Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to each of our guests for your very important testimony and answers to our questions today.
I'm going to return to the words of Chief Justice McLachlin. I think they really are important and special. They're unusual and not something that the Supreme Court normally says. She said:
The regulation of prostitution is a complex and delicate matter. It will be for Parliament, should it choose to do so, to devise a new approach....
They could have just left the provisions that they had struck down last December. Presumably, if those provisions were making the lives of sex workers more dangerous last December, they are still making those lives dangerous today, six months later. They left them in force. They said:
Considering all the interests at stake, the declaration of invalidity should be suspended for one year.
That's not what they typically do. She gave it back to parliamentarians to actually do something.
I was sent here by the people of my constituency of Mississauga—Erindale to do something, to make choices, and to make better choices. I think all of us, as members of Parliament, are sent here by Canadians across the country to actually do something and not to do nothing.
Ms. Scott and Ms. Lebovitch, who were two of the litigants in the Bedford decision, said earlier today that we should do nothing; let the suspension end, let the laws fall, and let legalization roll.
Let the good times roll.
Some people we've heard from on this panel, such as Ms. Dilley, and Mr. Paterson from the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, say pretty much the same thing: let the decision take its effect and don't do anything.
I want to ask each of you: Do you think that we, as parliamentarians—you're talking to 10 members of Parliament here today and I guarantee you there are many more watching right now—should choose to do something, or should we choose to do nothing?
Can I start with you, Ms. Dukes?