[LINK] "Ontario Appeal Court strikes down ban on brothels"

[rfmcdonald]

This is good news. The paradoxes of a legal code which which allowed prostitution but significantly increased the risk to prostitutes by making fixed, defensible institutions impossible had to be collapsed somehow.

The continuing ban on communications for purposes of prostitution is something I have concerns over, inasamuch as this affects the most vulnerable classes of prostitutes, those who work on the streets in public and so are directly exposed to police harassment and violence generally. Still, it's a start.

Ontario's Court of Appeal has ruled that sex workers should be able to legally take their trade indoors and pay staff to support them, steps that many in the industry have already taken to make their work safer.

The court released a decision Monday on an appeal of Superior Court Judge Susan G. Himel's high-profile ruling that three provisions of the Criminal Code pertaining to prostitution should be struck down on the grounds that they are unconstitutional.

The Ontario appeal court agreed with two-thirds of Himel's ruling, namely that the provisions prohibiting common bawdy-houses and living off the avails of prostitution, are both unconstitutional in their current form.

But the court disagreed that the communicating provision must be struck down, meaning that it "remains in full force."

The court said it will strike the word “prostitution” from the definition of "common bawdy-house," as it applies to Section 210 of the Criminal Code, which otherwise prevents prostitutes from offering services out of fixed indoor locations such as brothels or their homes.

However, the court said the bawdy-house provisions would not be declared invalid for 12 months, so that Parliament can have a chance to draft Charter-compliant provisions to replace them, if it chooses to do so.

[. . .]

The court will also clarify that the prohibition of living off the avails of prostitution – as spelled out in Section 212(1)(j) of the Criminal Code – should pertain only to those who do so “in circumstances of exploitation.”

The changes to the "living-off-the-avails" provision will not come into effect for 30 days.

In the preamble to its judgment, the court said prostitution is legal in Canada, with “no law that prohibits a person from selling sex, and no law that prohibits another from buying it.”

While the court acknowledged that “prostitution is a controversial topic, one that provokes heated and heartfelt debate about morality, equality, personal autonomy and public safety,” it said the questions before it were about whether the laws being challenged were unconstitutional or not.