VANCOUVER — A group of current and former sex workers in Vancouver say the Conservative government’s new prostitution law will continue to put them in danger.
The government’s new anti-prostitution bill passed through the final stage of debate in the Senate earlier this week.
The bill was in response to a Supreme Court of Canada ruling last year that struck down several provisions of the law as unconstitutional.
But advocates for sex workers have said the revised law still puts women in danger and some have suggested it will prompt another legal challenge.
Kerry Porth of Pivot Legal Society says the law, which criminalizes the purchase of sex, will push prostitution further into the shadows, making sex workers’ lives more dangerous.
Porth says the law was drafted without input from sex workers.