By Alison Bradish
Citizens of Regina may have one last chance to speak up about how body rub parlours will be regulated in their city.
Monday, December 16th at 5:30 p.m. Regina City Council will vote on amendments to the proposed zoning bylaw for body rub parlours. The city will decide if body rub parlours can operate in the major arterial commercial (MAC) zones or solely the industrial zones of the city. The city has decided to regulate body rub parlours, businesses where sexual acts are being sold, despite the buying of sex being a crime.
Tashia Toupin, Social Justice Coordinator for the Archdiocese of Regina, says the Archdiocese disagrees with the city’s decision to regulate body rub parlours for numerous reasons. “Firstly, the Archdiocese works to promote human dignity. This flies in the face of that, as it objectifies and commodifies human beings and it’s an affront to human sexuality,” says Toupin. She says the Archdiocese of Regina is concerned about human trafficking which is linked to prostitution, and by regulating body rub parlours the city in essence is saying it is okay for some people to be exploited as long as it happens in the purview of the law.
According to Devon Hill, with the group Freedom Catalyst Regina (FCR), if the city decides to allow the body rub parlours to operate in MAC zones, many of these businesses will stay where they currently are. FCR supported a complete ban for body rub parlours, but now that the ban had failed, they are advocating for body rub parlours to only operate in the industrial areas thus keeping these businesses away from residential areas and out of sight of heavy traffic areas. He believes this will decrease the demand for so called “services” and hopefully not as many people would be involved.
One concern about the industrial area was the safety of the area for women who are working in body rub parlours, for example not enough police presence or lighting outside. “My opinion is the majority of the safety problems occur indoors, out of the view of the public, out of the view of the police, which they can’t access. So, the way to really keep them (the women involved) safe is to stop it from operating in Regina,” says Hill. He says the city would not give a business license to a drug house, and asks why they think it is okay, in this instance, to create a city approved space for illegal activity to occur.
Gwendoline Allison is Vancouver based lawyer and a committee member of the Archdiocese of Vancouver’s Anti-Human Trafficking initiative. She says harm reduction sounds great in principle, but it misses a key point. Prostitution is inherently unsafe. “The idea of harm reduction comes from a notion which I consider to be misguided; that if we take prostitution off the streets and allow it to occur in body rub parlours, or indoors, it will become safer. That women will no longer be killed by men the men who buy them or profit from them. …people are concerned about it because they don’t want to see women be killed in prostitution,” says Allison.
Allison says she finds the harm reduction argument flawed, firstly because prostitution is a deeply gendered activity, meaning it is mostly men who buy mostly women. “If we regulate it firstly what we are saying is commercial sex is an activity women provide to men, and something that is so important in our society that we have to regulate it….is that something we want as a society? Second, from that, not only is it women who are primarily the ones who are selling and therefore at the most risk of being harmed and the men who are doing the harming, it is women are particularly vulnerable who are at the most risk of harm; women who are poor, women who are racialized, women who have mental health and drug addictions, those are the women who are most at risk for prostitution,” says Allison.
She said if you think about the women in Regina who are at risk, of course the community wants to keep them from harm, but is allowing them to work in a body rub parlour the best way to keep them safe? “The best way to keep them safe is to provide an exit from prostitution and to provide meaningful opportunities for them and help,” says Allison.
“Do we make exploitation better by allowing more of it to occur?” she asks.
If the city of Saskatoon is to be used as an example, the answer to that question is a resounding no.
The city of Saskatoon runs a business license program for “Adult Services License” and charges a licensing fee for adult service agencies, adult service performers and workers and even home-based adult businesses.
From an enforcement perspective, it is a double-edged sword, according to Detective Sergeant Aaron Moser, from the Saskatoon Police Service’s VICE Unit. “I think the idea when the city (Saskatoon) developed the adult service bylaw is that it would give us an opportunity to see who’s coming in and applying for these licenses and would be a tool for us to help ensure, for example, that underage girls were not involved in providing sexual services and persons were not being exploited in the criminal code definition of human trafficking.”
However, asked if the bylaw has decreased the demand for sexual services, Moser says “Absolutely not. No. The provincial data we have available for the advertising of online sexual services is showing an exponential increase year over year…from 2017 to 2018 we saw an increase of over 40 per cent of online adds for sexual services.”
Moser says he expects to see an increase in the numbers again for 2019 once they are released.
“The concern for our unit in Saskatoon and I think law enforcement communities in general is that there’s a correlation between those ads and victimization. The more ads we see for sexual services it would stand to reason that we are seeing more victims of sexual exploitation.,” says Moser.
In 2016 the city of Estevan created bylaws to regulate body rub parlours. They have seen a decrease in the number of body rub parlours operating in the city and are down to one which is located on Main Street.
The city of Moose Jaw has no bylaw regarding Body Rub Parlours. There was no confirmation from the Moose Jaw Police Service if there are currently Body Rub Parlours operating in the city of Moose Jaw. This month an 18-year-old woman from Moose Jaw was a victim of a human trafficking ring in Saskatoon.
Alison Bradish lives in Moose Jaw with her husband and two children. They attend St. Joseph’s Parish. She earned Bachelor of Arts in Journalism at the University of Regina. She is naturally curious about local and world events. She writes from her home where she strives to bloom where she is planted. She often feels pulled to the topics of religion, education and politics.
