Supreme Court of Canada will release its decision on the Bedford, Lebovitch and Scott

[oldjones]

Please don't then complain when Blue Water navies transit the Arctic Archipelago without bothering either request Canadian permission or pay the slightest attention to Canadian objections.

Matt said Harper's scheme was irresponsible; that does not mean that any or all schemes to build naval ice-capable patrol ships are. But spending more to 'design' our own than it would cost to buy and build already in-service designs from an ally, as Harpers is doing is far from responsible. Particularly when the company 'designing' the Canuck Arctic Patrol vessels then contracts that job to a foreign firm. Nice support for homegrown shipbuilding that is, although it likely let the former Defence Minister tell his province he was supporting local industries with our defence dollars.

And Harpo owes McKay big time.

 

[staggerspool]

Hers is not a nuanced position or any sort of "Joy (Smith) division of legality" in which some forms of prostitution should be allowed, she is calling for it to be criminalized.

Yes, it is probably true that Joy's position is the only detailed position to be put up by the conservatives... but this is probably because she is the only one who was interested in putting one up before this came on the radar via the Supremes.

I don't see Joy as having a lot of power in the PMO, where the decisions are all made. And the statement that "prostitution must be eliminated.." suggests that she isn't likely to have much sway, since this really isn't on the cards. Making prostitution illegal is a non-starter, as Peter Mackay knows.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Making prostitution illegal is a non-starter, as Peter Mackay knows

When did he say those exact words??

 

[TeasePlease]

When did he say those exact words??

Exactly. The CPC has no intention of legalizing prostitution. Such a position would certainly be inconsistent with policy statement from their last convention. The CPC views prostitution as inherently exploitative; consent is essentially irrelevant. The policy resolution passed without going to electronic balloting because a double majority was "clearly" evident from the floor.

 

[ultistar]

Exactly. The CPC has no intention of legalizing prostitution. Such a position would certainly be inconsistent with policy statement from their last convention. The CPC views prostitution as inherently exploitative; consent is essentially irrelevant. The policy resolution passed without going to electronic balloting because a double majority was "clearly" evident from the floor.

Sounds like you were there

Internal consistency is not Harper's strong suit but I cannot see Harper passing up this opportunity to drive a wedge between himself and Trudeau jr. After all, it was his father who rightly proclaimed "the gov't has no place in the bedrooms of its people".
Justifying a more open prostitution policy is hard to defend politically, but Trudeau will be forced to defend it (given his lineage).
Then Harper can call Trudeau a pot smoking pimp.

It's been said before and worth repeating; this was a pyrrhic victory.

 

[Vixens]

Is it the case that the outcall actually acts as a referral service for the ladies, that they hire the agency to "represent" them, and they make money simply from making the availability of the lady public and providing a means to meet her? Then if prostitution is legal, no problem..

This.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

CNN article today.

And LOL at 85% figure, what a joke!!

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/27/opinion/wells-prostitution-victims/index.html?hpt=hp_t4

Should prostitution be legal?

(CNN) -- Christmas came early this year for pimps and johns in Canada.

Last week's unanimous decision by the Supreme Court of Canada to strike down all remaining prostitution laws is not only a victory for the professional sex workers who brought their case through the legal system, it is a triumph for those who live off and enjoy the commercial sex industry. Tragically, it's a time bomb for hundreds of thousands of vulnerable and exploited women, girls and boys.

We are documentary filmmakers and our film, "Tricked", opened last week in New York City. For 3 years, we embedded with vice cops, met with the johns, pimps, girls and boys entangled in the professional sex world. We went to the dungeon of a dominatrix, filmed the partially legal model in Sweden and met sex workers advocating for legalization. We followed abolitionists, lobbyists, hobbyists, survivors, the FBI, grandmothers, gay sex workers, transvestites, drug addicts, alcoholics, college kids and PhDs. All had stories to share and a unique perspective on this complex issue.

By the end of our extensive investigation, focused on the United States, we shared a conclusion: the commercial sexual sale of someone's body is not empowering, does not offer gender equality and in most cases is a form of modern day slavery. The myths used by advocates of prostitution are universal.

The selling of sex is legal in Canada, but the decision ended prohibitions on operating brothels, making a living from working for a prostitute and communicating in public about prostitution. While striking down these three laws arguably protects the constitutional rights of a certain class of sex worker, it does so at the expense of another more plentiful group: those harmed by the sex industry.

