The Canadian government is currently doing a survey here ( http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cons/curr-cours/proscons-conspros/index.html#2014_02_17 ) about how they should deal with the decision handed down from the Bedford case. For those of you who haven't been following it (and I don't blame you if you weren't, 90% of law is only hella interesting if you know enough to follow wtf is going on), the Bedford case is the Canadian Supreme Court's response to a woman suing the government for making her job more dangerous than it needs to be. The woman was a prostitute. She won the case, the government appealed, and she won on appeal too. The government must now revise the laws so that being a prostitute is not made inherently more dangerous by virtue of the laws in place. "Isn't prostitution illegal?" you ask. Not in Canada, it isn't! ...but contacting people or being contacted by them to have sex-for-pay ("soliciting"), working from the same location as other girls ("operating a bawdy house"), and hiring people to help out ("profiting from prostitution") are. You can see how this would make it difficult to work safely when you need to be very discrete about finding clients, when you have to work solo in order to be legal, and when you can't hire bodyguards. The Supreme Court has decided that prohibiting anything which inherently makes the work more dangerous is unconstitutional and has given the government one year to revise the laws. Word is, however, that the Government is considering using the Nordic Model. What is that, and why is it so bad? Well, the Nordic model states that the woman shouldn't be victimised, but it still takes issue with prostitution at all and it inherently assumes that the woman is not a free agent. In fact, it assumes that any woman taking part in prostitution must be a victim and it goes after the people who purchase her services or get paid with money she earned. This means that a woman who lives under the Nordic model but who wants to be a prostitute has to be careful about who she solicits, can't work in groups or start a union, and can't hire bodyguards. Seeing a theme here? Yep: all of these are things that the Supreme Court has already deemed to be unconstitutional to enforce! If you live in Canada and you want women to be free to make their own choices about their sexuality and how they earn money, please go answer the survey. Tell the government that we don't want the Nordic model shoved down our throats and that there shouldn't be any restrictions on one adult paying another for consensual sex. Please signal boost - the survey is only open until March 17, so we don't have much time to work with. There's five questions, and each caps out at 500 words. They're loaded questions, I know - but I have faith in you guys! We can make ourselves heard for once!
