Filibuster CartoonsTitle: Canada's newest ride (click to view)
Date: September 30, 2010
In what is being heralded as a great victory for social libertarians, the Ontario Supreme Court struck down several of Canada's anti-prostitution laws yesterday, paving the way for the legalization of the world's oldest profession in that province.
Prostitution law in Canada is famously strange. Technically the
act of buying sex is not illegal, but just about everything else associated with the practice is.
Asking someone to have sex with you for money, for instance. Or making money from having sex.
In her ruling, Justice Susan Himel declared these regulations to be unconstitutional, on the basis that they violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom's guarantees of personal liberty and sovereignty of the individual. Granting legal status to the sex trade, she said, will ultimately help secure the safety and dignity of prostitutes, as they are able to move out of the shadows and into a profession able to license its workers and screen its clients.
The Canadian press has gone a bit hysterical over the ruling, and some headlines have made it seem as if prostitution is now destined to be universally legal across the country. I'd call for a bit of restraint. For starters, the ruling — which again, only applies to Ontario — is almost certainly going to be appealed by both the federal and provincial governments, both of whom have strongly stated that they do not support legalizing the sex trade. And even if the case makes it all the way to the Supreme Court, and gets a favorable ruling there — which is plausible, given the ideological makeup of the bench — my own thinking is that the politicians will push very strongly back, perhaps even evoking Canada's "notwithstanding clause" to override any attempt at national legalization.
Some pundits have drawn analogies to Canada's path to national gay marriage, which also came about via a provincial court ruling that was then cited as precedent in other courts across the country. But gay marriage was a fashionable cause, and did have considerable support in the governing party of the time. Prostitution, in contrast, is still a strongly unpopular issue, and no party that I can see is willing to identify as a passionate proponent of legalization. Definitely not the kind of issue anyone wants to fight an election on, in any case.
The ruling is, however, a great boon to those who enjoy the idea of Canada as some sort of "Northern Holland," where anything goes and nothing is taboo. Even in the era of Stephen Harper, it's an image that just won't go away...
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