The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down the country's anti-prostitution laws in a unanimous decision, and given Parliament one year to come up with new legislation — should it choose to do so. 
 
 It is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money. - Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, Supreme Court of Canada 
 
 In striking down laws prohibiting brothels, living on the avails of prostitution and communicating in public with clients, the top court ruled Friday that the laws were over-broad and "grossly disproportionate." 
 
 "Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes," wrote Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in the 9-0 decision that noted "it is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money." 
 
 The ruling was in response to a court challenge by women with experience in the sex trade, Terri-Jean Bedford, Amy Lebovitch and Valerie Scott that had resulted in an Ontario court ruling that overturned the laws. 
 
 Sex workers advocate Valerie Scott, left, and Terri-Jean Bedford brought the case against Canada's prostitution laws. (Darren Calabrese/Canadian Press) The Ontario Court of Appeal later upheld the law against communicating in public, but sided with the lower court in overturning the provisions against living off the avails and keeping a common bawdy house or brothel. 
 
 "These appeals and the cross-appeal are not about whether prostitution should be legal or not. They are about whether the laws Parliament has enacted on how prostitution may be carried out pass constitutional muster. I conclude that they do not," McLachlin wrote. 
 
 "I would therefore make a suspended declaration of invalidity, returning the question of how to deal with prostitution to Parliament." 
 
 That means the provisions stay in the Criminal Code for the next year while the government decides what to do. 
 
 In a statement, Justice Minister Peter MacKay said the government would take the time to decide how to address "this very complex matter." 
 
 "We are reviewing the decision and are exploring all possible options to ensure the criminal law continues to address the significant harms that flow from prostitution to communities, those engaged in prostitution and vulnerable persons," his statement said. 
 
 MacKay also said there are "a number of other Criminal Code provisions" in place to protect sex-trade workers "and to address the negative effects prostitution has on communities." 
 
 The women in the case had argued that the law prevented them from safely conducting their business as sex-trade workers, arguing that hiring bodyguards and drivers, and being able to work in private homes or talk with potential clients in public were important to their safety. 
 
 "Now the government must tell Canadians, all consenting adults, what we can and cannot do in the privacy of our home for money or not. And they must write laws that are fair," Bedford told reporters gathered in the foyer of the Supreme Court building in Ottawa on Friday. 
 
 One of her co-respondents in the appeal said a new law won't work. 
 
 "The thing here is politicians, though they may know us as clients, they do not understand how sex work works," said Scott. "They won't be able to write a half-decent law. It will fail. That's why you must bring sex workers to the table in a meaningful way." 
 
 'Sky's not going to fall in' 
 
 Scott says new laws should be up to municipalities, not the federal government. 
 
 "If the Harper government rewrites laws, they will fail and the next generation of sex workers will be right back here. So let's not be stupid, federal government. Let's do something progressive, actually." 
 
 Scott added that "the sky's not going to fall in" with Friday's ruling. 
 
 "People said that when women got the right to vote, equal pay, equal rights, and same sex marriage — all of those things, every single one, people said the sky would fall in. It did not. Society is the better for it and society will be the better for sex workers having proper civil and occupational rights." 
 
 The women's lawyer, Alan Young, said it was important to understand the ruling affects "one of the most under-enforced laws in the Canadian Criminal Code. 
 
 "The fact that people are crying that the law's been invalidated, [they] don't understand that the law's been ineffective and largely just used in a discriminatory way." 
 
 "We're not really going to see any change tomorrow. It's going to be business as usual," Young said. 
 
 Others condemned the ruling. 
 
 "It's a sad day that we've now had confirmed that it's OK to buy and sell women and girls in this country. I think generations to come — our daughters, their granddaughters and on — will look back and say, 'What were they thinking?,'" said Kim Pate, executive director of the Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies and a member of the Women's Coalition for the Abolition of Prostitution. 
 
 "To say that [prostitution] is a choice when you're talking about the women we work with is to say that in fact it's OK to just exploit them," Pate said. 
 
 "We've never seen men criminalized for buying and selling women and girls. We've always seen women criminalized for selling themselves. We absolutely object to the criminalization of women. Our position would not interfere with those women who truly have made their choices." 
 
 Worry about 'open season' for prostitution 
 
 Don Hutchinson, vice-president and general legal counsel for Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, said his group wants Parliament to come back with a new law that would "criminalize the purchase of sex and provide support services for those who wish to exit the sex trade. 
 
 "What we're suggesting is that for the first time in Canada, prostitution would be illegal. The purchase of sexual services or the rental of somebody's body would become illegal," Hutchinson said. 
 
 "If there's no replacement legislative scheme, then it's open season in regard to prostitution." 
 
 Lebovitch, however, said the decision will help protect sex-trade workers. 
 
 "I am shocked and amazed that sex work and the sex work laws that affect our lives on a daily basis will within a year not cause us harm any more." 
 
 "It's a huge victory for all the people in Vancouver, all my sisters out there who are going to be safe. It's just a huge, huge victory. I'm so happy," added Lorna Bird of the advocacy group Sex Workers United Against Violence. 
 
 Mobile users, read the ruling here ||||| The Supreme Court of Canada has struck down the country's major prostitution laws, saying that bans on street soliciting, brothels and people living off the avails of prostitution create severe dangers for vulnerable women and therefore violate Canadians' basic values. 
 
 Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, writing for a unanimous court, stressed that the ruling is not about whether prostitution should be legal or not, but about whether Parliament's means of controlling it infringe the constitutional rights of prostitutes. 
 
 "Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety and lives of prostitutes," she wrote. 
 
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 "The prohibitions all heighten the risks. . . . They do not merely impose conditions on how prostitutes operate. They go a critical step further, by imposing dangerous conditions on prostitution; they prevent people engaged in a risky – but legal – activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the risks." 
 
 The court suspended its ruling for one year to give Parliament time to respond. The ball is now back in the court of Justice Minister Peter MacKay, who needs to decide whether to adopt new prohibitions and if so, how to ensure those prohibitions do not fall afoul of the court. 
 
 Mr. MacKay suggested in a statement that the government will continue to look at prohibiting prostitution in some fashion. The government is "exploring all possible options to ensure the criminal law continues to address the significant harms that flow from prostitution to communities, those engaged in prostitution, and vulnerable persons," he said. 
 
 The court suggested Parliament has wide options for continuing to criminalize prostitution-related activities, even perhaps maintaining aspects of the existing laws. It said the prohibitions on street soliciting, brothels and living off the avails are all intertwined and have an impact on one another. 
 
 "Greater latitude in one measure – for example, permitting prostitutes to obtain the assistance of security personnel – might impact on the constitutionality of another measure – for example, forbidding the nuisances associated with keeping a bawdy-house. The regulation of prostitution is a complex and delicate matter. It will be for Parliament, should it choose to do so, to devise a new approach, reflecting different elements of the existing regime." 
 
 To stand, any new laws would have to "take seriously the safety concerns of people who are engaged in sex work," Elaine Craig, a law professor at Dalhousie University, said. 
 
 The government has a wide set of options. "As far as I can tell there is no constitutional bar to prohibiting the sale of sex for money provided the harm of the law doesn't grossly outweigh the federal government's objective in adopting it," Prof. Craig said. 
 
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 She said the prostitution laws struck down by the court "were nuisance laws. They were about trying to ensure that people in good, upstanding neighbourhoods were not exposed to the unsightliness of sex workers. These laws were never about protecting sex workers." And the court saw the harms as out of whack with the laws' objectives. 
 
 The ruling is one of the most important since the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was enacted in 1982 and will alter a longstanding feature of the Canadian legal landscape, much like previous Charter rulings on gay marriage on abortion did. Laws against brothels and pimps go back to pre-Confederation days. 
 
 The federal government had argued that prostitutes choose to accept the risks of an inherently dangerous trade, such as violence from customers. But the court said vulnerable individuals fall into prostitution not always of their own accord. 
 
 "While some prostitutes may fit the description of persons who freely choose (or at one time chose) to engage in the risky economic activity of prostitution, many prostitutes have no meaningful choice but to do so. Moreover, it makes no difference that the conduct of pimps and johns is the immediate source of the harms suffered by prostitutes. The violence of a john does not diminish the role of the state in making a prostitute more vulnerable to that violence." 
 
 The court cited specific harms caused by each of the three laws. The ban on brothels prevents prostitutes from working in safer indoor locations, and is "grossly disproportionate to the deterrence of community disruption." The law against living off the avails of prostitution is intended for pimps, but also bans "legitimate drivers, managers, or bodyguards. . . accountants or receptionists." The ban on street soliciting is intended to take prostitution out of public view to prevent nuisance, but endangers prostitutes by preventing them from weeding out dangerous clients, and is therefore grossly disproportionate to its purpose, the court said. 
 
 The court – with a majority of judges appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper – followed the line it established two years ago, when only two Harper appointees sat on the nine-member court, in unanimously ordering the federal government not to close down a Vancouver clinic at which people could inject illegal drugs under medical supervision. 
 
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 The ruling does not necessarily mean open season for prostitution. The Conservative government could still craft new laws that make prostitution or related offences criminal activities. If prostitution becomes legalized, cities would be faced with the challenge of where to permit prostitution and – if they refuse to permit it at all, or try to confine it to out-of-the-way places – potential constitutional challenges of their own. 
 
 Terri-Jean Bedford, one of three current and former prostitutes who brought the challenge to Canada's prostitution laws, said in court documents she was abused as a child, entered prostitution at 16 to pay for her drug addictions and those of her 37-year-old boyfriend, and was "raped and gang-raped too many times to talk about" as a street prostitute in Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver.
– Canada's highest court has slayed a series of prostitution laws that included bans on brothels and street soliciting, declaring them unconstitutional. After a series of appeals in the lower courts, the chief justice explained the 9-0 decision, noting, "Parliament has the power to regulate against nuisances, but not at the cost of the health, safety, and lives of prostitutes." Sex workers had argued the laws compromised their safety and the court agreed; the laws "prevent people engaged in a risky—but legal—activity from taking steps to protect themselves from the risks," the ruling read, per the Globe and Mail. While the chief justice noted "it is not a crime in Canada to sell sex for money," the ruling was "not about whether prostitution should be legal or not." Rather, it concluded that the law didn't set out a lawful way for prostitution to be handled, the CBC notes. The government will now have a year to figure out how to properly deal with prostitution, the court ruled. But even on the heels of the win, one advocate isn't very optimistic. "The thing here is politicians, though they may know us as clients, they do not understand how sex work works," she said. "They won't be able to write a half-decent law. It will fail."