The sex workers who walk into danger on Victoria鈥檚 streets every day won a victory in sa国际传媒鈥檚 highest court, but it will be cold comfort because the ruling is frozen for a year.
In the appeal brought by dominatrix Terri-Jean Bedford, former prostitute Valerie Scott and Amy Lebovitch from Vancouver鈥檚 Downtown Eastside, the Supreme Court has dropped the prostitution issue into the unwilling lap of sa国际传媒鈥檚 Parliament. The MPs have a year to bring prostitution laws into line with the Charter of Rights or watch three key sections become void.
As much as Prime Minister Stephen Harper hates taking dictation from the justices, he and his government should take the ruling as an opportunity to make sense of this most difficult of problems.
Last week, the nine justices of the court unanimously declared that the three laws relating to prostitution are violations of the constitutional guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person.
The three laws make it illegal to keep a brothel, live off the avails of prostitution or communicate for the purposes of prostitution. Because prostitution itself is not illegal, the three sections of the Criminal Code are the framework for controlling sex work.
Advocates have argued 鈥� and the justices agreed 鈥� that the laws have the unintended consequence of making sex work more dangerous for the people who make their living by it.
The bawdy-house law is designed to avoid the nuisance of traffic to a brothel and the risk that women might be kept there against their will. The prohibition against living off the avails is supposed to keep sex workers free of pimps and prevent commercialization of prostitution. The solicitation law is intended to keep neighbourhood streets clear of prostitutes and their clients.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing on behalf of the court, said the effect of these laws has been to force sex workers 鈥� mostly women 鈥� to take risks that have cost some their lives.
McLachlin noted that the Downtown Eastside haven called Grandma鈥檚 House was forced out of business under the brothel law, at a time when it might have saved some women from Robert 鈥淲illie鈥� Pickton. Pickton was found guilty of second-degree murder in the deaths of six women, and is alleged to have killed as many as 49.
The ban on living off the avails of prostitution prevents sex workers from hiring receptionists, drivers or bodyguards, all of whom provide added layers of protection.
And the soliciting law drives women to isolated areas and pushes them to make deals quickly, instead of checking out their potential customers carefully.
The court is essentially saying that it is inappropriate for the government to make something legal, but then create a web of laws that make it dangerous. The government has to decide whether to remove the dangerous restrictions or once again make prostitution itself illegal.
Those who brought the appeal are hoping for decriminalization. Elizabeth Fry societies and sex-assault centres say it鈥檚 a bad ruling that permits the 鈥渂uying and selling of women.鈥� Others, including the conservative Evangelical Fellowship of sa国际传媒, want to make it a crime again, but with the 鈥淣ordic model,鈥� which makes criminals out of pimps and johns, but not of sex workers.
The federal government鈥檚 position, as summarized by McLachlin, is that those who choose the sex trade know the risks, so the danger is in their choices, not in the law.
But as the chief justice wrote, poverty, drug addiction and mental illness make it far from a simple choice.
Over the next year, the government and all those who care about this issue must fix their eyes on the prize: reducing the horrendous toll that prostitution takes on sex workers.
