Guys I am no legal analyst but this seems really disturbing legally to me.
Bud with analogy but let me try this:
Assume if we had the same law USA had for non whites to ride only at the back of bus. So I go to Supreme Court and say hey.....please give me full rights to sit anywhere in the bus. Supreme Court says, you are right! Done...Government you FIX it.
Government goes.....Okay no Problem.......From now on Non-Whites cannot take the Bus. Period. FIXED.
Sure will want me to be think twice before returning to SC then huh.
Not a good analogy; even a lowly JP would then promptly rule the new law deprived non-whites of their SCC-recognized and clearly stated right to occupy any seat on the bus regardless of colour, and it would fail on the same human rights grounds as the previous law.
Prostitution—defined as sex for money—is already in the Criminal Code, not as an offence itself but as the trigger-mechanism that makes otherwise ordinary acts, like advertising, striking a deal in the open, or operating a retail business into criminal ones. You need to find a bus-ride scenario where it's OK for non-whites to ride, but not if they pay for it, and then punish the bus company that takes their money.
Given social attitudes, particularly in the conservative base, a proposal that criminalized the transaction would likely have some strong support, and if prostitution itself was illegal (no one could sit anywhere on the bus), then there would be no infringement of someone's rights in forbidding them to solicit customers or keep a bawdyhouse to do the deed.
But that would still leave a human rights case to be made on the basis that anyone receiving 'payment' for sex—the room and board of a non-employed wife—was committing an act of prostitution, and we'd face the same stupid logic-chopping semantic circuses that obscenity charges regularly produced, as judges and politicians vainly tried to keep their sex—or pix and words about it—legal while prohibiting the sex they didn't like. If you want to see how ultimately successful they were look up any topic on the web. Porn won.
Society did not collapse. Nor has it collapsed because we have no abortion law, and Colorado and Amsterdam will teach us we can manage with drug laws that are not criminal. Criminal law is the ultimate recognition that a society has failed to inculcate its citizens with its values and morals. It fixes nothing, and often creates more harm than the offence, especially when those 'offences' are common and the punishments heavy. Spanking never made a child good.
If OHG is worthy to become the Canada's Natural Government, they'll push a similar strategy as they have for abortion: Do nothing by law, but let the true-believers have their say; only if and when they gather enough support, then maybe a make law. In this case I'd bet they think support is already there, and that even if they get it wrong, it'll take years for another Supreme Court to say so.
Too bad. There are already all the basic social controls and laws we need to regulate, mitigate or to forbid and punish such evils as coercion, exploitation, violence, and disruptive solicitation and advertising. It isn't fear of criminal penalties that keeps all our other social/commercial transactions within acceptable limits. We can hope their legislative tinkering at least heads in that direction, but I wouldn't put money on it.
