Canada's government introduced legislation making it illegal to buy sex and to sell it in public areas where there might be minors on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper proposed the law as a response to Canada's highest court striking down the country's anti-prostitution laws last year, Reuters reported. According to critics of the bill, the new legislation makes prostitutes more vulnerable.
The courts struck down bans on keeping a brothel, making a living from prostitution, and street soliciting, according to Reuters. The Supreme Court ruling upheld an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling which struck down the ban on brothels on the grounds that it endangered sex workers by forcing them onto the streets, but the ruling didn't take effect because the court gave Parliament a year to respond with new legislation.
Angela Campbell, a law professor at Montreal's McGill university, said the proposal does little to protect sex workers and is merely an opportunity for the Conservatives to push their law and order agenda, according to Reuters.
Justice Minister Peter MacKay said the new law would target pimps and "the perverts," Reuters reported. "We are criminalizing the purchase of sexual services and in very specific instances the sale in areas where young people under the age of 18 could be present," MacKay said.
MacKay suggested the courts would ultimately interpret the circumstances under which someone could be charged for selling sex near minors, and said the police would have discretion to decide whether to act, according to Reuters. The law also would ban advertising the sale of sexual services in print media or on the Internet.
Emilie Laliberte, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Alliance for Sex Work Law Reform, said the new law "let down all Canadian sex workers," and she predicted it would end up before the Supreme Court again in a few years, Reuters reported.