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6 responses so far ↓

• Hazel
  Wrote: Mar 12, 2007 at 1:20 am

  Hi Rose I have two law’s in mind first and foremost and I thank you for the opportunity to discuss them. (thanx)

  First I think I would concentrate on the most vulnerable people in our society and that would be abandoned babies. I’d like to see some kind of safe surrender laws established in canada.

  The US has instituted such laws in 42 states to great affect and European countries have a long history of safe surrender. There is controversy but I do believe that with proper planning Canadians can create a safe surrender practice nationwide that suits the needs of our most precious resource, our newborns.

  Secondly, I would also like to see the criminal codes 210, 211, 212 and 213 struck down.

  The current status of prostitution in Canada as an act and as a trade is legal. Yet the regulations set out in the criminal code, specifically Sections 210, 211, 212, and 213, pretty much ensure the trade and acts of prostitution have no legal or safe place to occur.

  Section 210 prohibits maintaining, owning, or being an “inmate” of a common bawdy-house
  Section 211 (“the bawdy-house law” )prohibits knowingly transporting or directing a person to a bawdy-house
  Section 212(1) and (3): Section 212(1) prohibits procuring, attempting to procure, or soliciting a person to have illicit sexual intercourse with another person; inveigling or enticing a person to a bawdy-house for the purpose of prostitution; and living on the avails of a prostitute.
  Section 212(3) (”The Procuring Law”) places an evidential burden on an accused who lives with or is “habitually in the company of” a prostitute to prove that s/he is not living on the avails of prostitution.
  Section 213: (”The Communicating Law”)This section proscribes making offers to purchase or provide sexual services in a public place or in public view.

  Since these regulations came into effect in 1985 we have seen an epidemic of serial murders and vicious attacks against a certain group of sex trade workers.Attacks against those workers that fall into what is called the survival sex industry.

  While the Criminal code clearly states no one can live off the avails of prostitution, own operate or work in a “bawdy House” or direct commercial traffic to such a place of business, various municipal governments have been doing just that and profiting from such services over the past ten years through the regulation and taxation of “Massage Parlors” and “Escort Services”.

  For each escort service and massage parlor you see an ad for (in the back of nearly every paper you pick up) there is a license fee paid to the municipal gov’t in most major cities across the country.

  This license fee is invariably hundreds of times higher than other business license types. Compare $140.00 in Edmonton for a regular business license to the $3,600 for an escort license.

  The only people profiting here are the escort owners, the municipal gov’t and the Federal gov’t who also shares in a piece of that tax take.

  So back to the “survival sex trade” participants.
  These women are often participants of legal escort businesses who get into trouble. Drugs mostly. Viruses also. These women who can no longer work “inside” get turned “out”-side.

  Its not like their tax dollars are going towards any registered retirement plan for hookers so what do they do? No medical, no insurance? They do what they know they survive, until they don’t.

  These women cannot afford such exorbitant fee’s so they don’t get to work in the legitimized and sanitized industry of escorts and masseuses. They are legislated OUT of brothels, out of their own homes, and out of any support system such as drivers, body guards, or even family because of the danger of those supporters being charged with living off of the avails of prostitution.

  I would like to see the laws change to reflect the UN’s proclamation of the 1950’s that prostitution is not a prosecutable offense, but a legitimate service offering as it has been since the dawn of civilization.

  I would like to see the laws changed to protect the most vulnerable of prostitutes, the ones involved in survival sex like many of the women who ended up at Pickton’s farm Port Coquitlam, or in ditches and fields outside of Sherwood Park Edmonton. Or like the 5 women murdered over the past 12 years in the Niagara region in Ontario.

  The honorable and courageous Captain Trevor Green wrote a book about the missing women of the DTES called “Bad Date”. It was published about a year before Pickton was picked up on suspicion of serial murder.

