In light of an Ontario Superior Court ruling, the provincial government should act now to amend prostitution laws to create safe conditions for workers, the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Monday.
"In B.C., as in many parts of Canada, sex work is effectively legal," explained BCCLA board member Megan Vis-Dunbar. "You have governments at the municipal level charging licensing fees. It's promoted and advertised in a whole bunch of newspapers and through different types of media."
The de facto nature of prostitution across the province, Vis-Dunbar argued, was enough evidence for the province to take action despite policing efforts.
"The majority of the raids ... are targeted at illegal workers, people who don't have permits to work here," she claimed. "That wouldn't change. The decision in Ontario wouldn't change laws on trafficking, underage workers, and if you look at a lot of raids that's what they are targeting."
On Sept. 28, a judge found three provisions on communicating for the purpose of prostitution, running a bawdy house and living on the avails of prostitution to put sex workers lives at risk.
The province sent a letter to the Ministry of Labour demanding changes on Monday.
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Sketch
- Reporter
- Dharm Makwana currently serves as a web editor at The Province, British Columbia's best read daily newspaper. For more than four years he wrote on issues affecting the Lower Mainland for the province's third largest daily newspaper Vancouver 24 hours. Before arriving in Vancouver in January 2007, Dharm won the John Lott Scholarship for outstanding journalism at Centennial College. Since then Dharm has developed an interest in municipal and provincial politics, crime and policing and social issues including immigration, prostitution and trafficking. He is currently working on a series of stories involving Vancouver's sex workers.
Wisdom
I don't want to be that guy mumbling into his drink at a bar.
-Bill Murray
-Bill Murray