March 30, 2021 – The Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform — an alliance of 25 sex worker rights groups across the country led predominantly by and for sex workers — along with several individual applicants, have filed a Notice of Application seeking to strike down the sex work prohibitions against impeding traffic (s. 213(1)), public communication (s. 213(1.1)), purchasing (s.286.1(1)), materially benefiting (s. 286.2(1)), recruiting (s. 286.3(1)), and advertising (s. 286.4) in the Criminal Code, because they violate sex workers’ constitutional rights to security, personal autonomy, life, liberty, free expression, free association, and equality.

Canadian sex workers are having issues accessing the country’s Emergency Response Benefit Plan due to the criminalized nature of their work. As Mark Neufeld reports, COVID-19 enforcement strategies are making it harder to work and those in the sex work industry are struggling.