How Canada’s sex work laws put lives at risk

In today’s Big Story podcast, if things were different, 22-year-old Marylène Levesque would have known that her murderer was on day parole and had been found guilty of killing another woman years ago. She probably would have decided to not take him as a client, and she would still be alive today. But sex work laws in Canada prevent that kind of information to be known, even though it is legal to be a sex worker in this country.

The criminalization around sex work doesn’t protect sex workers–it puts them in danger. It also leads to misunderstandings about the industry. Sex work and sex trafficking are very different things. Today we discuss the damage caused when we conflate the two, why people choose to go into sex work in the first place, and what needs to change to protect them.

GUEST: Chanelle Gallant, Director of the Migrant Sex Workers Project, @ChanelleGallant

GUEST HOST: Sarah Boesveld, @SarahBoesveld

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