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McKay was asked to weigh expert opinion evidence from both sides. In his decision, he noted that adult sex workers participate in the industry for many reasons, but mostly for income. Canada’s sex industry had changed over two decades with more workers advertising online and taking the work indoors.

The internet, McKay noted, has helped create networks of sex trade workers who help and protect each other and create a regular client base. Still at high risk of violence are sex workers on the street, many of whom are Indigenous women.

Third parties, McKay said, can be pimps and abusive partners, but the evidence shows that in most cases, they are business managers and administrators.

The procuring law, McKay said, is “overly broad” because it criminalizes any employee or owner of a managed business and discourages marginalized or inexperienced sex workers from managed employment.

“The result is that those types of sex workers will face greater risks to their physical and emotional health and safety if they engage in sex work,” he said.

The material benefit law doesn’t allow sex workers to pool their resources or work in a safe, managed environment, he said. “Parliament could potentially have focused the effect of the law on third parties who are in coercive, exploitative relationships with sex workers,” McKay said, but instead the law “has a grossly disproportionate effect.”

Advocates who support the current law were disappointed by the decision. Cindy (she asked her last name not be used), works with Rising Angels, a Toronto-based agency supporting women victims of sex trafficking, She said her 20-year-old daughter has been trafficked since she was 17.

“How can any victims of this trust our court system when they’re going to give criminals this kind of latitude in a case?” she said. “It makes me feel like we can’t count on the court system to protect our victims, to protect our vulnerable people, or even to protect our children.”

John Cassels, who chairs the board of Men Ending Trafficking and runs support groups for parents of trafficked children, called the decision “devastating.”

“The ruling appears to put the interest of criminal profiteers ahead of the rights of vulnerable and exploited women and children,” he said.