In 1880, a group of Montreal sex workers and brothel owners were arrested in a police raid. They refused to quietly comply. Instead, while being marched from the recorder’s court to their jail cells, they began to sing. Their voices rang out for over half an hour.
Today, their story is told at the Centre des Mémoires Montréalaises (MEM), where echoes of their song of resistance can still be heard in the determined efforts of Montreal’s sex worker advocates.
For as long as Montreal has been a city in which sex workers are policed, detained, and prosecuted for their profession, it has also been a site of community, resistance, and activism against unjust legislation.
Canada’s current sex work laws constitute a human rights violation. To recognize the agency and autonomy of sex workers, and to create conditions in which they can safely do their job, Canada must decriminalize sex work.
Understanding Canadian legislation
In 2007, three Ontario sex workers—Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch, and Valerie Scott—took the federal government to the Supreme Court.
In Canada (Attorney General) v. Bedford, the plaintiffs argued sections of Canada’s Criminal Code prohibiting working in ‘bawdy houses,’ living on income derived from sex work, and communicating in public for the purpose of sex work violated sex workers’ constitutional right to security of the person.
Six years later, the Court issued its landmark ruling. It declared the Code’s three provisions unconstitutional and gave Parliament one year to introduce new legislation to protect sex workers.
“The prohibitions at issue do not merely impose conditions on how prostitutes operate,” former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin wrote in the decision. “They go a critical step further, by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution; they prevent people engaged in a risky—but legal—activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the risk.”
Rather than introducing a bill that pushed for the safety and health of sex workers, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government passed Bill C-36, the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA). This 2014 law maintained the criminalization of sex workers and third parties, as well as criminalizing, for the first time in Canadian history, the purchase of sex.
The Supreme Court instructed the government to improve the conditions of sex work; instead, Parliament passed a bill which made sex work more criminalized—and thus more dangerous.
While PCEPA claims to grant sex workers who sell or advertise only their own services immunity from prosecution, the criminalization of all aspects of their work creates an atmosphere of police presence and surveillance, which then contributes to isolation and vulnerability to violence. A 2021 UBC study found that one in three sex workers were unable to call 911 due to fear of the police, a statistic which illustrates the jeopardizing effects of PCEPA.
Sandra Wesley, the executive director at Stella, l'amie de Maimie, Montreal’s direct-service and advocacy organization run by sex workers for sex workers, emphasized that the Act puts sex workers in danger by creating and perpetuating this environment of violence and fear.
“[PCEPA] sends a message to every violent person out there that if you want to be violent, be violent towards a sex worker,” Wesley said in an interview with The Tribune. “We know in the 10-plus years now that the law has been in place, that these violent people are receiving that message loud and clear from the government, that the government wants to eradicate us, the government doesn’t think that we have rights [....] Just think about Judge Goldstein’s words, ‘Violence is a feature, not a bug, of sex work.’”
Sex worker resistance in Montreal
To counteract Canada’s oppression and endangerment of sex workers, Wesley and her Stella colleagues divide their efforts between broad-scale activism at a national level and on-the-ground support in Montreal. The organization draws on decades of resistance within Montreal, using regional advocacy as a catalyst for national change.
I met Jenn Clamen, Stella’s mobilization and communications coordinator, at the MEM, a towering museum in the middle of the bustling Quartier des Spectacles. She kindly agreed to tour me around Stella’s new exhibit, By and For: 30 Years of Sex Worker Resistance, which celebrates the organization’s 30-year anniversary.
Clamen noted that the exhibit’s location in the MEM is not coincidental. By displaying this history of sex worker resistance in the centre of Montreal’s former Red-Light District, the organization aims to draw attention to the historical displacement and oppression of sex workers in the city.
“We didn't choose the MEM for no reason. We chose it because we are standing in a space that has been highly occupied again and again and again over decades,” Clamen said. “If you look around and you look at the Quartier de Spectacle, the images that they use, the language that the city uses, talking about Montreal as a ‘sin city,’ […] they're still using sex work ideas or sex work histories, sex work symbolism, to attract people, but sex workers aren't allowed to work on the streets in the way that they used to.”
The By and For exhibit celebrates sex workers’ historical resistance against a political and social environment that has long denied their human rights.
“You know this myth that sex workers just are passive […] beings that cannot stand up for their rights or don't know what their rights are, or that they're being exploited all the time,” Clamen said. “The reason that these stories of resistance are so important is to really counter narratives, to demonstrate that's not actually who sex workers are. They're always resisting conditions. They're strong and vibrant people.”
Through archival documents, photographs, art, and videos, the exhibit showcases the convergence of sex work resistance with other social movements. Communities that have been historically subjected to harsh policing and oppression, including migrants, unhoused individuals, Indigenous Peoples, drug users, and individuals living with HIV, have a long history intertwined with sex work.
Clamen described Stella’s diametric opposition to carceral punishment, in part due to this intersection of sex work with other highly policed communities.
“Our feminism at Stella is an anti-carceral feminism,” Clamen said, “meaning that the solutions that we want or know to be successful for […] the challenges sex workers face are not through the use of criminal law, because of the ways that sex workers in our community are already surveilled and repressed.”
During my tour of the exhibit, two Stella members stopped in to say hello to Clamen. They were bundled up to face the cold and sported tall backpacks full of outreach supplies, from condoms and Narcan to printed guides on harm reduction and health. Hearing Clamen discuss the historical and legal context of Stella’s work and seeing her colleagues preparing to hit the streets encapsulated the unique breadth of the organization’s mission.
