Did Winnipeg give the green light to the red light district?
Professor says more regulation needed after another murder
CHELSE MCKEE, STAFF
After the recent death of Fonessa Bruyere, a murdered 17-year-old Winnipeg sex worker, the safety of the city’s sex trade has been brought into question.
The City of Winnipeg already regulates prostitution but more regulation could improve the safety of the local sex trade, said U of W assistant professor Steven Kohm.
According to Kohm and his colleague John Selwood’s 2004 research paper, Sex Work and City Planning: Winnipeg’s Red Light District Committee and the Regulation of Prostitution, in November 1999, a Manitoba provincial court decision called into question the City of Winnipeg’s ability to regulate off-street prostitution through its municipal licensing bylaw for escort services.
The November 1999 case, R v. Hrabchak, dealt with a man, Scott Hrabchak being charged with carrying on the trade of a dating and escort service without a licence under the City of Winnipeg licencing bylaw. In his defense, Hrabchak claimed that the definitions in the bylaw were too vague and could be applied to any business with the purpose of companionship.
Hrabchak successfully fought the charge. The judge ruling the case, provincial court judge Susan Devine, reprimanded the City of Winnipeg for not having a more specific bylaw. Devine continued on to explain that if the city was intent on regulating the sex trade industry, then they must have a more specified example of the type of people they hoped to regulate.
Following her decision, a volunteer committee was formed to re-examine the city government and its planning professionals and their role in the city’s sex trade industry. As well, the committee met to recommend new ideas for future regulation.
Some of the committee’s suggestions, as outlined in Kohm and Selwood’s report, were to “amend and expand the definitions of businesses such as escort agencies,” to identify the offences within a bylaw, and that “businesses operating without a licencelicence [are] dealt with, in a timely fashion.”
Despite the investigation, no new developments were pursued and the regulations for the sex trade remain the same.
Kohm, who has extensively researched Winnipeg’s sex trade, said that “the city quietly forgot about [proposals]. Now we’re left with the situation where women are turning up dead because they work on the street and I think we have to look very seriously, again, at the issue of regulating sex work. Is there a safer way and is one of the safer ways allowing sex workers to work off the street? I think we really have to explore that option.”
Winnipeg Police Services could not be reached for comment on the issue of revitalizing talks of regulations and the current safety of the sex-tradesex trade industry.
There are licences offered by the City of Winnipeg for massagists and escorts, and sex-trade businesses, like massage parlors and escort agencies.
The process to apply for the licence is like any other prospective business owner, where the applicant must provide a criminal record check and colour passport photos.
However, there is a price difference between an escort business and massage parlor and, say, to a business like a poultry slaughterhouse.
A poultry slaughterhouse, Kohm and Selwood state in their paper, is a business most people would object to having in their neighbourhoods.
As well, the applicant for an escort or massagists establishment licence must put forth their proposal before a community committee. The committee will then listen to the applicant, as well as any one else desiring to speak. They then consider whether the trade would be injurious to the interests of the occupants or owners of property in the vicinity (licence bylaw 6551/95).
Kohm explained why regulation and licenced agencies and parlors were so important for the safety of sex trade workers.
“Illegal prostitution keeps sex workers from reporting abuse for fear of arrest. It drives the activity underground where sexual predators can easily take advantage of women without fear of being reported. Providing a safe and legal alternative to the illicit sex trade, a place or space where sex work can be legally carried on provides a much safer alternative and empowers women to report abuse and violence without fear of arrest. [Regulation] will not totally clean up the street trade or the exploitation of underage sex workers, but it would at least provide sex workers an alternative to the current situation.”
Currently, a Winnipeg licence for a massage parlor and escort service both cost $4,000 annually, while a poultry slaughterhouse has a licence fee of $305 annually.
Licences for an individual escort or massagist cost $105 and $120 respectively. At least one massagist or escort licence is required to obtain a parlor or service permit.
Kohm called the fee difference between the two licences a ‘“sin tax’” extracted from the city. Sex and City Planning even suggests that the Winnipeg licensing fees appear to be aimed at discouraging sex-trade work.
There are no hard numbers of how many sex-trade workers are on or off the street because, as Kohm explained, there is no solidified definition of a sex trade worker.
“I would be suspicious of anyone that had hard data. It raises the question of ‘What is prostitution?’ There’s no definition in Canadian law to define what a prostitute is.
There are those that are out there every day and need to be out there for various reasons every single day and then there are those who may be out there once in awhile at the end of the month when they’re running out of money. There are those who work off the street steadily, those occasionally off the street.”
In Winnipeg, there are currently seven licenced dating and escort services and three licenced massage parlors.
