Bedford Case Study

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Pages: 6

Legal Responses and Outcomes With respect to legal responses and outcome, I will conduct a review of the Bedford case, Bill C-36, and public opinion on prostitution laws in Canada.
To start, according to Lowman and Louie (2012) prostitution law reform in Canada gained a renewed sense of urgency in September 2010, when the Superior Court of Justice for Ontario struck down the Criminal Code sections prohibiting communicating in public for the purpose of buying or selling sex (s 213), bawdy houses (s 210), and living on the avails of prostitution of another person (s 212.(1)(j)) on the grounds that they violate several Charter rights, including a prostitute’s right to security of the person. The applicants Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch,
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To begin with, I will discuss the role of public opinion on prostitution law reform in Canada by drawing from Lowman and Loui’s (2012) article. One of the most controversial topics in Canada has been prostitution law reform which typically includes three models: the conservative, the Nordic model, and decriminalization. The conservative model is based on criminalizing both the buying and selling of sexual services and any third-party profit from prostitution. The Nordic model would criminalize sex buying and third-party profit from prostitution, while sex selling would be legal on the grounds that the seller is a victim of male violence against women. Decriminalization would remove all references to adult prostitution from the Criminal Code and prostitution would be regulated with generic business and other civil laws rather than creating a specific system of prostitution regulation and licensing. Lowman and Loui examined the prohibitionist claims about public opinion on Canadian prostitution law – focusing on the Christian Legal Fellowship, REAL Women of Canada, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s assertion that most Canadians support the prohibitionist stance which was a reason for his government’s decision to appeal the Superior Court of Ontario’s decision to strike down several prostitution laws (Canada [Attorney General] v. Bedford, 2013). A review of seven national public opinion polls conducted between 1984 and 2011 revealed that, contrary to the CLF and the prime minister’s claims, since 2005 a small majority of Canadians actually favoured some form of decriminalization of consensual adult prostitution. Thus, the assertion that the majority of Canadians support the prostitution laws that the Ontario Superior Court struck down is unfounded and even contrary to research that indicates a mall majority of Canadians actually favour some form of decriminalization of consensual adult