An attack on safety
Mar 19, 2026
This week a B.C. RCMP news release announced that on March 12, 2026 the BC Counter Human Trafficking Unit and Richmond RCMP conducted a joint operation targeting individuals “attempting to obtain sexual services.”
The one-day operation identified more than 100 people, multiple arrests were made, and “all individuals were released pending further investigation.”
In The Richmond News RCMP Inspector Ed Yoshiyama added, “The safety of vulnerable people is our priority.” But it is clear that these actions harm sex workers.
WISH’s Executive Director Kara Gillies responded by saying:
An attack on sex workers’ clients is an attack on sex workers. It is an attack on our safety. Our income. Our rights. Disguising criminal investigations of sex workers’ clients as anti-human trafficking efforts does not change this evidenced fact.
The RCMP news release also repeats the false claim that reducing demand is a critical component of addressing “the harms associated with the sex trade.” This may sound logical, but research shows that the criminalization of sex work (including efforts to “end demand”) causes the most harm to sex working people.
In a meta-analysis of nearly 30 years of studies from around the world, these researchers published evidence of the extensive harms associated with the criminalisation of sex work, including “laws and enforcement targeting the sale and purchase of sex.”
Blurring the lines between sex work and sex trafficking is intentionally confusing and supports the incorrect assumption that sex work is trafficking, making all sex workers victims.
The website Decriminalize Sex Work explains further:
Under the Nordic model, human trafficking cannot be properly addressed or prosecuted. As the sex trade is still pushed underground, victims are harder to identify and do not know where to turn for assistance. Wherever prohibition is implemented, illicit markers flourish. By viewing all sex work as inherently exploitative, consensual adult sex workers are denied their basic human rights. Proponents of the Nordic model insist that it will eliminate trafficking while evidence shows that it allows exploitation and trafficking to proliferate, a tragic irony of this moralist approach to governing sex work.
Police and lawmakers continue to support strategies that harm workers, in part because sex workers’ lived experience and expertise are rarely sought out or incorporated in meaningful ways. On the DTES we are especially aware of how dangerous that can be.
Do you want to support dignity and safety for sex workers? Then listen to sex workers. Sex workers continue to live—and die—through failures to do so.
To learn more about the systemic changes needed, please read “Forsaken.“
To learn more about “the nuances of sex work and the importance of ethical reporting” we recommend this excellent resource from SWAN Vancouver.