Efforts to legalize prostitution are based on the outdated assumption that prostitution is a victimless crime, a view that is effectively used by the pro-legalization lobby. That's simply not true. For the majority of commercial sex workers, the sex industry is a continuum of harm that feeds on vulnerabilities and spits out damaged victims.

In the United States the FBI estimates that 85% of commercial sex workers experience some degree of force, fraud or coercion (the federal definition of sex trafficking).

There is no definitive evidence that legalization ends the exploitation of sex workers. According to several undercover cops we interviewed, a majority of girls have pimps in the legal brothels of Nevada. Most of the girls and women we filmed worked "legitimate" escort services for their pimps. Danielle did escort work by day and street work by night -- all her money went to her pimp. In Las Vegas, Cindy worked through licensed escort businesses but had to hand over all her earnings to a violent and controlling pimp.

Legalization could potentially cut down on violence by johns, but it cannot control the violence outside brothel walls. Another myth often cited by supporters of legalization is that there is a health care benefit, but recent statistics from Germany, where prostitution is legal, show that less than one tenth of 1% of sex workers actually use the health insurance system.

Throughout the sex industry, we found a strong dominance of pimp culture. Where pimps operate, most take 100% of the money earned by the sex workers. For them, there's a strong financial incentive to continue business as usual. Would legalization change this truth or eliminate pimps?

Commercial sex workers face violence, whether in brothels or at "home" with a pimp. According to one study, working in prostitution is 51 times more violent than the second-most violent profession for women (working in a liquor store). Sex workers said they had been subjected to beatings, knifings and rape. Worse than the physical abuse is the ongoing trauma. Years later, those we interviewed struggle with PTSD, chronic pelvic disease, the repercussions of forced abortions, depression, drug addiction, self-mutilation and shame.

We need a comprehensive approach to the sex industry that involves social workers, law enforcement, employers, politicians and citizens as a whole. The first step is to recognize the harm that naturally occurs in the sex industry. The second step is to establish support systems to help victims overcome their traumas and become survivors. And third, we need to stop future victimization by combating the vulnerabilities in our youth. The current evil in the system preys on the vulnerable among us.

Prostitution is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, but legalization and decriminalization is not the answer. The Canadian decision ignores the most important part of the sex industry dilemma: the victims and those adrift in harm's way. The rights of the small percentage of voluntary sex workers should not take precedence over the lives, bodies and souls of those who are forced to work in prostitution as sex slaves

 

[canada-man]

WHEN SUSAN DAVIS heard that the Supreme Court had struck down three of Canada’s prostitution laws as unconstitutional, she celebrated by uncorking a bottle of champagne that she had been saving for 10 years.

“It’s huge,” the long-time sex worker and advocate said by phone from Vancouver. “You can’t help but think of the women who didn’t make it. But we all celebrated together.”

However, Davis told the Georgia Straight that she’s “afraid” of the laws that Stephen Harper’s Conservative government might come up with in response to the ruling, which was released today (December 20). She would prefer to see the feds opt for decriminalization and not make any new laws on prostitution.

“Kidnapping is illegal,” Davis said. “Extortion is illegal. Unlawful confinement is illegal. Assault, rape, even human trafficking is specifically illegal. Why do we need two sets of laws to protect people?”

Davis called Conservative MP Joy Smith “one of the biggest threats to the safety of sex workers in this country”. Smith issued today a statement promoting what’s known as the Nordic model, which targets clients by criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. According to Davis, this model has proved to be a failure in Sweden.

“Even their parliamentarians understand that it isn’t working,” Davis said. “It is a moral statement. Those laws are about ideology. They’re not about people. So, I am afraid. But at least in Vancouver we’ve laid the foundation for balanced thinking on this. Here, more than anywhere else in Canada, people understand that we can’t make those kinds of mistakes. There’s no time for ideology. We have to do something pragmatic in light of the disaster in the case of the missing women.”

In Vancouver, Davis noted, both city hall and the police are making efforts to prioritize the safety and dignity of sex workers. She pointed to the Vancouver Police Department’s Sex Work Enforcement Guidelines report, which states: “Sex work involving consenting adults is not an enforcement priority for the VPD.”

Davis asserted that one barrier to progress is the falsehoods—one being that sex workers were all abused as children—spread by opponents of prostitution and believed by many people.

