It has been brought to my attention that police enforcement of our now unconstitutional laws has fallen off dramatically, particularly in Toronto. It appears that the police have only been enforcing the laws against street sex workers, and this may be because the Ontario Appeal Court upheld that one law of the three. It will be interesting to see if they now continue to prevent screening of clients in public. If so, will they use other laws meant to prevent selling things on the street, or will they continue to invoke the laws set to expire in December? I am also curious to see if they will step up investigations of reported rapes, sexual harassment on the job or wife-beating. I hope so.

I have been reading and viewing the Web to see public reaction to the decision. By this I mean how the public responds to the issue of what the federal government should do now. A clear majority says prostitution should not be made illegal. Those who do actually want restrictions on the private behaviour of consenting adults in private advocate the so-called Nordic model, where customers are charged. Those of us who worked to strike down the laws know that this approach drives prostitution underground because the girls do not want to lose business. It is also under-enforced in countries that have adopted it. The judges in the case examined the experiences of other countries and concluded that other laws now in place in Canada address the worst aspects of prostitution. The only argument for making prostitution, whatever that is, illegal, are moral arguments. Such arguments have no place in a free country and those who make them should be ashamed of themselves.

I have been reading many stories in the media where members of the government are quoted or appear in interviews when the decision was released and after. My first reaction is to tell the public that these are the guys who announced they would appeal the initial lower court decision without reading it properly (if at all). Then they appealed the parts of the Ontario Court of Appeal decision (that upheld most of what the lower court ruled) to the Supreme Court, insisting that they still believed the laws were unconstitutional. After a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, it meant that 15 judges told the government that they were wrong. Are these the guys we are going to trust to bring in new laws? If they really believed the laws were constitutional then they were and are stupid. If they were just saying this to make the issues go away for a while they are are liars. Either way, they cannot be trusted to legislate on this issue. Therefore they should either not bring in new laws, or resign and let others who can be trusted do the job.

Some of you may have seen me say on television that the Prime Minister called and offered to appointment me to the Senate as the government “whip”. I have turned him down because I don’t like to engage in behaviour that upsets the police.

It has now been a few days since the decision has been released. On Saturday December 21st I put up a blog where I asked readers to keep some things in mind as we go forward. Please have a look at that by going to terrijeanbedford.com. Today I want to tell you what I think will happen if the Canadian government lets the laws fall and does not bring in any new laws. First, as Judge Himel ruled from the evidence, there will not be a significant increase in prostitution. This is because men who want to buy sex from women, or smoke marijuana, are already doing so. Massage parlours are all over the place, as are escort services. Secondly, the existing laws are under-enforced, to say the least, anyway. New laws likely would be under-enforced as well. Third, if the so-called Nordic model was brought in (where only clients are charged), the harms the judges found with the current laws would reappear, and those laws would not be enforceable in court. Remember, the countries with the Nordic model don’t have the constitutional protections we have in Canada, but the laws may fall in some of those countries as a result of our case anyway. Fourth, those who say the buying and selling of women for sex is wrong are wrong themselves. First of all, they don’t define sex. Can a man pay for a massage, or to kiss a woman’s feet? I could go on. I think you get the idea. I will have more to say in the new year about how laws must be specific to be enforceable – to say nothing about constitutional – to say nothing about enforceable. A happy holiday season and new year to all.