Six former and current sex workers will accompany a Vancouver lawyer to Ottawa next week to attend a landmark court case challenging Canada’s prostitution laws.

Katrina Pacey, a lawyer with Pivot Legal Society, and former Vancouver sex worker Sheryl Kiselbach have waged a six-year legal battle to try to overturn the country’s sex laws.

When Pacey appears before the Supreme Court of Canada on June 13, she’ll make arguments to support a case by Ontario dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, who wants to strike down laws that prohibit operating bawdy houses, making money from prostitution, and communicating in public to sell sex.

The Ontario case, first launched in 2007, has been heard by two lower courts and will now be settled by Canada’s highest court.

Pacey will appear on behalf of Pivot, the Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence (SWUAV) and the PACE Society, a sex worker support group.

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Vancouver Sun: You refer to this case as a “historic hearing.” Why?

Katrina Pacey: It’s really about moving away from a criminalization approach to understanding sex workers as a human rights issue, as a health and safety issue, and as a labour issue, and really making sure they have all the safety and rights they deserve. So it’s a very major legal shift and kind of a substantial paradigm shift for Canada.

VS: What will be your main legal argument?

KP: Sex workers on the street have been disproportionately targeted by criminal law, and the result has been this epidemic of missing and murdered women in the Downtown Eastside, and violence against street-based sex workers across the country. And what we need is to recognize the harms caused by this law because it pushes them into very dangerous working conditions.

VS: What do the current laws on street-based sex work say?

KP: The act of selling sex and buying sex is a legal activity. What is illegal is communicating in public for the purpose of prostitution … The real hypocrisy in the law is that Canada says sex work is fundamentally legal, however it is impossible to do it safely. They’ve criminalized everything around the core activity.

VS: What has been the federal government’s main argument against changing the law?

KP: They say the law is not to blame for violence against sex workers; it is people who choose to prey on them. Our response to that is, of course, we recognize that the violence is perpetrated by men against women who are involved in the sex industry, however the laws exacerbate their vulnerability.

VS: Why are former and current sex workers going to the hearing?

KP: It’s their stories and their experiences that matter, and I think their presence before the court is of enormous importance to them because it is going to impact their lives greatly and I want them to feel a part of that.

VS: What is the status of the B.C. case brought by Sherry Kiselbach?

KP: We need to wait for the outcome of Bedford and see what the court rules, because that will actually answer a bunch of legal questions that are being asked in the B.C. case. …. Then Sherry and SWUAV will see what’s left in terms of what criminal code provisions remain, what arguments haven’t been raised, and be able to carry on from there.