“Those myths have been dispelled by this finding,” Davis said. “If you read what the judges say about those statistics, they’re not real. Those are made-up statistics that these people use to profit from the rescue industry, and they don’t care. They’ve stated openly that they don’t care if a few of us die in the fight for the greater good. That’s illegal, and that’s what the court has said today.”

According to Davis, the Supreme Court ruling is “not a blanket solution” and change won’t happen overnight. But she believes the decision will make police think twice about shutting down “safe workplaces” and forcing sex workers on to the streets.

Davis hopes sex workers will organize and establish an industry association and trade guilds in order to negotiate with business owners. She wants to see industry-wide standards for occupational health and safety.

“If we’re able to be free of these Criminal Code restrictions, we can exercise our right to associate and begin to bring stability and safety to our industry,” Davis said. “Only then can we shine a dark light in every corner and expose exploitation. All of this re-criminalization and driving it underground isn’t going to help anyone. We need to be able to open the doors and see what’s happening inside.”

Follow Stephen Hui on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

http://www.straight.com/news/553631...-prostitution-laws-after-supreme-court-ruling

 

[omegaphallic]

How many MPs don't have receptionists?




Agreed on the election issue. But no one is going to carry the banner for hookers. It will be comfortably couched in the context of "family values", etc.

Also, how exactly would anti-john legislation offend the Charter in the same way? I am not aware of any analysis that says that procuring sexual services is a S. 7 right. A key argument (accepted by the justices) was that compliance with the law was what was putting prostitutes in danger. Hence, the offending sections were struck.

Actually MP Libby Davies is the Champion of Prostitutes in Parliament and she may end up writing the NDP position on the issue. Libby was the driving forced on the subcommittee on Prostitution that PM Martin created, I believe that subcommittee pushed for legalization with just the Tory disenting.

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

We also didn't strike down any laws that relate to child prostitution wtf why would they say that? Typical CNN bullshit

Most people always give FoxNews a hard time, but CNN is no better

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

Even if Canada adopts Swedish model, there is still lots of escorting business done in Sweden. But I suspect prices will go up because of the higher risk factor:

http://www.escort-sweden.com/

http://www.divine-girls.com/escorts-directory/top.php?country=sweden&lang=en

http://www.happyescorts.com/escorts/sweden/stockholm

http://m.eskorterplats.com/

http://stockholm.backpage.com/FemaleEscorts/

 

[canada-man]

Swedish escort rates are slightly higher than average Canadian rates

 

[ultistar]

Even if Canada adopts Swedish model, there is still lots of escorting business done in Sweden. But I suspect prices will go up because of the higher risk factor:

Apparently prices in Sweden dropped due to reduced demand.
(I posted a link somewhere)

 

[Phil C. McNasty]

There's even independents in Sweden:

http://annika-escort.com/?page=introduction&lang=en

http://www.madelinestockholmescort.com/

Apparently prices in Sweden dropped due to reduced demand.
(I posted a link somewhere)

Interesting. I figured prices would go up instead of down

 

[kstanb]

This is from a Swedish upscale escort page (http://annika-escort.com/?page=faq&lang=en#faq4)

