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  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  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  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  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 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.