Control Or Regulation Of Prostitution In Canada

In 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Canada v. Bedford that key prostitution laws were unconstitutional. Red Light Labour addresses the new legal regime regulating sex work by analyzing how laws and those who uphold them have constructed, controlled, and criminalized sex workers, their clients, and their workspaces. This groundbreaking collection also offers nuanced interpretations of commercial sexual labour from the perspectives of workers, activists, and researchers. The contributors highlight the struggle for civic and social inclusion by considering sex workers’ advocacy tactics, successes, and challenges. A timely legal, policy, and social analysis of sex work in Canada.

The intent of Bill C-49 was to make it easier to enforce the law related to street prostitution, and thus to control the incidence of the phenomenon. The Department of Justice has contracted evaluations of the intended and unintended impacts and effects of the Bill on the control and practice of prostitution in five Canadian cities. These evaluations focus on the implementation and enforcement of Bill C-49 and any changes that have occurred in the practice of prostitution since enactment of the legislation. This report presents the findings for the evaluation conducted in Vancouver, B.C.

Topics include implementation of Bill C-49, practice of street prostitution since Bill C-49 and reaction of the community.

Despite being dubbed “the world’s oldest profession,” prostitution has rarely been viewed as a legitimate form of labour. Instead, it is often criminalized, sensationalized, and polemicized. In Selling Sex, Emily van der Meulen, Elya Durisin, and Victoria Love present a more nuanced view of the sex industry. They bring together a vast collection of voices – including feminists, researchers, advocates, and sex workers of every stripe – to challenge dominant narratives surrounding sex work. Presenting a variety of perspectives on such diverse topics as social stigma, police violence, labour organizing, and human trafficking, Selling Sex is an eye-opening, challenging, and necessary book.

Sex workers are often the "objects" of study for academics and policy makers. Theories about their lives and the policies that affect their work are usually developed without input from the sex workers themselves, as they are rarely seen as capable of analyzing the social and political world in which they work. In this book, however, sex workers set the tone. Leslie Ann Jeffrey and Gayle MacDonald interview sex workers in three Maritime cities and those who work around them: police, health-care providers, community workers/advocates, members of neighbourhood associations, and politicians. The sex workers discuss such issues as violence and safety, health and risk, politics and policy, media influence, and public perception of the trade, portraying the best and the worst facets of their working lives and expressing sentiments refreshingly at odds with commonly held opinions. Given recent Parliamentary recommendations to decriminalize prostitution, Sex Workers in the Maritimes Talk Back represents a timely shift to public discussions about sex work. Engaging and accessible, this book will be of interest to public policy practitioners, students of social and political science, community advocates, police, and sex workers and their families.