VANCOUVER – A group of Vancouver sex-trade workers has incorporated the country’s first sex industry co-operative with the goal of setting up a legal brothel.

The official documents incorporating the West Coast Cooperative of Sex Industry Professionals arrived in the mail last week. So far, the co-op has 13 directors, including prostitutes, porn stars and exotic dancers.

“We’re not looking for a Red Light district,” said Susan Davis.

“We’re just looking for an opportunity to demonstrate what we believe will be the impact on the health and safety of the entire community by bringing it indoors.”

Ultimately, the co-op would be like a safe place for prostitutes to conduct business, as well as a place to offer education and skills training to sex-industry workers.

Davis said the co-op hopes to set up profitable enterprises, such as a catering business and a publishing house, which could give sex workers marketable skills for other work.

“It is intended to provide choices,” she said. “You’re talking about a group of people, some of whom haven’t put anything on their resumes in 20 years.”

The group will be lobbying the federal government for an exemption to federal laws against prostitution in order to open the brothel, preferably near the Port of Vancouver.

Davis said Vancouver has opened its doors to a safe-injection site for drug users in order to save lives and it’s time to do the same for sex industry workers.

Co-op directors are in the process of drafting a proposal for the federal government that would exempt the co-op from the Criminal Code prohibition on prostitution.

Davis said they will consult with local residents and businesses but that the deaths of prostitutes from the Downtown Eastside, most notoriously at the hands of serial killer Robert Pickton, has served to highlight the need for change.

“It’s about safety,” said Davis, a sex worker for the past 22 years. “We can all agree the situation in the east end is not acceptable. Something has to change.”

Davis admits the group has an uphill battle convincing the federal Conservative government to approve a brothel but she is confident.

“This is not asking for carte-blanche to open all kinds of brothels all over the place,” she said. “We’re asking for a limited opportunity to try and demonstrate what we think will happen if we bring them inside (off the street).”

Davis believes there is support for the project, even within the political community.

Ideally, the brothel would be in place by the 2010 Olympic Games, she said.

“The Olympics presents an interesting political time,” she said. “With the world coming here, maybe we should show people that we can rise above the old moral standpoint and do something really creative to stabilize people’s safety.”