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Sgt. Jeff LeBlanc with the Ottawa police says the new laws have given police some new powers in trafficking cases, and generally officers go after people exploiting sex workers. “A lot of the negative comments haven’t changed toward the police, but I can say that our approach toward the sex trade has changed probably 180 degrees,” LeBlanc says. “We don’t go about evicting people from hotels or condos because they’re involved in the sex trade.”

With all the delay in changing the law, there is still a sense of optimism. While the sex-worker alliance wouldn’t disclose which parliamentarians it has met with, it feels as if sex workers are actually part of the conversation this time. “It’s a really big deal to our member groups because the door was literally locked shut with the Conservative government,” Clamen explains.

And if discussions break down, or no change is forthcoming, there’s the trump card, though nobody is eager to play it: legal action. In November 2015, the PIVOT Legal Society in Vancouver said it would be willing to head back to court if the Liberals didn’t change the laws. Alan Young, the Osgoode Hall law professor who battled the old laws to the Supreme Court, said he’d be ready to do it again, but that changing the laws is just simpler.

“If you are opposed in principle and conceptually to what the government has done, eventually you need to remove it either by lobbying the government or by bringing a court challenge,” Young says.

Whatever comes of this, we’re still a long way off what has to be the final goal: the acceptance that prostitution is just work. Unique, admittedly, but so what?

Thousands of men, women and trans Canadians have figured this out. It shouldn’t be hard for the government. When you consider the harms caused by criminalizing prostitution, the solution’s a no brainer.

Tyler Dawson is deputy editorial pages editor of the Ottawa Citizen.