  In the book he details a cruel counter-culture he uncovered. Men trolling the DTES for women. Not to engage in the purchase of sex, but rather to engage in violence. He discovered there is a small yet thriving market among a few disturbed violent males to have access to women they can torture. This is what they get off on. Torture is their sex, their porn, their bag.

  I don’t know who these jackals are, but it is obvious what they feed and grow strong on- vulnerable, drug or mentally ill, poverty stricken street women. It is also obvious by the trail of broken and burned bodies littered along the Trans Canada HWY (specifically Yellowhead Rt 16 aka the HWY of Tears) and the numbers of murdered and missing women growing exponentially across this nation, this small sick counter culture is growing.

  How do we cut the life out of such a monster? We remove its food. How? We protect our women, and our children. Simple as that. We need to stop blaming the prostitutes for living the lives they lead while continuing to turn a blind eye top the actions of our brothers, fathers, uncles, husbands, and son’s who look for such women to take out their frustrations on.

  Thanks Rose, for allowing me to write a novella on your blog.

  I continue to enjoy your blog every time I drop by.

  Take care.
  Hazel.

• Hazel
  Wrote: Mar 12, 2007 at 1:21 am

  Oh Sorry I realize you asked for ONE law. I just couldn’t choose, Brothels vs Babies Brothels Vs babies ???

• Marcia
  Wrote: Mar 12, 2007 at 5:15 pm

  My initial response was flippant, “the law of averages”. Haveing just read the comment on the safe surrender law, I agree, it needs to be across the entire US (and Canada). We have it in WA, and unfortunately last year a visitor who did not know of the law abandoned her baby near a pond. Reading it affected me so much I wrote a poem about it. I am sure there are other laws I could have picked, but Hazel struck a chord with that one.

• Rose DesRochers
  Wrote: Mar 12, 2007 at 6:23 pm

  I believe that Canada should have a Safe surrender law established and by all means you can write a book anytime that you wish on my blog. I don’t agree with your views on prostitution, but that is ok and I did not realize that one could purchase an escort license.

  Hazel drop by my blog any time.

  While were on the subject of laws, I would like to see the age of sexual consent law raised in Canada and tougher sentencing for internet crimes against children.

  Marcia, I would love to read your poem.

• Hazel
  Wrote: Mar 14, 2007 at 1:50 pm

  Marcia, I would also love to read your poem.

  And Thanks Rose, I appreciate that I rather like it here.

• “Annie”
  Wrote: Mar 14, 2007 at 10:29 pm

  Rose,
  Today is my first visit to your website. Thank you for providing a place to post our thoughts.

  I’m fairly confident that given the opportunity to REALLY change a single law, I’d choose something more signficant than what I’m about to post. Despite knowing this, I’m going to suggest three issues where I think laws should be changed or written.

  1) Professional athletes should be immediately fired and banned from playing if they behave violently on or off their playing field, court, etc.
  They’ve had years and years of training and playing by the time they reach professional status so if they can’t control themselves, they should be totally banned. There is no other professional occupation where a person would not be fired for jumping on someone’s head or biting off someone’s ear.

  2) Scented candles, potpourri’s, and other strong & artificial smells should be banned from public places. Make it legal in the privacy of one’s home, but don’t subject the rest of us to smells so strong that often they can be detected outside of the building they’re in. People with breathing disorders, allergies, and aut0-immune disease should be allowed to visit public places without risking their health.

  3) Ban the use of latex and plastic handling of food. Latex allergies are increasing dramatically as more and more products are developed or replaced with latex. Items containing peanuts are labeled…yet, no one is warned if someone handles food with latex gloves or latex is used in preparation or packaging of food.

  Latex allergy doesn’t always cause just a “little rash.” It causes anaplylactic reaction in many people who are latex sensitive.

  Perhaps, it is too late to remove latex from every toy, stretchy fabric, carpet fiber, or automobile, but it should be possible to find safer ways of handling food.

  (And, yes; I’m allergic to latex)

  4. This one is from my husband: Ban busing.