While B.C.'s Options for Sexual Health has run the Sexual and Reproductive Health Day Breakfast for three years, this year, Opt decided to focus on sex workers and to honour a local hero who has been a significant figure in battling the legislation of sex work in Canada.

At the event held on February 12 at the Vancouver Marriott Pinnacle Downtown Hotel (hosted by CBC's Fred Lee), executive director Jennifer Breakspear explained to the audience that Opt, which provides sexual health services to British Columbians, has been trying to shift more attention to rights and health of sex workers.

"If I were asked why I'm in favour of decriminalization it's because I believe in human rights and the fact that anyone who goes to work and faces unsafe conditions or violence is a threat to their human rights and that's why I'm in favour of decriminalization," she said. "We feel that because sexual rights, control over one's own body, the right to security of a person—these are all vital components of sexual and reproductive health, and this is why this year, we're turning our attention to sex work and the health and safety of sex workers."

Vancouver author Amber Dawn (How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler's Memoir, Sub Rosa), who has written and spoken about her experiences as a sex worker, illuminated the challenges and harsh conditions that sex workers face.

She cited how studies have shown that sex workers have been disinclined to access healthcare and social services due to stigma associated with their profession.

"A 2014 survey of street-based sex worker needs assessment led by a research team in Toronto, Barrie, and Oshawa, Ontario, showed a quarter of the interviewees never see a healthcare provider while nearly half never disclose their involvement in sex-work to their healthcare provider," she said. "A judgemental healthcare and social services providers were the most prominent reason mentioned by interviewees."

She said that if someone wants to be an ally, they can help by fighting the criminalization of sex work.

"Criminalization…and other systemic barriers that prevent sex workers from freely sharing information put our health at risk," she explained. "It not only impedes our ability to learn from each other, it increases the likelihood that police will refuse to protect sex workers and instead will routinely confiscate condoms and other harm-reduction supplies as evidence of criminal activity."

Someone who did fight against legislation about sex work in Canada was Pivot Legal Society executive director Katrina Pacey.

Pacey was honoured at the breakfast as this year's Sexual Health Champion.

While Breakspear said that previous award winners Savage Love's Dan Savage and Scarleteen founder Heather Corinna both hailed from Seattle, they chose someone local this year.

Katrina Pacey explained the origins of her interest in fighting for the rights of sex workers in how her values were formed when her mother came out to her as a lesbian in 1982.

She said her mother's coming-out occurred at a time "when [same-sex] marriage was impossible, when her human rights weren't protected, when custody was an issue". She explained that the experience made her later realize that "there was this entire legal framework that surrounded her experience…added and contributed to the vulnerability that she faced".

As she sought to try to understand conflicting messages about same-sex relationships, she began to focus on what was most important.

"So within those contradictions, it's when my core values really settled in, when I started to really realize what mattered was love, what mattered was compassion, what mattered was an openness to learning and to understanding the importance of difference and it's in that space, we actually grow, we actually become better people, we actually build a good society," she said.

While she was in law school, she decided to focus on sex workers and learned a great deal about sex work by listening to them when she took 100 statements from Downtown Eastside sex workers to take to Ottawa in 2004.

She pointed out that all 100 interviewees were unanimous that Canada's prostitutions laws were hurting, not helping them.

"They face the most dangerous possible work environments and that danger is largely attributable to Canada's prostitution laws," she said.

Pacey was the counsel for a coalition of intervenors on the landmark Bedford case, in which three of Canada's prostitution laws were successfully struck down as unconstitutional.

In December 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, in a unanimous decision, that laws prohibiting the keeping of a common bawdy house, living off the avails of prostitution, and communicating in public for the sale of sex violate sex workers' charter guarantee to security of the person under section 7.

Along with a slide show, she described the incredible moment of celebration upon the announcement of the decision.

"This is what was happening across the country: hugs and kisses and love and cheering and just this incredible victory, this incredible recognition, for something that sex workers had been fighting for, for decades—I've been lucky to be a part of the last 10," she said.

Pacey also praised the work of Opt. In particular, what she pointed out is actually something very simple that anyone can do to help sex workers.

"The most important thing that Opt is doing is speaking truth to power by meeting people where they're at by doing deep listening by saying 'I believe you' and by saying 'What do you need?' "