In a two-part package, National Post looks at enforcement or the lack thereof around marijuana and prostitution and what it means for the future. Raven, a name she uses professionally, started selling sex in Winnipeg about a year ago. She likes the people she meets. In the last several months, though, Raven, 33, has noticed small changes cropping up in her industry.
Clients are becoming more cautious, she believes, and advertising more discreet. Online posts β once quite explicit β are slipping into euphemism. Four months after the federal government brought into force new laws aimed at ending prostitution in this country, the vast grey market for sexual services in Canada remains, unsurprisingly, intact. From Halifax to Victoria and everywhere in between, sex is still being bought and sold in Canada, according to sex workers, police departments, researchers, and common sense.
In interviews with the National Post , sex workers in five cities across Canada, all contacted through a popular sexual services website and identified here by their work names, said uncertainty over the new regulations has pushed some clients away and made business harder for them in other ways. The court suspended that ruling for 12 months, however, giving the federal government time to craft a new set of, in some ways, even more restrictive laws around sex work.
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The next issue of NP Posted will soon be in your inbox. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Bill C, for the first time in Canada, explicitly outlawed the buying, but not the selling of sex. It also gave police new powers to prosecute those who advertise sex work and those who exploit or otherwise make money off sex workers in all but a few limited cases.
