Canadian Laws Restricting Prostitution ‘Unconstitutional’: Ontario Court

Prostitution and exploitation, trafficking or not. Reports, comments, lessons learned, etc...  

• A Superior Court judge ruled on Tuesday that prostitutes should be allowed to freely communicate with customers on the street, conduct their business in their homes or brothels, and hire accountants, drivers and bodyguards, without fear of criminal prosecution.

• Reports from jurisdictions have consistently indicated that the legalization of prostitution has not achieved the expected results.

• In 2005, the mayor of Amsterdam admitted that the Dutch experiment to curb abuse by legalizing prostitution in 2000 had failed miserably.

• In 2005 it was reported that Germany was reconsidering its position on legalized prostitution, made legal there in 2003, after reports that legalization had not really had any benefit for prostitutes, nor had it improved the situation for Germany at large.

• According to a study by the Scottish government in 2003 on the consequences of prostitution policies in several countries, those that had legalized and/or regulated prostitution had a dramatic increase in all facets of the sex industry, saw an increase in the involvement oforganized crime in the sex industry, and found a dismaying increase in child prostitution, trafficking of women and girls and violence against women.

The article:

Sex-trade traffickers exploit Canadian visa rules

A police study was released last Monday in Canada. Recent convictions have mostly involved victims who were Canadian citizens or had permanent resident status. The focus remains sex trafficking. 

By Allan Dowd

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Human trafficking groups have exploited Canada's visa rules to bring victims from Europe and Asia to work in the illegal sex trade, according to a police study released on Monday.

Canada is also used as a transit route for victims, mostly women, who are transported to the United States for work as prostitutes, according to a threat assessment released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The RCMP report says there is also sex-trade trafficking within Canada, and recent convictions have mostly involved victims who were Canadian citizens or had permanent resident status.

The report, which studied Canadian police investigations from 2005 to 2009, acknowledged that authorities are hampered by a lack of intelligence information and poor public awareness about the issue.

Identifying victims as they enter the country is difficult because many do not realise they will be exploited after they arrive, even if they know they are coming to work in the sex trade, the report said.

Traffickers use businesses such as escort services as fronts to hide their activities. Prostitution per se is not illegal in Canada, but it is illegal to live off the earnings of prostitution.