By Jeff Shantz
State Repression columnist

Criminal justice systems in capitalist liberal democracies like Canada have criminalized work that is predominantly done by women. Examples of this regulation of women's labour range from the witch hunts — the punishment of women largely for medicinal knowledge; the criminalization of midwifery and abortion provision; and the criminalization of sex-trade workers. Three sex-trade workers challenging Canada's prostitution laws in a court case in Toronto show the struggles over the regulation of sex work in Canada.

The three sex-trade workers involved in the court case, dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford and prostitutes Valerie Scott and Amy Lebovitch, argue that the laws against keeping a common bawdy house and communicating for the purposes of prostitution perpetuate violence against women by forcing them into more dangerous working conditions.

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/johnbon/2009/10/new-study-migrant-sex-wo...

by John Bonnar
October 21, 2009

The number of migrants in all sectors of the local sex industry in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has dramatically increased in the last ten years, according to a recent study released by the Wellesley Institute.

In their report, Building Partnerships for Service Provision to Migrant Sex Workers [2], Natalya Timoshkina and Lynn McDonald found that migrant sex workers are one of the most hard-to-reach, underserved and poorly studied populations.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) estimates that between 600 and 800 foreign women and girls are trafficked into the Canadian sex industry each year, but estimates from other sources are much higher.