Paths to decriminalization
Rather than the government employing its current criminalization system—known as the ‘Nordic model’—which encourages violence and carceral punishment, Stella and other organizations are pushing for the removal of all criminal sanctions surrounding sex work and the implementation of policies created with input from sex workers.
Wesley described how the current law creates an environment in which those who commit offences against sex workers can be charged not for their violence but for their participation in the sex work industry. She argued that decriminalization would allow these offenders to be correctly charged.
“If we decriminalize sex work, then what?” Wesley propounded. “Then maybe if we're raped, the person can be charged with rape. Maybe if we're being kidnapped and held against [our] will, that charge can actually happen, which it doesn't right now. Maybe if a client assaults us or robs us, that's the charge that he can have instead of purchasing. We already have all those things in the Criminal Code that are not being used right now because we're seen as not rapeable [....] Just our existence as a sex worker is [seen as], in and of itself, violence.”
One route to decriminalization is through the House of Commons, where Members of Parliament can choose to pass new sex work legislation at any time. Wesley noted that the Liberal Party claims to align with the goal of decriminalization, yet has failed to take any action despite its ten years in government.
“The liberals were supposed to change this law,” Wesley said. “They were against it in 2014, and when they were elected in 2015, they said they would change it. That's their party's position. They never acted on it. Why didn't they act on it? Because it's politically very appealing to hate sex workers.”
Another path towards new legislation involves the Supreme Court. Stella is a member group of the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform (CASWLR), an organization currently engaged in a constitutional challenge to specific sex work criminal offences.
There have been previous, highly publicized challenges to PCEPA, including this summer’s R v. Kloubakov case. However, these challenges have all been pursued by third parties facing criminal charges, not sex workers seeking recognition. Notably, all have failed.
By contrast, CASWLR’s challenge is not an attempt to evade criminal prosecution; instead, it is a legal challenge made by sex workers who want the law to acknowledge and protect their human rights.
The Ontario Supreme Court heard CASWLR’s challenge and upheld Canada’s current laws as constitutional in 2023’s CASWLR v Attorney General (Canada). CASWLR has since sought leave to appeal the ruling. If the Court of Appeal chooses to hear CASWLR’s appeal and overturns the Ontario Court’s decision, it will be referred to the Supreme Court of Canada.
New Zealand: A legislative model
Decriminalization may still be a hopeful concept in Canada, but on the other side of the world, it has been a legislative reality for over 20 years.
In 2003, New Zealand passed the Prostitution Reform Act, a bill developed in association with the New Zealand Sex Workers Collective (NZPC) that decriminalized sex work. Since then, sex workers have experienced improved relationships with police, safer systems of reporting assault, legal wins on issues of harassment, and justice through the court system.
In New Zealand, sex workers are considered workers, not criminals, and their rights are guaranteed under employment and human rights laws.
Cherida Fraser, the Wellington regional coordinator of the NZPC, described how this legislation has created a safe and open work environment for sex workers.
“Decriminalization benefits workers’ health, safety, and wellbeing,” Fraser wrote to The Tribune. “It enables reporting of any harms in the justice system, without fear. It supports sex workers' health (sexual, mental, general) as sex workers can be open about their work without fear of authorities.”
New Zealand, like Canada, has a high percentage of Indigenous sex workers who are already subject to increased police surveillance and violence. Fraser stated that the decriminalization of sex work supports Indigenous sex workers as it protects them from receiving discriminatory charges.
“Decriminalization made a positive change for Maori sex workers,” Fraser wrote, “mainly due to the institutional racism that existed which saw Maori sex workers disproportionately charged/incarcerated for all crimes.”
Both New Zealand and Canada pride themselves on having generally progressive political cultures, especially compared to their larger, more politically dominant neighbours, Australia and the United States. But Canada’s record on the rights of sex workers stands in stark contrast to this reputation.
If Canada wishes to remain a world leader in progressive policy and work towards reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, it must turn away from criminalization and adopt decriminalization legislation, as New Zealand has successfully done.
Moving forward
It is naive to believe that the criminalization of this profession will somehow result in its total eradication. Criminalization does not abolish sex work; it worsens the already challenging conditions in which sex workers live and labour.
Instead of fighting for a world in which sex work ceases to exist, the government must follow New Zealand’s lead and enact legislation that protects sex workers. CASWLR has provided an exhaustive proposal of recommended law reform; these suggestions come directly from sex workers with lived experience navigating the industry.
Whether through the Supreme Court or Parliament, Canada must decriminalize sex work. When drafting new legislation, the government must consult sex workers to ensure new laws are conducive to their health, safety, security, and human rights.
Stella’s work in Montreal exemplifies the power of local activism. Students can join the fight for decriminalization by writing to their Member of Parliament and explaining their concerns with Canada’s current sex work legislation.
The laws that govern our nation must protect all workers, not just those the government deems ideologically virtuous. For sex workers in Montreal and advocates at Stella, new legislation cannot come soon enough.
The full By and For: 30 Years of Sex Worker Resistance exhibit will be displayed at the MEM until Feb. 1, 2026, and part of the exhibit will remain until March 15, 2026.
To learn more about the constitutional challenge put forward by the Canadian Association of Sex Workers for Law Reform, visit their website at sexworklawreform.com.