Shelly Glover, police officer “on leave and planning to return to it once she’s out of politics,” is currently peddling in hysterics and trading upon her time as a police officer that worked undercover on the prostitution beat. Glover says that the laws that were struck down will make it more difficult for police to help exploited women and children – err, except that the laws against human trafficking and child exploitation remain in effect. The laws that were struck down were the ones that made women in those situations be afraid to go to the police for fear of self-incrimination, which seems like a bigger deal than police using those laws to arrest those same women, criminalise them, and hope that it might instead put them in touch with social services agencies while they were locked up. And then there’s her caucus colleague, Joy Smith, who a) doesn’t actually read the literature on the Nordic Model of prostitution laws except for the ones that are devoid of fact and tell her what she wants to hear, and b) conflates all sex work with human trafficking, and all human trafficking with sexual exploitation, which anyone with an inkling of how things work can tell you is a gross overreach. I’m glad that Smith thinks that it’s easy enough to criminalise the buyers of sex to curb demand – because that totally worked with things like alcohol during the prohibition era or illicit drugs today, right, and criminalising those very same drug users is totally saving lives in places like Vancouver’s Lower East Side, right? Oh, wait… Terri Jean Bedford, one of the plaintiffs in the case, says that any new laws need to take consenting adults into account, which may be difficult when faced with an ideology that the exchange of sex for money is inherently bad (while ignoring the other transactions for sex that occur as part of everyday dating and marriage). CBC looks at five questions arising from the Supreme Court decision.
Tag Archives: Kim Campbell
Roundup: A sizeable delegation
Former Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney, Kim Campbell and Jean Chrétien are joining Stephen Harper at Nelson Mandela’s funeral in Johannesburg. Also joining them will be former Governor Generals Adrienne Clarkson and Michaëlle Jean, premiers Stephen McNeil, Alison Redford, Bob McLeod and Darrell Pasloski. Thomas Mulcair will be joining, as will MPs Deepak Obhrai, Irwin Cotler, Peter Braid, Joe Daniel, Roxanne James, and retired Senator Don Oliver, plus AFN National Chief Shawn Atleo. Joe Clark will be leading a delegation from the National Democratic Institute.
Roundup: Harper’s need for ambiguity
At a business school event, the Prime Minister said that they don’t want foreign takeover rules that are too clear because the government wants room to manoeuvre in the event that some takeover bids aren’t good for the country and need to be blocked. He also said that the free trade deals that they are negotiating with China, India and South Korea aren’t going to be the same as the EU trade deal just agreed to, as they won’t be of the same depth or comprehensiveness.
Roundup: Re-focusing CIDA
International cooperation minister Julian Fantino has announced a new business-focused international development policy, and said that it’s not CIDA’s business to keep funding NGOs forever. There’s no word on what kinds of programmes will be cut in order to make this shift in focus, but Fantino says that no, they’re not getting into the mining industry.
Campaign Research polling company has been censured by the industry body for their reprehensible calls into Irwin Cotler’s riding alleging that he’s about to retire.
Bill C-398, the latest iteration of the attempt to reform Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime – which aims to get cheap generic medicines to developing countries – was defeated in the Commons last night by seven votes.