LET'S TALK RED-LIGHT DISTRICT, MAYOR SAYS

A new project aimed at improving the health and safety of sex trade
workers and dealing with their impact on the community should include
a discussion of red-light districts, Vancouver Mayor Larry Campbell
said Sunday.

"We're going to have to come to some recognition that there is a sex
trade and it's not going away," Campbell told a news conference
announcing the two-year project. "It's here, it's been here forever
and I simply don't think we can be playing with people's lives," said
the mayor, who later told a Vancouver radio station that red light
districts and legislation changes should be on the table during the
coming discussions.

The new initiative, called the Living in Community project, is a
collaboration of community and government organizations, including
groups formed by current and former sex workers, business groups, the
City of Vancouver, the Vancouver police department and the Vancouver
Coastal Health Authority.

With a goal of developing a well-informed, coordinated approach to
issues associated with the sex work, they're hoping to do for the sex
trade what the four pillars approach did for drug issues.

"This is like the four pillars all over again," Campbell said.

Susan Davis, chair of the Prostitution Alternatives Counselling and
Education society, and an active sex worker, said: "I think really
what we are looking at here is harm reduction for sex workers who are
in a survival capacity and to try to help the communities that are
affected by the sex industry that is on the street."

"People are in the mood to take a harm-reduction approach," she said.

"They realize the laws aren't working, something has to be done."

Patricia Barnes, executive director of the Hastings North Business
Improvement Area, said the committee hopes to develop a city-wide
plan that will address core issues, and not just push workers from
one community to another.

"We [have been] pushing these people out of their own communities and
we're placing them in danger," Barnes said.

"We weren't moving forward. We weren't achieving anything."

Committee members will assemble a draft plan, which they will take
into the community in the spring, she said, adding that no
suggestions or solutions will be ignored.

Campbell agreed.

"Nothing is being ruled out. It's wide open," he said, pointing out
no one could have foreseen a safe injection site when the Four
Pillars plan was first conceived.

"I believe this project here is on the cutting edge and again will
lead Canada into an area where people are respected, where we save
lives and we are able to help the community and those people that are
involved in the trade," he added.

First formed in 1997, Vancouver's Four Pillars Coalition was a group
made up of business, government, non-profit organizations and
advocacy groups that came together to determine ways to address
Vancouver's drug problem.

In May 2001, the city adopted the four pillars approach, which
included such elements as a supervised drug-injection site in the
Downtown Eastside.