Is ‘sex work’ really work? Not according to Cardus Work and Economics program director Renze Nauta in a new report – true work doesn’t undermine human dignity and the common good like prostitution does.
Cardus is “a non-partisan think tank dedicated to clarifying and strengthening, through research and dialogue, the ways in which society’s institutions can work together for the common good.”
Key Points
- The Supreme Court of Canada recently deferred a decision on whether Canada’s prostitution law violates the Charter right to liberty, making this a timely and urgent issue.
- The Canadian debate on prostitution has been defined largely by two streams of feminism.
- Radical feminists tend to support the criminalization of prostitution on the basis that it commodifies women and entrenches patriarchal systems of oppression. Liberal feminists tend to support decriminalization on the basis that women need more autonomy, not less.
- A third stream of feminism, known as sex-realist feminism, can contribute new insights to the prostitution debate by emphasizing the interdependent nature of human beings. Our relationality means that we must always encounter each other as persons, never merely as products or as means to our own gratification.
- Empirical studies expose the reality of prostitution in Canada.
- Over 80 percent of prostituted persons are women. As many as 99 percent of buyers are men.
- Over two-thirds of participants in a federal program for prostituted persons report being coerced into prostitution.
- Over one-third of prostituted women in Vancouver are Indigenous, according to one study.
- Among sex workers in Vancouver, 40 percent reported injection drug use and 69 percent reported non-injection drug use.
- Prostitution is incompatible with a rightly ordered understanding of human dignity, work and liberty.
- Prostitution violates human dignity by treating a person as a means to another’s end.
- It is not work, because it undermines human flourishing and the common good.
- Nor is it compatible with economic liberty, because it undermines the dignity that is the very basis for freedom itself.
- Policy-makers should:
- Retain the Nordic model: Criminalize the purchase of sex, but make prostituted persons immune from prosecution.
- Stop using euphemisms such as ‘sex work.’ Instead, use language that reflects the violation of human dignity inherent in prostitution.
- Provide additional supports for women and men to avoid or exit prostitution.
Introduction
Every person has inherent human dignity and the right to have this dignity respected and upheld by others. They retain this inherent dignity regardless of their state in life, what they have done, or what has been done to them. Yet, too often, this dignity is obscured or violated by individuals and systems that prey on the most vulnerable in our society.
Nowhere is this clearer than in systems of prostitution wherein third parties and purchasers of sex prey on vulnerable (mostly) women for their own profit or gratification.
The Supreme Court of Canada’s 2025 ruling in R. v. Kloubakov briefly considered whether the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains a right to liberty for prostitution. The Court elected not to decide the issue, saying that it would wait until lower courts had the opportunity to consider it. This makes a consideration of the nature of economic liberty as it relates to prostitution a timely, if not urgent, issue.
This paper begins with key principles to guide our thinking on work and economics – namely human dignity, the dignity of work and economic liberty. Then, following a brief overview of Canada’s prostitution laws, it analyzes two schools of thought, radical feminism and liberal feminism, that have fundamentally shaped the current public debate on prostitution, as well as a new strand of feminism, which this paper will refer to as sex-realist feminism, that has more recently influenced thinking on this topic. Finally, the paper suggests a way forward for thinking about Canadian prostitution policy.
The paper does not seek to consider the issue from a legal perspective per se, as it is a normative investigation into the nature of dignity, work and liberty and whether they are consistent with prostitution. Nor does this paper seek to engage every phenomenon related to prostitution. There is no doubt significant overlap with other issues, such as pornography and human trafficking, but this paper focuses squarely on those activities that are contemplated by the Criminal Code’s prohibition on the exchange of sex for money.
The paper will usually discuss prostitution as it relates to female sellers of sex and male buyers, because they constitute the vast majority of the population involved.1 This is not meant to negate or to diminish the existence of male prostitution or to deny nuances that exist, but simply to reflect the reality that the overwhelming experience of prostitution is men purchasing sex from women.
The experiences of men are a crucial factor, but this paper engages this only incidentally in considering policy. This paper does not claim to speak to every angle of prostitution, but to contribute in a meaningful way to some of the main issues in the current debate.
The paper concludes that prostitution is incompatible with a rightly ordered understanding of human dignity, work and economic liberty. It therefore recommends that Canada retain its current prostitution laws, while providing additional support for those seeking to leave prostitution. It also recommends a move away from the terminology of ‘sex work’ toward language that acknowledges the fundamental dignity of those who are involved in prostitution.2
- Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform v. Attorney General, at para 219. Complete citations are provided for all sources at the end of this report.
- This paper argues that the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sexual services’ are inappropriate for describing the phenomenon of prostitution and will propose different terminology. Nevertheless, the paper employs these terms in contexts describing laws, schools of thought or references that themselves use it. It does not put the terms in quotation marks, except when discussing the terms themselves. This does not constitute an endorsement of the terms but an attempt to be respectful to the language of the authors whose work is described in this paper.
Renze Nauta is director of the Work and Economics Program at Cardus. Before joining Cardus, he was policy director for two federal Leaders of the Opposition and held various roles in the Prime Minister’s Office. He holds degrees in economics and philosophy. His writing has appeared in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, The Hub, Policy Options, the Financial Post and other publications.
Go here for the full report.