Right off the bat, I'll enter my plea that I don't have a working knowledge, other than a very broad one, about what they're doing in New Zealand, its efficacy and its implementation, so I'll have to pass on that aspect of the question.
In facing the rest of the question, I'll say that we are an organization of lawyers and our section is made up of Crown defence, those who, as I said, work and specifically do files on behalf of vulnerable people, including victims of sexual offences. All those perspectives are at the table when we formulate our position on things like this.
There's the doctrinal aspect of this, which is the principle. What are the principles that should govern our position? There's also the question of what's practical. Practically speaking, when bills or provisions are designed too broadly, they lead to constitutional challenges that have merit, whether they're successful or not. That takes time and money in our courts and it costs the taxpayers money.
We want not only fair and just laws, but precision in law-making. Precision keeps us away from constitutional challenges because the net of liability is cast too broadly on certain offences or certain criminalized portions of an act. That's a lot of what we're concerned with here with section 286.1. It nets in people who are not.... Whether in theory or in practice, its easy to see that those who are not what we would classically define as the exploited sex worker or the underage sex worker are made to suffer and are put at risk by elements that make it hard for them to have transparency around the work they're doing. If they have to hide any of it, we say that pushes it underground.
With respect to section 286.1, we say, strike it. With respect to sections 286.2 and 286.4, we need to make them more specific. That's what we're asking for.