will be good for the reservoir.”

    Paul and I are currently in the waning days of an amazing housesit on North Rendezvous Island, at a property that is normally a little summer resort for getting away from it all but at the moment is totally ours. I can hardly believe our good fortune to have all of Solstua West to ourselves. I would be indebted for life to owners Pete and Karen Tonseth for the opportunity had I not been already indebted for life to Karen for picking up me and a Honduran dog in Vancouver after we got stuck there in April with no way home to Victoria.

    But back to the edge of the grid. A home like this – solar electricity only, water an ongoing concern in the summer months, no grocery stores for miles and even then only if you can drive a boat there (which we don’t know how to do) – quickly gets you thinking differently about things.

    For me there’s usually never enough sun, but these past couple of weeks I’ve found myself dwelling on the consequences of too many hot days in a row. And I’m feeling genuine pleasure at the sound of the rain pounding down all around us right now, imagining the depleted reservoir filled to the brim again and the dry gardens and lawns grateful for a good soak.

    I’ve been stung by two bees since being here, which also brought home to me another aspect of life on a remote island: No easy access to medical care. I’m not allergic to bees but they say that can all change with the wrong bee. So I stood there for a few minutes after the first sting just to see if I’d just met my wrong bee, and thinking that if my time really had come, at least I’d be dying in brilliant sunshine on a lovely island. But it turned out to be just another bee sting.

    Before we left for the island, we packed provisions like we were headed for wilderness. I guess in a way we were; the nearest corner store is a 40-minute boat ride away on Quadra Island, and as mentioned, we don’t know how to operate a boat. (Or manoeuvre the intimidating Surge Narrows.) But it’s wilderness with a super-nice gas stove, on-demand hot water and solar-powered fridge and freezer. So I can’t complain, even if I did eat through my treasured bag of raisins way sooner than I’d intended and at this very moment would kill for a big restaurant meal of fish and chips.

    We have no TV here, but I knew I wouldn’t miss that much. It’s just so disappointing, all those channels and nothing interesting. I didn’t bring anywhere near enough books, but happily there’s a place called the Bluff Cabin where Solstua West guests can hang out, and it’s full of books. And there are two kayaks and about a million miles of water to explore.

    I’m in my thoughts more here, probably because there just aren't the same number of distractions. I’m an introvert who loves solitude, but now there are so few people around that I feel a bit excited when I see someone pulling up at the dock.

     It has been a restorative, peaceful time – a gift that has brought me back to this beautiful country of mine after more than two years of living in another country that I still miss a great deal. Life can be wonderfully simple, with space for reflecting on the light left on unnecessarily, the overly long shower, too much time on-line. I’m here with my most hated form of weather falling all around me, and I'm thinking: Let it come. 

CUPE Ontario has the right idea: Sex work regs ought to be about workers' rights

    CUPE is my new favourite union now that CUPE Ontario president Fred Hahn has written a piece in the National Post saying the thing Canadians should be aiming for in laws and regulations around the adult, consensual sex industry is a safer workplace for sex workers.
    So true. The violence and vulnerability that Justice Minister Peter McKay keeps going on about as he tries to push through the flawed and dangerous Bill C-36 exists primarily because sex workers don't enjoy any of the standard workplace protections that the rest of the country's workers rely on. When you're a sex worker, there is no workers' compensation board, no contract law, no employment standards. You can't even go to the police with a complaint without wondering if you might end up getting charged yourself, and that will be doubly true if Bill C-36 is passed.
    Were the bill to become law, sex workers will have to be even more secretive in their work to protect their clients from being charged. The potential for danger will increase even more as they move deeper into the shadows. I don't know if McKay really is naive enough to believe that criminalizing the entire industry will wipe it out, but the rest of us surely know that's not true.
    CUPE has been the most progressive union in Canada for some time when it comes to viewing sex work as a workers' rights issue. Hats off to them for a brave stance, when so many other unions are still sitting back in silence.
    Unions could play a powerful role in shaping a safer future for Canada's tens of thousands of sex workers. They have lost their relevance on many fronts, but here's an area where they're really needed. I look forward to the day when the Canadian Labour Congress, the BC Federation of Labour and other union voices are joining CUPE Ontario in making the support of sex workers' rights and work safety a priority.

Federal hearings finally put a spotlight on empowered sex workers

 

  While I'm offended as a Canadian that the future of my country is in the hands of people as uninformed, close-minded and unworldly as Justice Minister Peter MacKay, it's a wonderful thing to see Canada's sex workers stepping up to speak their own truths to combat all the lies that are being told about them right now.
     I saw footage from the justice committee meetings in Ottawa this week as the debate around Bill C-36 gets underway. I totally love seeing empowered and passionate sex workers putting it all on the line to challenge the Conservatives' proposed new anti-prostitution law, which would take the ineffective and damaging laws that we've had for the last 147 years and make them considerably worse.
    Based on the untruth that all sex work is violent, coercive and sick and that all sex workers are victims, Bill C-36 is so far from so many sex workers' realities that the generally low-profile community just can't take it anymore. For those of us cheering them on from the sidelines, it's a beautiful thing to see them fighting back with such passion.
     I couldn't have imagined that there would be an upside to Bill C-36, but maybe this is it: That sex workers who have mostly just gritted their teeth and coped with Canada's flawed laws up to this point are now so incensed by MacKay and his team of yes-ministers that they are organizing, speaking up, and refusing to be shut out of other people's discussions about them.
    Two representatives of PEERS Victoria will be presenting to the justice committee on Thursday. They are the kind of people whose knowledge is deep and wise, and I can only hope the committee has its ears on when the PEERS team talks about all the things that are wrong with laws that criminalize everything about sex work.
    This issue is about workers' rights, and in many ways women's rights as well given that the majority of sex workers and brothel managers are women. On that point, MacKay should have been ruled out right off the hop as the man for the job. A man who places all women in the kitchen packing the children's lunches (and all men moulding and shaping the minds of the next generation) simply shouldn't be involved in making life-endangering changes to a woman-dominated industry he knows so little about.
    MacKay was on the news this week saying the goal of the bill is to eradicate sex work. What it will actually do is drive the industry further underground, where the "victims" that MacKay seems so worried about can continue to go unsupported, unseen and vilified in even more potentially dangerous situations.
     More and more, sex workers are speaking out to say, hey, buddy, you don't know anything about our lives. Like all leaders in the early days of a social revolution, they risk so much personally to be "out" as sex workers, which adds even more to the significance of seeing them in the justice committee hearings, bravely and calmly telling it like it is.
      There are always going to be people who don't want to hear anything that challenges their conviction that sex workers are helpless victims and their clients, perverted pigs. But for those who suspect there's more to the story, this week's hearings just might be a powerful public-relations tool for real change and respect for sex workers. 
      Finally, Canadian sex workers have a national platform. So far, they're looking great. Hope you know what you've started, Mr. MacKay.