By Katie Donnelly O’Neill
Mac Harb wants to give the green light to red-light districts again.
The Ottawa Centre Liberal MP has resurrected his private member’s bill in the House of Commons that would give municipalities the power to license certain zones and establishments for prostitution.
Harb first tabled the bill three years ago, but he says that the situation of street prostitution continues to be problematic and it was time to try again.
“The problem is persistent throughout Canada and I hope that I get more support to deal with it this time around,” Harb says.
It is safer for prostitutes to allow the municipalities the flexibility to license certain areas, he says.
“They will be off the streets and they will no longer be subject to pimps and middle men, who may abuse them,” he says.
Valerie Scott, spokeswoman for the Sexual Professionals of Canada, says there is no reason for the government to try to regulate the trade since it is a legitimate occupation that should be legalized.
“We see it as a legalized business and it should not be looked upon as something that needs to be controlled.”
Currently, there are no laws prohibiting the exchange of money for sex but public solicitation and keeping a common bawdy house are both offences under the Criminal Code of Canada.
If the bill gets passed, Scott says she plans to purposely get arrested for prostituting in an unlicensed area and she will challenge the law up to the Supreme Court.
Scott says the proposed bill will not improve health standards for prostitutes.
Ottawa Police Services Board chairman Herb Kreling agrees that red-light zones may not be the answer.
He says the way to make streets safer and neighbourhoods healthier is to deal with the social problems that cause women to prostitute, not to create red-light districts.
According to Kreling, the bill will create two systems for prostitution because the illegal street prostitution won’t stop once the licensed areas are created.
The federal government should not be passing off “cleaning up the problem” of prostitution to the municipalities, Kreling says.
“There is a leap here to assume that the municipality should be laden with the responsibility,” he says.
Kreling says that he cannot see this bill getting sufficient support to pass and that it is doubtful a red-light area would ever be created in Ottawa.
Members of the Hintonburg Community Association have been working for years to rid their neighbourhood streets of prostitution.
Jay Baltz, the association’s president, says any bill capable of dealing with the problem would have to address safe and available treatment for the women’s drug addictions and would have to find a way to deter the men.
“There needs to be an effort not to just wink and nod toward the men because there can’t be prostitution without men,” he says.
Baltz says Harb’s bill is ineffective and favours instead the approach taken by the Ontario government.
Last June, the provincial government passed a bill dealing with prostitution.
It authorizes a one-year suspension of a driver’s licence if the person uses a car to commit a prostitution-related offence.
The bill will also allow police officers to apprehend under-age prostitutes in order to hold them in a safe facility for 30 days.
Baltz says that he’s not concerned the effect Harb’s bill may have on his community since “it doesn’t have a chance in hell of passing.”
The Dalhousie Community Association, which supported Harb’s bill in 2000, had no comment on his latest attempt.
The association recently added new members to its board and has not had a chance to re-examine Harb’s bill.