Canada may regulate prostitution

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 27

Canada may regulate prostitution

NZPA-Reuter Ottawa Prostitutes should be allowed to sell sex in their homes, and Canadian provinces given permission to regulate “small-scale prostitution establishments,” a Federal committee has recommended. It also recommended stiffer jail terms for pimps, who it said should be tracked down by special police units, Asked tef comment on the sweeping recommendations, the Minister of Justice, Mr John Crosbie, said: “The committee has done a good job. Their recommendations are well thought out and take a balanced approach.”

He said the Government would introduce legislation next month that would make it “illegal to solicit on the streets per se.”

The police have been left largely powerless to deal with the problem of street soliciting since 1978 when the Supreme Court ruled that prostitutes could not be convicted unless they were “pressing and persistent.”

In its most revolutionary recommendation, the committee said that Canada’s criminal law “should not prevent one or two prostitutes, 18 years or older, from operating out of a place of residence.” “If any provinces decide to allow and regulate smallscale prostitution establishments, the Federal law should not intervene,” it said.

Mr Crosbie, asked to comment on the prostitution-at-home idea, said: “The Government has not decided on

its response but I am certainly not going to rule it out.”

He said Canada’s Conservative Government would introduce a big package of legislation on prostitution and pornography by the end of the year. The 750-page Fraser report said: “Decriminalisation does not necessarily result in an increase in prostitution.” It praised the efforts of Denmark and the Netherlands in producing what it called “a mix of selective criminal law and trade regulation.”

“The United States has over all the most Draconian provisions on prostitution but has an uneven record in control of prostitution by criminal law,” it said.