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| News: Little support for change to prostitution law |
Decriminalization would further erode already hard-hit neighbourhoods: residents
By IRWIN BLOCK
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Decriminalizing solicitation by prostitutes will further weaken the "social fabric" of certain Montreal neighbourhoods where they work the streets, residents warned yesterday.
The combination of intravenous drug use and female and male street prostitution in parks and lanes is making life impossible north and south of Ste. Catherine St. E. and east of St. Hubert St., they told a travelling committee of the House of Commons.
"Street prostitution and neighbourhood life are not compatible," said Agnes Connat, a member of the Association des residentes et residents des Faubourgs de Montreal.
She estimated that 200 hookers, most of them drug-dependent, were plying their trade in parts of the Centre-South and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve areas.
These residents urged the sub-committee of the Standing Committee on Justice not to recommend dropping Article 213 of the Criminal Code, which bans communicating with someone in a public place for the purpose of prostitution.
Sex acts and drug use in an area park, next to a church, got so bad for Pierrette Thomas that after living for 64 years on Alexandre de Seve St., south of Ste. Catherine St. in the Gay Village, she had to move to the suburbs.
"They forced me out of my neighbourhood," she told the committee, meeting at a midtown hotel.
Marc Drapeau of Quebec City, a street worker in Projet Intervention Prostitution Quebec Inc., advocated heavier penalties and education of clients as a way to decrease demand for prostitutes.
But this approach was denounced by Jennifer Clamen, a member of the Coalition for the Rights of Sex Workers. The hard line against johns ignores the fact they are the prostitutes' "bread and butter," Clamen said.
"We suggest removing all the laws that make sex workers criminals," she told the MPs.
Francois Robillard, who lives on St. Christophe St., said neighbourhood pressure on police and Project Cyclops - where residents post licence plate numbers and description of johns on telephone poles - has cut down on street action there over the past two years.
The hearings are continuing but there is little support at the top for radical change.
Prime Minister Paul Martin rejected a push this month from some Liberal Party members to fully decriminalize prostitution.
Origionally published www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=0aec8c49-131c-43aa-aa6c-4e34643190e7
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