Justice committee  I think we have to be a little bit careful about that because in fact we've had in the last few years in Vancouver several murders of women who have been prostituting either out of their homes or in trick pads that are used for that.

Justice committee  In terms of degrees of danger, the reality is that taking the very same women who were on the street and moving them indoors.... It's not the location that is dangerous; it's the men who seek out those women. So ultimately it's the women who are at the bottom of the social hiera

Justice committee  Yes. Many of the reports that have been done have shown in many Canadian cities that the concentration of aboriginal women in street prostitution vastly outnumbers their representation in the population. Certainly we see that in Vancouver. We see that in Winnipeg. I know Andrew S

Justice committee  Yes, that's true in New Zealand as well.

Justice committee  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 g

Justice committee  I'm at a bit of a loss here to understand how advertising is really protective expression, in particular how profiting from running ads is protective expression. When I look at the kinds of ads that run in the Georgia Straight, our local free paper in Vancouver, the best estimate

Justice committee  To give you an example, about 24 women testified in the Bedford case, called by both sides, the government and the applicants. They had the choice of whom they could get to testify, who wanted to come forward and be heard. That was a really interesting cross-section of the women

Justice committee  If I understand the question correctly, you have to recall that most of the provisions that were challenged in Bedford, leaving the pimping provision aside, which I think has a slightly different analysis to it, applied to both buyers and sellers, if I can put it that way. One of

Justice committee  It depends on how you understand the evidentiary record for such a case. He'll say, “Well, let's just refer this to the Supreme Court of Canada and they can tell us whether it's constitutional or not.” The evidentiary record that was amassed for the prior challenge had a lot to d

Justice committee  Not quite, and that's why, if I may, I just want to clarify. I'm focusing on subsection 212(4) that makes it an offence to buy someone who is under the age of 18. I'm saying that no one is making the argument that somehow we'd better repeal that provision because it pushes child

Justice committee  So I'm focusing here not on the child who is selling herself, who is clearly not a criminal in any sense, but the person who is buying that underage prostitute.

Justice committee  Thank you very much. I'm here today as a law professor and also as a lawyer who has spent the past two decades researching, teaching, and advocating for sex equality under Canadian law, with a particular focus on sexual violence against women and girls, including prostitution.

Status of Women committee  I do think it is generally acknowledged that one of the factors of that climate in Vancouver is that you do get a migration of people from all across Canada.

Status of Women committee  Well, certainly many of the factors, the predicting factors...if you have individuals who are living in poverty, who are trying to survive, they often find it easier to do so here. But I can't imagine that that's a major explaining factor. I don't know if others or if you, Jane

Status of Women committee  I guess what I mean by that is you see that coming up in a variety of different ways. The point I was making specifically is that we have legislation right now that allows us to name criminal acts against women as crimes that are committed on the basis of race or aboriginal statu