TORONTO—A justice on the Ontario Superior Court this week dismissed a challenge to a controversial law governing sex work in Canada. Sex workers’ rights groups filed a lawsuit in 2021 in a bid to render the Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act unconstitutional as it violates the rights of sex workers, per the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the constitution.
A coalition of 25 rights groups formed the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, which brought the lawsuit. At issue is how Canadian law, under the act, regulates sex work through the so-called “Equality” or “Nordic” model. This is a legal model where sex buyers are criminalized, and sex sellers are decriminalized with the intention of providing them with social, health, and human services. However, it is the position of the alliance that the Nordic model contributes to harm and abuse against sex workers. The alliance favors total decriminalization and regulation.
Justice Robert Goldstein, the judge in the case, ruled that the act does not violate the rights of sex workers. Ellie Ade Kur, the vice chair of the board of directors at sex workers’ rights advocacy organization Maggie’s Toronto, tells AVN that Goldstein’s bias is clearly displayed in the ruling.
“Goldstein’s decision in this case reflects his career as a lifelong prosecutor and an architect of the violent Nordic model,” she said in an emailed statement. “His findings are dismissive and offensive, discounting the experiences and perspectives of sex workers and our organizations directly responding to the harms of criminalization.” Dozens of international non-governmental organizations and human rights groups lobby against the Nordic model of regulating sex work.
Academic evidence overwhelmingly validates the concerns of activists like Ade Kur. In 2019, the peer-reviewed academic journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy published a study where the researcher characterized the Nordic regulatory model as “punitivist humanitarianism” or “governing in the name of caring.”
“Goldstein’s decision is deeply patronizing and reinforces harmful narratives about sex workers and our communities—this is particularly dangerous for Black sex workers, disproportionately targeted by violence—but we are resilient, and this will not stop us from demanding human rights,” Kur added. Others expressed similar dismay.
The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform posted on X (formerly Twitter) a thread of posts indicating that sex workers across the country are “devestated.” The alliance’s national coordinator, Jenn Clamen, told CBC that Goldstein’s ruling is “extremely dismissive of sex worker’s realities and the concerns that were raised” throughout much of the case. CBC also reports that the reformers in the alliance are likely to appeal Justice Goldstein’s case decision.
Goldstein’s decision comes amid various changes in sex workers’ rights perceptions in the Western world. For example, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging member states to implement a Nordic model for regulating sex work across much of the European Union bloc.
Days later, a United Nations (UN) working group on discrimination against women and girls recommended to the UN Human Rights Council and members of the intergovernmental body to decriminalize sex work internationally as a way to curtail discrimination against sex workers.
“Sex workers should be consulted and provided every opportunity to be directly involved in the development and implementation of legal frameworks and public policy on sex work, as well as allowed to fully exercise their right to form associations, including trade unions,” the group’s paper reads. “The prevalence of harmful sex- and gender-stereotyping and systems of oppression and inequality as well as the underlying sexism and misogyny and other systems of oppression and inequality should be also taken into account in the elaboration of any new law or policy.”