How can I date you discretely in a hotel?
In Sweden, it is not legal to hire my services. Although I don’t really think normal hotel employees actively watch out for escorts, neither do I think that they would be courageous enough to bother to intervene – as they would make themselves deeply embarrassed if they accidentally accused anyone falsely. From my adventures in the hotels of Copenhagen, I have seen plenty of civilian tourist girls that look much more like whores than the real whores themselves do. So even if some vigilante hotel employee would be out on the hunt for escorts, that person would get a really hard time to figure out who is who.
What hotels in Sweden are told to look out for are returning girls using hotels as “hunting ground” for picking up clients. So flagrant flirting in the hotel bar might be unwise, particularly if you are much older than I am. Checking in and out together the same day, as a couple consisting of younger girl plus older guy, is also what hotels have been told to look for as sign of prostitution going on. Same goes for a couple of young girl and older guy checking in together spontaneously without pre-reservation of a room (which is typical behavior for guys picking up street-girls on a whim).
In general, what hotels look for are girls that typically look foreign (East-European or colored), and either have a too-civilian street-look (in tight jeans and waist-short jacket), or girls with a bimbo look (with silicone and party image) – not young Scandinavian women with modest ladylike appearance.
But if you are a shy person who worries a lot about what people think about you, it can be wise to avoid meeting up too late at night, as most common escort girls come running in around 10-11 pm, while not so many other people are going in and out of hotels at that time. It is more discreet to meet around the dinnertime between 6 pm to 9 pm, when most hotels have a lot of people coming and going in connection to going for dinner.
If you really don’t want to be seen meeting me, or if you travel with colleagues, and being seen with a girl not your wife would be a trouble in itself, there are 3 methods of going about that:
Method 1: The first method is that you ask for 2 cards to your hotel room (as I assume you book a double room), and then meet with me around the corner of the hotel, where you tell me the room number and give me one of the cards. I can then go into the hotel two-three minutes after you have gone back to the room, travel up the elevator myself, and scratch at your door (when no one else is around in the corridor). Even if you have booked a double room for one person only, you can motivate getting a second card by wanting to be able to recharge your laptop or mobile phone while being out of the room (in most modern hotels in Scandinavia you need a room card inserted in connection to the main electricity switch in order to have electricity on the room).
Method 2: If you cannot get double cards to the room, the second method is to meet outside and walk in together, but with a slight distance, as if we just happen to arrive to the hotel at the same time, and then just happen to take the same elevator. You can do this in connection with actually going out buying a newspaper or some fruit in the closest kiosk near the hotel, before you meet me, as probable excuse for going in and out of the hotel with little time in-between.
Method 3: The third method is that we communicate by texting each other by phone, and time my entrance with when you are going down in the elevator. Then I simply step into the elevator you are coming down with (you text me a good description of how you look and are dressed, so I easily can recognize you) and we travel up again together. (You can pretend that you just forgot something in your room, and hence return up in the elevator again.) If there are people in the elevator, or in the upstairs corridor, that you seem to know, I will pretend to dig in my purse for something, check my phone, adjust my make-up, or similar, while you go to your room, and then I will come knocking when no-one is around.

Really amazing the kind of BS they have to endure. That said, I don't it can ever apply to Canada. We simply lack the collective mentality and the blind trust on our authorities

 

[kstanb]

Not to mention the racist profiling that hotels might be doing:
if the lady is black or East European, she might be an escort
if in the other hand, she is nordic, of course not

a really fucked country

 

[canada-man]

Feminism and feminists hates SPs

 

[freedom3]

I think somebody on this thread pointed out that Sweden has liberal attitudes and passed the nordic model and, therefore, we would be as equally fucked with the Liberals in power as we are with the Conservatives in power. Good point, whoever said it.

In my view, the key to understanding the politics of this situation is focusing on the biggest voter block in a democracy: stay at home mothers. They definitely don't want their husbands seeing prostitutes.

Personally, I think that the conservatives will pass the nordic model and I think this will the best thing for us (except for things staying the same as they are now, but Allan Young fucked that up for us.) With the nordic model, women can continue to advertise their services on the web and can't be charged. The onus will then be on us hobbyist to keep up to date on who is really an escort and who is an undercover cop. Hopefully, law enforcement will continue to prioritize prostitution only in cases of trafficked or underage women as they do now, and so it will not be a big deal for us because we wouldn't see a woman like that.

The real winner, of course, in all this will always be Allan Young. Whatever new law gets passed, he will get his name in the paper again challenging it.

 

[canada-man]

All-girls schools may be more orderly, but they’re no place for a tomboy, Canadian study finds

All-girls schools may be more orderly, but they are also bastions of strict conformity in which non-feminine behaviour is ruthlessly stamped out, according to a Concordia University study that may have implications in the ongoing push for single-sex education in Canadian schools.

In the words of lead researcher Kate Drury, a classroom filled exclusively with girls leads to “more pressure to behave ‘like a girl.’”

The finding runs in sharp contract to the popular notion — much-espoused by single-sex education boosters — that all-girls schools are stereotype-free zones pumping out high numbers of women scientists, engineers and woodworkers.

“They’re probably giving boys too much credit,” said Concordia psychology professor William Bukowski, the study’s co-author. “What this paper is telling us is that it’s girls who enforce the female sex role.”



http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/1...e-no-place-for-a-tomboy-canadian-study-finds/

 

[Lovehobby]

There is a feeling that the Tories will try the Nordic model, it will also be ruled unconstitutional some day but will take years giving the tories breathing room. Politicians don't give a shit about 5-10 years out. They only care about their next election and their base will want them to do something.

The Nordic model is worse for hobbyist that what we have now.