(LifeSiteNews) — In a rare unanimous ruling, Canada’s Supreme Court upheld the country’s prohibition on inducing or profiting from the sale of sex on July 24. In a stern judicial rebuke to advocates of “sex work,” all nine justices affirmed in R. v. Kloubakov the prohibitions to the Criminal Code of Canada, the 2014 Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act (PCEPA).
PCEPA adopted the “Nordic model” for combating the sex trade by criminalizing the purchasing of sexual services, advertising the sale of sex, and the purchase of sexual services (pimping). By shifting the criminal penalties from the selling of sex (prostitution) to purchasers and pimps, the government successfully cracks down on the sex trade without running the risk of imprisoning trafficked women. PCEPA states that prostitution is inherently exploitative due to the harm “caused by the objectification of the human body and the commodification of sexual activity.”
As the Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF) noted:
This approach … has also been adopted in Sweden, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Iceland, France, and Northern Ireland, endorsed by the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, affirmed by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, and upheld by the European Court of Human Rights, as well as the Alberta Court of Appeal and the Ontario Court of Appeal. CLF highlighted these various facts in its intervention, which were also noted by the Supreme Court in today’s decision.
Pro-prostitution activists, however, claim that the sex trade constitutes legitimate “sex work” and is not exploitative, and have long objected to PCEPA on those grounds. As CLF reported on January 24, this was a key argument “advanced in Kloubakov, which involved two men convicted under PCEPA’s provisions as parties of obtaining a material benefit from sexual services and procuring a person to offer or provide sexual services.”
The two men, who served as drivers for prostitutes in Calgary, were initially found guilty by an Alberta court of benefiting financially from prostitution as well as being “parties to procuring women” for prostitution. They won at trial, but the Alberta Court of Appeal overturned that decision; they appealed, and the case ended up at the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court rejected claims that PCEPA is unconstitutional, instead affirming the constitutionality of the law banning the sale of a person’s sex acts, even, CLF noted, “in situations that might not appear to involve a ‘specific act of exploitation,’ acknowledging Parliament’s conclusion that ‘commodification, and thus exploitation, results from the fact of profiting from the sale of another human being’s sexual activity.” The Court explicitly recognized the contributions of intervenors that emphasized this fact in paragraph 163:
(I)n forceful submissions, the intervener the Women’s Equality Coalition (consisting of the Vancouver Rape Relief Society, Concertation des luttes contre l’exploitation sexuelle, Aboriginal Women’s Action Network, Formerly Exploited Voices Now Educating, London Abused Women’s Centre and Strength in Sisterhood) rejected ‘the Appellants’ promotion of prostitution as a solution to women’s economic inequality’. This intervener ‘particularly reject(ed) the cruel logic that the overrepresentation of the most marginalized women, including Indigenous women, in the prostitution industry, is akin to an employment equity program, rather than a reflection of profound sexism and sexualized colonialism.’
The July 24 ruling is significant for several reasons. First, it upholds a key piece of Harper-era social legislation that has proven a policy success in protecting vulnerable and victimized populations exploited by the sex trade. Second, it was the Supreme Court’s first ruling on the constitutionality of provisions of PCEPA, affirming lower court judgments and indicating that the legislation is likely to stand long term. Third, it was a rebuke to advocates of the sex trade and an affirmation of the inherent exploitative nature of the sex trade.
Pro-prostitution activists are, predictably, outraged by this decision — 23 advocacy organization for the sex trade had called for the overturn of PCEPA (incidentally, Joyce Arthur of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada is also a vocal supporter of what she calls “sex work,” and once worked briefly as a stripper). With the Supreme Court’s July 24 ruling, however, it appears that advocates of the sex trade are out of options. This rare win is good news for the victimized and the vulnerable, good news for women and girls being exploited by the sex trade, and good news for Canadian society at large.
