Access to Safety: Health Outcomes, Substance Use and Abuse, and Service Provision for LGBTQ Youth, YMSM AND YWSW Who Engage in Survival Sex
"This report focuses on LGBTQ youth who become involved in the commercial sex market to meet basic survival needs, describing their physical, mental, and sexual health issues, their substance use, and their experiences with service providers. It finds that most youth protect themselves from harm in several ways, including using protection against sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy and visiting service providers for health and nonhealth services. However, most of the youth reported needs that were unmet by service providers, including employment assistance and short- and long-term housing, and youth who reached ages 18 or 21 had even greater challenges accessing services."

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Police, communities struggle to grasp prostitution ruling

Kirk Makin

The ruling also left police confused and neighbourhoods fortifying to fend off a possible deluge of sex-trade workers.

When the dust settles around the prostitution decision, experts predict that municipalities across the country will pass bylaws and licensing systems based on their own local community standards and political realities.

“We could end up with a bizarre patchwork of regulation across the country,” said Simon Fraser University criminology professor John Lowman. “Nor, is there any guarantee that municipalities are going to do any better at this than the feds. It depends upon the attitude they take to a highly divisive issue in Canadian society.”

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