The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has a head start in lobbying on prostitution legislation as several interest groups jockey for position while the government prepares to table its bill.The Conservative government has been consulting with Canadians and interest groups on prostitution legislation after the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Canada’s laws in December as unconstitutional.
While some organizations representing sex workers say the government hasn’t been consulting in good faith, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) has reported a number of communications with government officials since December and circulated a report to all MPs supporting the “Nordic model”—used in Sweden, Norway and Iceland—a week before the Supreme Court’s decision.
The EFC has been engaged on prostitution legislation for three or four years and had been working on human trafficking prior to that, policy analyst Julia Beazley said in an interview with The Hill Times. She started networking with what she called “survivor organizations” of former sex workers as well as women’s groups when the challenge first went to the Supreme Court.
The EFC put out a series of three reports beginning in 2010 with the last one, called “Out of Business: Prostitution in Canada—Putting an End to Demand,” released about a week before the Bedford decision.
The report was distributed to all Parliamentarians in mid-December. The EFC has reported a number of communications on the subject of “justice and law enforcement.” It contacted Nancy Baker, Justice Minister Peter MacKay’s (Central Nova, N.S.) policy advisor, four times in February as well as on the day of the Supreme Court decision, the Lobbyists Registry shows. It also communicated with a group of Liberal and NDP MPs in January, and with Cynthia Tran, who handles stakeholder outreach at the Prime Minister’s Office, on the day before and the day of the Supreme Court decision.
The 37-page “Out of Business” report recommends a “Canadian adaptation of the Nordic model,” first introduced in Sweden, which makes buying sex illegal and targets pimps and johns but decriminalizes those being prostituted and offers support to exit the profession.
Ms. Beazley said most prostitutes aren’t in the business by choice and that they would leave if they could.
“We’re advocating for this model of law because it recognizes this and it focuses its attention on the buyers and perpetrators of prostitution. These are the people who put them there and keep them there,” she said.
“We’ve asked that Parliament make a clear statement that prostitution is a form of violence, abuse and control of vulnerable women, children and men, and that that kind of be the framework for whatever comes forward.”
Conservative MP Joy Smith (Kildonan-St. Paul, Man.) produced her own report, called “The Tipping Point,” that contains many of the same recommendations.
Ms. Smith has been a champion of human trafficking issues, managing to get two private members’ bills passed on the issue.
The Lobbyists Registry shows the EFC communicated with Ms. Smith five times in the past year, most recently in February, and the MP also met with the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) about “justice and law enforcement” in May 2013.
ARPA, a Reformed Christian group seeking to bring a biblical perspective to public life, has been encouraging its members to fill out the government’s consultation survey and to send form letters to MPs asking them to adopt the Nordic model.
“I thought it was excellent,” Ms. Beazly said of Ms. Joy’s report. “We’ve done a lot of the same research and read a lot of the same materials. Our recommendations very much line up with what she put forward in her report.”
Mr. MacKay told reporters in April that his department has studied several models, including the Nordic model, and said the legislation would be uniquely Canadian. His comments have pointed toward a version of the Nordic model.
“Prostitutes are predominantly victims. They have very much, in some cases, run out of options before entering this particular pursuit,” he told reporters last month.
Mr. MacKay spoke of the violence and vulnerability in the business and said there would be support mechanisms to help people transition out of the sex trade.
His department ran a public online consultation from Feb. 17 to March 17 and the minister met with stakeholders in person March 3.
Mr. MacKay said in a release about the March 3 meeting that the government is consulting with representatives from “a cross-section of interest groups, to seek their views and input to inform our response to prostitution. The government is taking action to maintain the safety of our streets and communities by ensuring that a legislative response truly reflects Canadian values.”
Robyn Maynard, an outreach worker for Stella, a Montreal-based organization that advocates for sex workers, said she hasn’t been impressed with the consultations so far, since the online one doesn’t value the perspective of prostitutes, who will be most affected by the law, more than any one else’s.
She said Stella was represented at Mr. MacKay’s in-person consultation but that sex workers were in the minority and each person was only given about seven minutes to speak. The government is focused on criminalization and a law and order agenda, she said.
Stella is working with other like-minded groups as part of the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, and they have an advocacy day planned on the Hill this month.
