Community harm or harm-reduction measure? Legal sex-trade parlours 'operate subtly' in Winnipeg
While Winnipeg once had dozens of body-rub parlours, it now has 2, which are legal and licensed by the city
When a body-rub parlour operated across a back lane from a recreation centre for inner-city kids, the resulting land-use conflict was nothing short of a nightmare for the City of Winnipeg.
On one side of the lane sat one of the last licensed and fully legal sex-trade operations in Winnipeg, grandfathered onto a block of West Broadway under old, vestigial rules governing what used to be called massage parlours.
On the other side, the Broadway Neighbourhood Centre offered meals, sports instruction and educational programming to hundreds of little kids, teens and young adults.
The presence of johns and children in the same back lane led to predictable and unhappy outcomes.
"Our kids were being propositioned and in some cases, accosted," said Broadway Neighbourhood Centre director Lawrence (Spatch) Mulhall, recalling occasions when he tried to chase after motorists who had attempted to procure services from teenage girls on their way to after-school programs.
"Thirteen, 14-year-olds were coming down the back lane, whether they were on their bikes or Rollerblading or walking, and they were being propositioned by older gentlemen, and I use that term loosely," he said.
"They would ask the young girls if they were into giving massages. The girls would run in, and by the time I would run out, the cars were gone."
The City of Winnipeg has been licensing the sex trade for decades, at least when it comes to what are now known as body-rub parlours. Two remain in Winnipeg, grandfathered in under arcane zoning regulations.
For six years, Mulhall and leaders of other West Broadway community organizations tried to lobby the city to get rid of the body-rub parlour, which he also blamed for drug use in the back lane and underdressed women hanging out of windows, visible from a patio used by a head-start program for Indigenous kids age three to five.
An effort to convince the owner to pack up shop was met with a request for $3,500 a month in compensation, Mulhall said.
Arcane zoning rule
Then in 2016, a "permanently closed" sign appeared on the door of the Broadway operation, providing city licensing officials with a window to ensure the body-rub shop would in fact remain closed forever.
The arcane city zoning rule that effectively allows any existing, legally licensed body-rub parlour in Winnipeg to operate in perpetuity in the same location has a sunset clause: the grandfathering expires if the business is inactive for a year.
We were elated.… We don't have sort of weird old men hanging around in Cadillacs, driving around and asking questions.- Spatch Mulhall, Broadway Neighbourhood Centre
"We were able to to start the time clock to capture [a] 12-month period of not conducting that business," said Marcia Fifer, the City of Winnipeg's licensing co-ordinator.
"So that effectively removed the grandfather clause from the zoning approvals."
As a result, with the stroke of a pen in 2017, the official number of legal body-rub parlours in Winnipeg dropped from three to two.
"We were elated. Joyful. Dancing!" Mulhall said of the day his staff realized the sex-trade operation across the lane was gone for good. "We don't have sort of weird old men hanging around in Cadillacs, driving around and asking questions."
Still, two more body-rub parlours continue to operate in Winnipeg. And this presents a conundrum for city officials, police and community workers who advocate on behalf of sex-trade workers who are, by the very nature of their work, at risk of violence and exploitation.
Wait, Winnipeg licenses the sex trade?
In the 1970s, so many so-called "massage parlours" operated in Winnipeg that city land-use officials decided they had to put rules in place to govern what was then an only quasi-legal segment of the sex trade.
Dozens of these businesses existed downtown alone, licensing co-ordinator Fifer said.
"There was a need to regulate and control density and working conditions and things like that. So they've been licensed a long time," she said.
"When we think back in history, how many cathouses used to be in Winnipeg? There was a whole district of them," said Charlotte Nolin, an outreach worker for Sage House, which helps women involved in sex trade. "It was a service that politicians realized that there was a demand for."
In 2012, the city stopped calling these businesses "massage parlours," partly at the behest of the therapeutic massage industry. The legal sex-trade businesses were renamed "body-rub parlours" and continue to be licensed by the City of Winnipeg.
Two of these establishments remain, both in the West End, employing about 50 people, Fifer said.
Each body-rub parlour must pay an annual licensing fee of $4,770 and only employ the services of people who pay an annual $350 fee that allows them to work as body-rub practitioners.
Winnipeg's business bylaw imposes a series of conditions on these establishments. No alcohol is allowed to be consumed on site. No advertising is permitted outside that indicates the sexual nature of the services offered within. No services may be provided between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m.
A body-rub practitioner is not allowed to be nude; each one must wear "clean, washable, non-transparent garments covering his or her body between the neck and no more than 10 centimetres above the top of the knee," the bylaw says.
As well, all services must take place in rooms that are not fitted with doors that lock. The Winnipeg Police Service inspects both businesses on a regular basis, as often as once a week, both to check on the well-being of the women who work there and to ensure city bylaws are being followed.
The only other licensed businesses inspected by police instead of bylaw officers are pawn shops and gold buyers, Fifer said.
'No one's forcing them there'
For the Winnipeg Police Service, which primarily deals with the online sex trade and people who work the streets, there are some advantages to the licensing of a tiny, legal segment of the sex trade.
- Winnipeg sex trade booms online as street-level operations decline
- Winnipeg police help shine light on Canadian sex trafficking
- Human trafficking crackdown includes Winnipeg police, FBI, others
"From a harm-reduction perspective, we as law enforcement know who the women are who are working in these establishments," said Insp. Kelly Dennison, who is in charge of specialized investigations, including counter-exploitation and missing persons.
"We can determine that they're there of their own free will. We can determine they're licensed appropriately with the City of Winnipeg [and] that they're performing a function because they want to perform that function," Dennison said.
"Nobody's forcing them there. Nobody's making them do anything they don't want to do, and they're in a somewhat semi-secure place."
To Dennison, women working in body-rub parlours are not subject to the same risks as sex workers who solicit clients through social media or on the street.
"There is an element of maybe safety for some of these girls that are working in these establishments," he said.
But there remains little love for body-rub parlours from the people who provide services to women involved in the sex trade.
'Exploitation comes in many forms'
Sage House's Nolin, a former sex worker herself, said she has mixed feelings about the city's continued licensing of body-rub parlours.
"I guess I'm on the fence with that one. It does provide some sort of safety to the girls," she said. "But exploitation comes in many forms."
Nolin said she's been told stories about substance use in the workplace, unfair charges for supplies such as condoms and poor wages.
Body-rub practitioners are also told by their employers not to engage with any clients on their own time.
"You're providing services and they're taking a big chunk of the money," she said. "I know [if] I was working in one of those places, I'd want it to stay open so that I could keep working. But my personal view on it is take 'em out."
Most 'wouldn't know where these are'
The City of Winnipeg is making no effort to shut down the two remaining body-rub parlours.
"I think if people don't know that they're operating, it's not a bad thing. They operate subtly within communities," said Fifer of the West End body-rub parlours.
One has no exterior signage whatsoever and is located four storefronts from a daycare. A second does have a sign, bearing only its address, and sits between a junior high school and a 7-Eleven.
Dennison said there is no evidence to connect the presence of these businesses with the visible presence of sex-trade workers in the West End.
"Most people in the city of Winnipeg probably wouldn't know where these are. And if you were to drive by one, you wouldn't know that's what it was," he said.
Nonetheless, Dennison said he hopes the city will not approve any new body-rub businesses. While that's possible, in theory, the application process involves a tremendous amount of vetting, Fifer said.
Spatch Mulhall is simply happy the parlour across the lane from his recreation centre is gone. He credits community activism.
"If you don't phone or complain or let people know what's going on, nothing will ever happen," he said. "Nothing will ever change."
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