I guess the first thing I would say about comparisons to New Zealand is that it is important to understand.... I think it's useful to look at other jurisdictions, and I'm certainly someone who has asked Canada to look at the experience of Sweden, but New Zealand is a very small geographically isolated country. It's nearest neighbour, Australia, has mostly legalized prostitution. The Canadian experience with the United States right next to us is different, so whatever has happened for good or for ill you have to be a little bit careful about those kinds of analogies.
I can say, even looking at research coming out of the New Zealand government and coming out of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective, which is sort of the most established group supporting the New Zealand model, the general trend is that reported incidents of violence have remained the same. They are lower indoors than on the street, but they have remained the same both prior to the legislation and after. That has not changed.
The number of women on the street in street prostitution in cities like Christchurch has not changed since the legislation was passed, and it's the women on the street who are disproportionately the aboriginal women, the indigenous women.
What has changed—and again the groups supporting the legislation verify this as well—is quite a significant increase in the number of foreign women, now Chinese women, in prostitution in New Zealand. That's estimated to make up about a third of the industry as I understand it, and those women are not legally permitted to engage in prostitution because they are not citizens. The law there requires that you be a citizen in order to engage in prostitution.