Testimony to be used in the drafting of Bill C-36 concluded on July 10th. Bill C-36 was introduced in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision to strike down Canadian prostitution laws as violations of constitutional guarantees to the life, liberty, and security of the person: specifically, the prohibitions against keeping a brothel, living on the avails of prostitution, and soliciting on the street. The previous legislation exposed sex workers to danger, since it forced them to practice out of public view and be unable to hire their own drivers and guards.
Bill C-36 seeks to protect sex workers by treating them as victims and shielding them from criminal prosecution. However, prostitution is still illegal if carried out in public places where children could be, or if two sex workers communicate for the purpose of selling sex.
Bill C-36 also aims to limit prostitution by prohibiting the purchase of a sex worker’s services, but not the selling of such services, and thus prosecutes johns and pimps: it would be illegal to pimp out prostitutes and pay for their services. This is also known as the Nordic model.
The bill is intended to protect sex workers by allowing them to rent apartments, screen clients, hire receptionists, drivers, and guards, and to advertise their own services. However, sex workers believe that the most vulnerable members of the profession do not benefit from hiring support staff they can’t support, and instead would be driven further into sketchy neighbourhoods when soliciting clients.
Furthermore, the ultimate purpose of C-36 is “to protect human dignity and the equality of all Canadians by discouraging prostitution,” as stated in the bill’s preamble. Seems a bit ironic – that one might promote dignity of one group by discouraging another. Furthermore, the purpose of Section 15 in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is, according to the Supreme Court, to prevent the “violation of essential human dignity and freedom through the imposition of disadvantage, stereotyping, or political and social prejudices, and to promote a society in which all persons enjoy equal recognition at law… equally capable and equally deserving of concern, respect, and consideration.”
C-36 also addresses provision of assisting workers to “exit” the sex industry, but these services are contingent on exiting the industry in the first place. Sex workers for whom leaving the sex trade is not feasible, or have no intention of leaving in the first place, do not benefit from these services, because C-36 considers them to be still part of the problem.
You might also notice that I haven’t referred to any sex workers as female above. Bill C-36 is exclusively designed to protect vulnerable and marginalized women. And yes, most sex workers are female, but male sex workers were not included as witnesses in the discussion and drafting of Bill C-36.
Furthermore, the Conservative government would have you believe that the world’s oldest profession has no right to exist in the first place. The Nordic model, 15 after years its 1999 inception in Sweden, still has not eliminated prostitution. The War on Drugs won’t help suffering addicts, but clean needle and medication does. Prostitution is illegal in all the States but Nevada, but I’m pretty sure there are sex workers all over “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” The 2003 legislative accident in Rhode Island that allowed paying for consensual sex (but only indoors) reduced rape by 30% and female gonorrhea by 39% until the closure of the legal loophole in 2009, likely due to lower rates of victimization.
One recognizes that prostitution or brothel management is not always a person’s first choice of career, and that generally speaking, prostitution is not good. However, C-36 broadly assumes that all prostitutes are victims in need of protection. C-36 also prosecutes madames who currently manage brothels, and those who depend on the services of such escort agencies. Similarly, those who purchase sex are not necessarily bad people.
If the government really wanted to protect sex workers, they might focus their efforts on reducing poverty and the removal of legal and social stigma associated with the sex industry to allow for easier prosecution of abusive johns, pimps, human traffickers. Isn’t the abuse of sex workers the problem in the first place?
Such a broad and simple-minded law like Bill C-36 is dangerously powerful. It stinks of NIMBYism and ham-handed legislators. It will probably pass by the end of the year.
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