Summa Strategies consultants Lindsay Doyle and Shay Purdy registered April 25 to lobby on behalf of Stella to arrange meetings on the Hill and promote the decriminalization of sex work.
Ms. Maynard said her organization and others representing sex workers don’t want any form of criminalization.
“We know that criminalizing anybody in the sex exchange for money is dangerous and ends up having repercussions on sex workers’ lives, no matter who you’re criminalizing,” she said in an interview.
She doesn’t want any new laws tabled and would eventually like to get to a model like New Zealand’s, where occupational health and safety codes govern sex workers rather than criminal law.
Caroline Newcastle, a sex worker and spokesperson for Prostitutes of Ottawa-Gatineau Work, Educate and Resist (POWER), said the New Zealand model has reduced the stigma toward sex workers and improved relationships with police.
“It created an environment where sex workers feel they can negotiate safer sex practices with clients that much more easily, where they have easier access to health services and police services,” she said in an interview with The Hill Times.
It’s also reduced trafficking, she said, so decriminalizing doesn’t necessarily mean an increase, as some advocating for the Nordic model have argued.
Ms. Newcastle said the Nordic model was politically appealing partly because of what she called a “huge conflation” between sex work and human trafficking. Decriminalizing sex work doesn’t decriminalize extortion, sexual assault, kidnapping, forced confinement and all the issues related to trafficking, she said.
“There’s a conflation between sex work—consensual experiences between adults—and human rights and labour abuses that happen in the sex industry, so people think that the solution to human rights abuses and exploitation in the industry is to criminalize clients, but that’s not the case,” she said. “There are already laws in place that do that.”
In March, MediaStyle’s Ian Capstick registered to lobby for POWER to arrange meetings to discuss the Supreme Court decision.
Ms. Newcastle also expressed dismay at the consultation process so far, saying her organization is planning to meet with MPs and participate in committee once the legislation is tabled.
“There’s a difference between being consulted and having meaningful consultation,” she said.
Ms. Beazly said the Evangelical Fellowship has hosted MP breakfasts and film screenings to push its position, and has been participating in public forums across the country with Defend Dignity, a group seeking to end prostitution run from the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada. They’ve held 27 forums together across the country to explain the position they’re advocating with hundreds attending, Ms. Beazly said. The sessions end by encouraging those in attendance to contact their MP.
“And we have heard that MPs did, in fact, receive significant numbers of letters out of these events and you know how that works. They have to kind of sit up and say, ‘Oh, what am I going to do about this now. What is my positioning going to be?’” she said.
Ms. Beazly said it’s encouraging to have a member of the Conservative caucus onside in Ms. Smith. After meeting with MPs from all parties, she thinks all the caucuses are split on the issue and nobody’s certain about the best approach.
Timothy Smith, who manages government relations and communications for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said the organization tried to bring various chiefs from across the country together for the Justice consultation but couldn’t find a common position.
“The CACP did hold its own internal discussion around this issue and we found that police services across Canada [had] differing opinions, as is the case within the public landscape on this issue,” he said in an interview. “And that’s the truth. It’s going to be a tough decision for the minister to have to come up with consensus in all this that will appease everyone… Even within individual police services there were not necessarily agreements as to, should it be legalized, should it not be legalized.”
Ms. Maynard also said MPs are still learning about the issue and that there’s room to change their minds.
“One of the things we learned again and again in our advocacy efforts this year is that we can’t assume that people actually have an opinion already,” she said. “They do have opinions but they don’t actually know… what the realities are for sex workers.”
The Native Women’s Association of Canada, the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and a number of other organizations have come together as the Women’s Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution. The coalition also supports an adaptation of the Nordic model in Canada.
Liberal Senators held an open caucus meeting last week and invited advocates and experts in to discuss prostitution. Sex worker Émilie Laliberté advocated for the New Zealand model, saying decriminalization saves lives, while Christine Bruckert, a University of Ottawa criminology professor and former sex worker, said the Nordic model pushes the trade underground, making it more dangerous.
Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, said decriminalization would harm the most marginalized groups. She advocated for legislation like the Nordic model that criminalizes clients but not sex workers.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Mark Burgess
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