This Summer of 2008 will see the bawdy-house laws tested in court. This is a law suit against the Federal Government. I am one of the plaintiffs in the case. Professor Alan Young, a very prominent Canadian lawyer and Professor of Law at Osgoode Hall York University, will head our legal team. I was cross-examined in a pretrial session on June 6. These sessions will continue leading into the trial. The actual trial, where I am one of three plaintiffs, is expected in 2009.

It is not unlawful to work as a prostitute, yet the accompanying criminal prohibitions make it virtually impossible to pursue this lawful trade in a safe and secure environment. This action will challenge some sections of the Criminal Code: Sections 210 (bawdy house), Section 212 (1)(j) (living on the avails) and Section 213(1)(c) (communication for the purpose).

The bawdy house prohibition denies the sex-trade worker a safe haven for pursuing this lawful trade and the living on the avails provision prevents the sex-trade worker from hiring the services of a manager, driver, bodyguard, etc.  We are all aware of the many prostitutes who have been murdered or have disappeared in recent years throughout Canada.

The Safety Argument will be brought under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It will be argued that the law is too arbitrary since the harms to society caused by the law distinctly outweigh benefits to society gained by the law. We will present many witnesses and other evidence to support this argument.

The present constitutional challenge is unique from a technical legal perspective in a number of ways including these two following facts. Previously no empirical evidence concerning the operation of these laws was introduced into court. Secondly, the laws were previously challenged on the basis of economic liberty, vagueness and freedom of expression.

Since the previous decisions the Supreme Court of Canada has not been apprised of numerous studies commissioned by the Federal Department of Justice in 1987, and the Report of the Federal/Provincial Working Group on Prostitution in 1998. These studies documented the ineffectiveness of the current laws in achieving their stated purpose and suggest that the Supreme Court may have ruled differently in the past if this evidence had been available.

Overturning the law will allow sex-trade workers to come off the streets and operate safely from private property under the full protection of the law. It will end this discrimination against women.