New rules ‘will push sex work further underground’: Kerry Porth

The Conservative government’s new anti-prostitution law will continue to endanger the lives of people who work in the sex trade and in some cases make things worse, sex workers and advocates said Thursday as the law received royal assent.

Ottawa revised the law to respond to a decision last year from the Supreme Court of Canada, which concluded the previous Criminal Code sections related to prostitution were unconstitutional because they made sex work more dangerous.

But several sex-worker rights groups across Canada used Thursday’s royal assent to repeat their arguments that the law will continue to put women and men working in prostitution at risk.

“They have told us over and over again that this bill is intended to protect sex workers,” Kerry Porth, chairwoman of Pivot Legal Society and a former sex worker herself, told a news conference in Vancouver.

“These new laws will push sex work further underground into the darkest corners of our city.”

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