Make no mistake, ABC Councillors voted against sex worker safety.
At the May 20 Standing Committee Meeting on Finance and Services, Vancouver City Council read a motion about prioritizing sex worker safety policies and resources following the City of Vancouver’s decision to eliminate one of two Sex Workers Safety Social Planners.
What followed was an amendment that gutted the motion’s original intent, by a councillor who shamelessly invoked Forsaken: The Report on the Missing Women’s Commission of inquiry and Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – to justify the elimination of a position that contributes to sex worker safety across Vancouver.
The motion was so heavily amended that Councillor Fry, who drafted the document, abstained from voting. Other opposition councillors voted against it.
Twenty speakers signed up to express their support for the original motion, some shared harrowing accounts of the violence sex workers face and the memory of lost loved ones.
To a party that emphasizes and campaigns on community safety, we ask: safety for who?
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The Georgia Straight writes that it’s an understatement to say ABC councillor Lisa Dominato’s amendment watered down the original motion.
“It drowned the thing. There was no commitment to rehiring the worker. There were platitudes about presence in the community and few to no actionable items.
Of course it makes sense that the ruling party wasn’t going to commit to rehiring a worker it cut as a result of the “Zero Means Zero” budget that it approved. But ABC also wasn’t going to outright reject a motion that would help sex workers, because then the case could be made that the party voted against a motion that would help sex workers. Which… it did. It just did it with an amendment in a way that makes it less cut and dried.” – Nathan Caddell, “How a motion about sex worker safety told the story about Vancouver’s current City Council” The Georgia Straight. May 20, 2026.