Request for Action from Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime

February 16, 2011

Sue O'Sullivan, Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime
Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime
P.O. Box 55037
Ottawa, Ontario
K1P 1A1

Dear Ms. O'Sullivan:

The undersigned represent Canadian sex worker and sex worker serving organizations and supporters based in Vancouver, British Columbia. We are dedicated to working for sex workers’ legal, human and political rights, and for their equal access to social and health services. In our advocacy for sex worker rights, we are constantly aware that, as individuals and collectively, sex workers are among those most consistently victimized by violence in Canada.

We write to you as the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime in the expectation that you will take action on our complaint, which concerns the exclusion of Canada’s sex workers from the Federal Provincial Territorial Justice Ministers’ National Strategy on Missing and Murdered Women (Hereafter referred to as the FPT National Strategy).

The Federal Ombudsman’s mandate broadly speaks to “ensuring that policy makers and other criminal justice personnel are aware of victims' needs and concerns and to identify important issues and trends that may negatively impact victims.” As important, the mandate expressly commits your Office to “promote access by victims to existing federal programs and services for victims” and to “identify and review emerging and systemic issues, including those issues related to programs and services provided or administered by the Department of Justice or the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, that impact negatively on victims of crime.”

The Federal Ombudsman complaint criteria states your Office has the authority to “initiate a broader review of the issue you raise in order to make recommendations to the Government of Canada on how to improve its laws, policies or services for victims of crime.” Further, victims have the right to seek the intervention of your Office when they feel that “that Canada's laws or policies for victims of crime do not meet their needs.”

Background to the Complaint: Exclusion of Sex Workers from National Strategy on Missing and Murdered Women.

As stated in the founding report on the establishment of the FPT National Strategy, in February 2006, Federal Provincial Territorial Deputy Ministers Responsible for Justice “endorsed the establishment of a working group of the Coordinating Committee of Senior Officials (CCSO) to review issues related to the high number of murdered and missing women in Canada.”

In a follow-up June 2006 meeting, the FPT Deputy Ministers approved the mandate of the Missing Women’s Work Group “to consider the effective identification, investigation and prosecution of cases involving serial killers who target persons living a high risk lifestyle, including but not limited to the sex trade (emphasis added).”

In October 2006, the FPT Justice Ministers “received a status report on the issue of missing women in Canada, and endorsed continuing efforts to improve the prevention, early identification of cases, enforcement and prosecution of these cases and to identify good practices for dealing with the families of victims.”

Four years later, on October 15, 2010 the FPT Ministers of Justice announced a National Strategy on Canada’s missing and murdered Women. According to the governments’ media release on the subject, the FPT National Strategy was based on the September 2010 MMWG report noted above.

The September MMWG report provided the foundation for the FPT National Strategy by proposing 52 recommendations based on its June 2006 mandate, as described above. Despite the continuing MMWG mandate to specifically consider persons involved in the sex trade, not a single one of its 52 recommendations addressed violence against Canada’s sex workers, let alone the beyond critical issue of missing and murdered sex workers.

On October 29th 2010, the federal government announced its support for a series of FPT National Strategy actions together with the Strategy’s funding priorities and allocations. Once again, the government’s proposals did not include even one single action to foster sex workers’ safety and failed to allocate one single dollar to support sex worker-oriented safety and security programs and services.

On December 17, 2010, we wrote to each one of Canada’s Justice Ministers, to the Prime Minister and to the federal Minister Responsible for the Status of Women to register our total opposition to the governments’ decision to exclude sex workers from the FPT National Strategy.

We noted that few, if any, changes have been made to either policing practices or within the broader criminal justice system to protect women from the violence, sexual predation and murder prevalent in the street-based sex industry. We called upon these elected leaders to exercise their authority and conscience by immediately initiating discussions with representatives of Canada’s sex worker organizations to address this community’s urgent and critical needs for safety and protection on the local, provincial and national level. To date, we have received three responses to our appeal, none of which responded to our concerns.

