by Peter Berton
YNOT – The fight over Canada’s archaic prostitution laws – prostitution is legal, but ‘communicating’ that you offer sexual services and offering them safely indoors is not – has made its way to the country’s Supreme Court.
At issue is an Ontario appeal court ruling that struck down federal laws prohibiting prostitutes from, among other things, working indoors in “bawdy houses.” Those laws were voided because they flew in the face of Canada’s Charter of Rights, by putting sex workers’ personal safety at risk.
Canada’s Supreme Court justices, who sit in Ottawa, Canada, spent nearly six hours on June 13, 2013 listening to arguments from government lawyers trying to reverse the Ontario court ruling, and lawyers representing the three sex workers who have been fighting to uphold it.
Federal government lawyer Michael Morris told the justices that the Ontario appeal court went too far.
“In the face of a complex social problem, uncertainty and contradicting social science evidence, we submit that the Ontario Court of Appeal erred,” said Morris.
Sex worker lawyer Alan Young disagreed. He asked the Supreme Court judged to ignore the “mythmaking, fearmongering and storytelling” of his opponents, and their “powerful, lofty, rarefied statements that don’t reflect the law.” It is this emphasis on the law – namely that sex workers have the fundamental human right to personal safety enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights — that was at the core of the Ontario Court of Appeal decision, which Young fought for.
Public sympathies in Canada are generally in favor of decriminalizing sex work, with the exception of certain conservative religious and social groups. This is because the current laws are generally acknowledged to enable the abuse of prostitutes; most notably by Robert Pickton. The British Columbia pig farmer has been convicted for killing six prostitutes, and is suspected of murdering many more; all under the neglectful eyes of law enforcement who saw the disappearance of Vancouver sex workers as not worth investigating.
Where this current case will go is anyone’s guess. That said, the Canadian Supreme Court has a history of sticking to the law, rather than making the kinds of political/ideological decisions that often bias top courts in other countries.
If the justices agree that the Charter of Rights supports sex worker rights — based on the law — then they will likely uphold the lower court ruling. Should this occur, sex work could open up in Canada.
What would remain to be seen is how the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper would react. Harper has a history of not re-opening contentious social legal issues once they have been ruled upon by the Supreme Court, if the rulings are supported by the majority of Canadians. This is why his government has chosen not to challenge the availability of abortions in Canada following Supreme Court rulings allowing them, despite pressure within Harper’s party to make abortions much tougher – if not impossible – to get.
The biggest irony: The advent of the Internet, plus the lack of interest by police in investigating individual prostitutes already working discreetly indoors, means middle- and upper-echelon escorts already operate without too much fear in Canada.
The result: Should the bawdy house law be struck down, it will improve safety for ‘street walkers’ who currently have to jump into cars with potentially-dangerous johns, for fear of being busted for ‘communicating’. As for their more prosperous colleagues? Thanks to the Web, they’ve already liberated themselves from Canada’s out-of-date, functionally cruel prostitution laws.
