Vancouver Police, like Toronto and most other large cities refuse to enforce C36 for in private consenting adults. If only LE was as mature in the U.S.
Vancouver Police, like Toronto and most other large cities refuse to enforce C36 for in private consenting adults. If only LE was as mature in the U.S.
After the Supreme Court 2013 decision declaring the incall law and "living of the avils" unconstitutional based on harm reduction, the conservative Harper government passed C36. It is easy to avoid but is more the Swedish model making it a crime for a customer to buy sex but all is legal for the prostitute. WIth the new Trudeau government there is mounting pressure to repeal C36. The law is unlikely to survive a court challenge if it is used against an in private consenting adult, based on harm reduction when legal, just like the prior Bedford case.
Highlights of 9/30/2016 Vancouver Sun Article
As Vancouver fails to enforce prostitution laws, Trudeau government needs to declare its stance on legalizing sex work
When the Criminal Code’s sections on prostitution were rewritten in 2014 the intent was to focus on the demand for sex services, in order to make prostitution a less risky proposition. The changes recognized for the first time that the right to safety included people engaged in the sex trade. It was a recognition forced on the government by a Supreme Court of Canada decision in 2013 that struck down key sections of the old law. In the Bedford case, Canada’s top court agreed that prostitutes need to be protected and it agreed with the complainants that criminal sanctions against brothels and those living off the avails of prostitution put them at greater risk.
But there’s a deep divide internationally about how best to protect prostitutes from harm when they’re doing work that’s inherently harmful.
Shouting across the divide are those who believe that prostitution is a job like any other and ought to be legalized; and those who believe that prostitution is violence against women, a vestige of gender inequality that ought to be abolished.
In Vancouver, legalizers have been winning for a long time and are still, even with the Criminal Code changes. What muddied the legal waters is that during the 2015 election campaign, some Liberal candidates (including Hedy Fry in Vancouver Centre) suggested that their government would revoke the changes and legalize prostitution (for customers etc.). That’s re-ignited the fierce debate.
Where there hasn’t been any debate for 15 years is at Vancouver City Hall, where councils have long pursued the stealth legalization of the sex trade. It dates back to the city’s 2001 harm-reduction model in the “Four Pillars Approach to Drug Problems,” which included a recommendation that prostitution be decriminalized. Under the banner of harm reduction, Vancouver made brothels a permitted use in areas zoned for home-based businesses in 2008. Public outrage forced the council to back down.
In 2011, council endorsed a “comprehensive approach” aimed at mitigating the negative effects on neighbourhoods of an estimated 1,000-2,000 street prostitutes, and better protecting the other 8,000-10,000 believed to be working indoors.
By 2013, when the Conservative government called for input into new prostitution laws, Vancouver’s council was urging full legalization (with the exception of the purchase of sexual services from minors).
That same year, the Vancouver Police Department adopted its “Sex Work Enforcement Guidelines.” Since then, not a single person has been arrested for buying sexual services, not even after the new prostitution laws were enacted in 2014. The guidelines’ only reference to sex buyers is that police will enforce the laws related to the abuse and sexual exploitation of children and will “monitor and maintain intelligence reports to identify and track potentially violent sex industry consumers/exploitive abusers.”
Several Vancouver-based organizations asked the B.C. government not to enforce the new laws because they’re not in the public interest.
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