International Conference on Prostitution and Sex Work

On the weekend of September 27th-29th, 1996, QPIRG McGill co-sponsored an International Conference on Prostitution and Sex Work. The QPIRGs at Concordia University, Université de Montréal and Université du Quebec a Montréal were sponsors as well, providing start-up funds and the salary for the conference coordinator.[1] Some other groups that were approached to sponsor the conference were Concordia`s Simone de Beauvoir Insititue and School of Public and Community Affairs, the International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development, La Ligue des Droits et Libertées, and various governmental ministries including the Ministry on the Status of Women in Quebec, Status of Women Canada, Health and Welfare Canada, and the Ministry of Public Security in Quebec.[2]

The aims of the conference were to reevaluate the Canadian legal framework regarding sex work and to find solutions to the many issues sex workers were facing due to the marginalizing and stigmatizing effect the laws had on them. The Canadian legal system had put in place occupational hazards[3] for both clients and sex workers by criminalizing acts that are involved with prostitution, such as the exchange of money or communicating about the exchange.[4] The criminalization of these acts increased the risk of sex workers facing sexual violence, theft, and harassment.[5] This conference sought to bring together different perspectives on the issue to try and find a way to reform the laws surrounding sex work to protect sex workers and provide them with occupational rights.

The Conference included many panels and workshops with sex workers, members of sex workers` rights organizations, including Montreal-based organization for the protection of sex workers, Stella, and legal experts. In bringing together people who were directly affected by these policies, yet politically powerless, sex workers themselves, with those who understood and had access to political institutions, the goal was to converge on an ideal image of how the laws could be formulated in a pro-feminist way that guaranteed protection and destigmatized sex work. Reviews of the conference indicated that there were not enough voices of sex workers present, especially transgendered people and people of colour.[6] Overall the conference was deemed successful in terms of bringing forward conversation about these issues and connecting different Montreal organizations that supported the aims of the conference.

[1] Conference Partners Update, 1996, International Conference on Prostitution and Sex Work - Sept. 27-29, 1996, File: 2007-0007.01.22, QPIRG Fonds, McGill University Archives.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Frances M. Shaver, "Occupational Health and Safety on the Dark Side of the Service Industry, Post Critical Criminology, ed. Tom Fleming (Scarborough: Prentice Hall, 1995).

[4] Criminal Code, RSC 1985, c C-46, s 210-213, CanLII.

[5] Frances M. Shaver, "Prostitution, A Female Crime?", In Conflict with the Law: Women and the Canadian Justice System, eds. Ellen Adelberg and Claudia Currie (Vancouver, Press Gang Publications, 1993), 153-173.

[6] Report from the Organizing Committee, 1996, International Conference on Prostitution and Sex Work - Sept. 27-29, 1996, File: 2007-0007.01.22, QPIRG Fonds, McGill University Archives.