Hookers don't have a lot of political clout, which may explain why the feds have stubbornly refused to repeal our prostitution laws.
From a political perspective, there's simply nothing to gain by wading into an issue so fraught with legal, social and moral complexities.
Revamping Canada's prostitution laws is not a vote-getter. There is no loud, large groundswell of support for decriminalizing prostitution and few people care about vulnerable sex trade workers.
It's getting harder to ignore the growing numbers of missing and murdered women, however. Hundreds have disappeared over the last three decades. Vigils have become annual events.
Yet there is no sign that the federal government has any intention of moving from sombre remembrance to political action to save women's lives.
In an Toronto courtroom yesterday, an Osgoode Hall law professor, a dominatrix and two sex trade workers launched a constitutional challenge of our prostitution legislation.
They contend that the laws banning bawdy houses, communicating for the purposes of prostitution are, in fact, exposing sex trade workers to violence and murder.
"The law, the way it's structured in an irrational, arbitrary manner, contributes to these killing fields," declares lawyer Alan Young who's spearheading the court challenge.
"It's not about whether you have the right to sell your body," he explains. "It's whether the law is unconstitutional when it increases the risk of harm."
Young's primary argument is simple. The negative impact of our laws (the epidemic of violence and murder) is grossly disproportionate to the objective of protecting them and the community from prostitution.
That reality, argues Young, violates prostitutes' charter rights to liberty and security.
The Supreme Court of Canada upheld our prostitution laws in 1990 but that was before serial killer Robert Pickton and before the numbers of missing women, particularly in B.C., skyrocketed.
Between 1980 and 1984, there were only eight B.C. prostitutes known to have been murdered, Simon Fraser University criminologist John Lowman notes in his affidavit. Then, in 1985, the law was changed to ban communicating for the purpose of prostitution, forcing sex trade workers into dangerous isolated areas.
Over the next 15 years, killers stalked more and more B.C. prostitutes. Between 1995 and 2001, says Lowman, about 50 women disappeared from one Vancouver industrial area, including the 26 women Pickton was charged with killing.
"These (laws) help reinforce the assumption that public property and propriety are placed above human life," Lowman says in his affidavit.
Most prostitutes working for escort services or massage parlours aren't victims of violence, he adds.
Predators love our laws because street prostitutes are easy pickings. They count on the fact that few will notice that another messed up sex worker is missing.