We note that to the best of our knowledge, not one Canadian sex worker organization was consulted in the National Strategy process. Most definitively, neither the MMWG working group nor any other federal or provincial body associated with the National Strategy process consulted with British Columbia sex worker organizations or sex worker serving organizations.

For your further information, we recommend you review the following reports, which provide current and comprehensive evidence-based findings on the situation of sex workers in Canada:

• The Challenge Of Change: A Study of Canada’s Prostitution Laws (2006), prepared under the authority of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and authored by its Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws.

• The Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision on Bedford v. Canada, 2010/09/28, a court decision that supports the decriminalization of prostitution in Canada, which The Government of Canada is currently seeking leave to appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Finally, and as we noted in our Open Letter to the justice ministers, the signatories to this letter fully support the National Strategy funding being directed to Canada’s missing and murdered Aboriginal women and First Nations communities. We also fully support the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) and Sisters in Spirit in their November 2010 demands for improvements to the National Strategy and for the immediate need for on-going operational federal government funding to the NWAC and the Sisters in Spirit initiative.

Basis of the Complaint: Exclusion of Sex Workers from National Strategy on Missing and Murdered Women

As is well known, the absolute necessity to deal with violence against sex workers has been overwhelmingly brought home by Vancouver’s Missing Women’s Case. The case concerns the murders or disappearances of 65 women sex industry workers in Vancouver during the 1990s. We bear witness that the physical and sexual violence and the threats of assault and/or murder faced by women in the sex industry daily continue and are not isolated to major urban centres, but rather occur across all Canadian communities, including rural communities. This is especially so for street-based sex workers who experience exponentially high rates of violence.

It is our strong belief that Canadian governments have the responsibility to protect sex workers while working seriously to limit their victimization. Yet the FPT National Strategy fully demonstrates our governments’ profound failure to respond to the violent victimization of sex workers. Such deliberate government exclusion is enormously
devastating to sex workers on every conceivable level.

We come to you as the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime in the hope your Office will initiate a committed process that can bring our governments to understand their responsibility to offer protection to sex workers just as they offer protection to all other Canadians. We underline that such a process will not deliver successful outcomes unless sex workers are directly involved in its development, focus and design.

More specifically, we are requesting that your Office immediately initiate a broad review of the federal government process that led to the unwarranted exclusion of sex workers from the National Strategy on Missing and Murdered Women and, further, that your review include comprehensive recommendations to the Government of Canada on how to work with Canada’s provincial and territorial governments to improve Canadian governments policies, programs and services for sex workers who are victims of crime. In December 2006 in response to above-noted Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws, the current Conservative government stated: “Those involved in prostitution are at a significantly greater risk of abuse and exploitation,” and further that “Strong and consistent responses to this serious social problem are required.” Four years later, we behold a federal government that has callously excluded sex workers from its National Strategy on Missing and Murdered Women.

As we directly asked our country’s Justice Ministers in our Open Letter, we now ask you: How many more women will have to face violence and death before our governments take the necessary steps to begin reducing the extreme violence, stigmatization and social marginalization endured by sex workers?

As you can well understand, we are enormously interested in working with you as your Office facilitates this process. Please contact us if you should require any further information, noting the attachments to our letter provide information central to these efforts.

Thank you for considering our request. On behalf of the undersigned, we look forward to
your response.

Kerry Porth, Executive Director
Providing Alternatives Counselling and Education Society
Email: pace-admin@telus.net

Susan Davis, Coordinator
British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Communities
Email: coordinator@wccsip.ca

The following organizations are full parties to the Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime complaint, dated February 16, 2011.

BC Coalition of Experiential Communities
Exotic Dancers for Cancer
FIRST Decriminalize Sex Work
HUSTLE: Men on the Move
PACE Providing Alternatives Counselling & Education Society
PEERS Vancouver
Pivot Legal Society
The Naked Truth Entertainment
West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals
WISH Drop-in Centre Society