Prairie Dog Magazine / July 17th, 2008 / Regina, Saskatchewan
by Gregory Beatty
In nearly 20 years of writing, I couldn’t even begin to guess how many interviews I’ve conducted. A thousand?
Fifteen hundred? Who knows? And not once in that time, I’m proud to say, have I ever committed a criminal
offence. Until July 4, that is.
That day, I interviewed Valerie Scott, executive director of Toronto-based Sex Professionals of Canada (SPOC). During a trip to Regina she contacted prairie dog about a constitutional challenge SPOC is mounting to have three Criminal Code sections declared unconstitutional: s.210 (keeping a bawdy house), s.212.1(j) (living on the avails) and s. 213.1(c) (communicating for the purposes of prostitution). Scott says the sections deprive sex workers of the right to liberty and security.
At one point in our conversation, Scott reached into her purse, pulled out a matchbook and handed it to me. Inside, I found a nickel. “Lawmakers generally frown upon overly broad laws,” she said. “A good law should be as narrow as possible so as not to end up with unintended consequences.”
{photo/Darrol Hofmeister}
Under a strict reading of s.212, Scott explained, by accepting the nickel (chosen by SPOC because of the beaver on it, she laughingly informed me) I could be charged with living off her earnings as a prostitute. Not a pleasant prospect, especially since the “avails” section has a reverse-onus clause. Instead of the Crown having to prove my guilt like in a normal trial, I’d be required to prove my innocence.
The laws [on prostitution] are as broad as you can imagine, and yes, there have been unintended consequences,”
she says.
“People ask ‘What about those guys with purple suits and big floppy hats’ — we’ve all seen those movies — ‘who are abusing sex workers?’” says Scott. “Well, they should be charged for whatever it is they’re
doing — extortion, forcible confinement, sexual assault.
“A lot of people have an opinion on the pimping law, but very few have actually read it. One part states that anyone who lives with or is habitually in the company of a prostitute can be charged and, if convicted, be jailed for up to 10 years.
“So I can’t have a lover or a roommate, and if I have a friend it’s dicey because they might habitually be in my company. Technically, we’re not permitted to support our children if they are over 12 because they can be charged.”
After 18 months of preparation by a legal team working pro bono, SPOC launched its case in Ontario Superior Court in May. Opposing them are seven Crown attorneys, along with lawyers representing the Christian Legal Fellowship, Catholic Civil Rights League and REAL Women, who have applied for intervener status.
On its website, REAL Women says this about SPOC’s suit. “If successful, [it] will result in very detrimental effects — practical, social, legal and health — that will undermine the social fabric in Canada.”
To press their case, SPOC has recruited dozens of witnesses — sex workers, social activists and criminologists. Among the last are Elliott Leyton from Newfoundland’s Memorial University, who’s an expert on serial killers, and John Lowman, who’s a professor at Simon Fraser’s School of Criminology.
Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal in 2005, Lowman said, “the prohibitionist lobby has managed to scuttle almost every attempt to introduce harm-reduction strategies for prostitutes, reasoning that creating safer working conditions would legitimize prostitution and sustain patriarchy. Prostitution, they say, hurts all women by reinforcing the ideology that women are sexual objects for the enjoyment of men. They assert that no woman would choose to become a prostitute if she really had a choice.”
But based on over 30 years of research, Lowman distinguishes between sexual slavery and survival sex — driven by things like poverty, addiction and debt bondage where the person has limited options — and a situation where a person with alternatives chooses to work as a prostitute.
“Rather than seeing prostitution as harming all women, I agree with prochoice feminists who argue that denying women control over their own bodies, including the decision to sell sexual services, denies them full and equal personhood,” Lowman wrote.
Prostitution itself is not illegal in Canada. But in 1985 [Dec. 20, to be exact, Scott says she remembers the
date well], Ottawa passed changes to the Criminal Code that cracked down on prostitutes communicating
publicly with clients. “When they brought in Bill C-49, we went to the parliamentary hearings in Ottawa
and told them what would happen. And they said ‘Thank you very much’, and passed the law. It wasn’t
two months after that that we began hearing about people being beaten up, raped, robbed.”
In his CMAJ article, Lowman recounted how people in the know warned the government that dire consequences would ensue. “Sadly, they were right. In British Columbia, for example, 11 prostitutes were murdered in the 25-year period before [1985], as compared with approximately 100 in the 15-year period immediately after.”
B.C.’s figure is inflated by Robert Pickton’s sickening exploits, of course. But by further pushing prostitutes into the shadows and hindering their ability to look after each other, Bill C-49 created the perfect conditions for predators like him to operate.
Rather than work to prohibit prostitution, Lowman agrees with prochoice feminists who argue that the
ultimate goal of social and legal policy should be to ensure that prostitution really is a matter of choice.
“The law kind of indicates to people that we’re criminals, and that we’re disposable,” says Scott. “So you
can do whatever you want with us and it’s okay,” she says. “It’s like the feds brought in a de facto death penalty for prostitutes.”
And when prostitutes are assaulted, raped, murdered and robbed, they often don’t receive the same consideration by police and the courts that more “upstanding” citizens do.
“When the murders were happening in Vancouver, we heard about the pig farm three years before Pickton was arrested,” says Scott. “In Toronto, we heard about this. C’mon, the cops in Vancouver must have known something. Instead, I remember reading quotes from cops saying ‘Well, these are transient women. They just picked up and began a new life.’ Wait a minute. These are women who didn’t have enough money to get a bus out of town.