There really hasn’t been much intelligence happening on Parliament hill since our government decided to evade and attack Afghanistan, so this new initiative of theirs shouldn’t really surprise me, but it certainly does disgust me.

Last week the police in Ottawa have declared a war against whores (or at least a war against those who see them), and have begun mailing letters to anyone caught cruising the streets for sex workers. The letters will include the time, date and location the man was observed by officers in areas known to be frequented by prostitutes, and also include a listing of “harms related to prostitution” (i.e. sexually transmitted infections/diseases like Hep C, HIV/AIDS, and syphilis), in an attempt to deter men from seeking the services of street based sex workers.

What jacks me off (and not in a good way) about these letters is that Ottawa police are sending out false information that will only serve to further stigmatize sex workers as vectors of HIV/AIDS, Hep C, and other infections. Research from around the world (including from the World Health Organization) has shown that sex workers, whether street based or those who work indoors, are experts at safer sex and that they are at no more risk of getting or infecting others with HIV than the rest of the population in Canada. There is absolutely no evidence in Canada to show that transmission of HIV from sex workers to their clients regularly takes place, not even with injection drug using sex workers as a 2003 study known as I-Track: Enhanced Surveillance of Risk Behaviours Among Injecting Drug Users in Canada, found that 98% of injection drug users who also worked as sex workers report ably used condoms all the time with clients.

So with that being said, what the police are doing is intentionally reinforcing stereotypes of sex trade workers as a diseased and drug-addicted threat, while simultaneously driving sex workers further into isolated locations—as well as sending out the message that sex workers are not valued members of our community but, instead parasites waiting to infect innocent men with families.

These letters are also an invasion of privacy for the clients of sex workers, and insinuates that they’re guilty of a crime they haven’t been convicted of.

Furthermore, who’s to say that these men, who police believe were using the services of sex workers, were not just asking for directions?