As reported by CBC Immigration Minister Jason Kenny and Human Resources Minister Diane Finley have teamed up against foreign strippers and sex workers, making it policy to deny them postive Labor Market Opinions and Work Permits.
This means exotic dancers need not apply if they are foreigners. And for those already in Canada on work visas, your time is running out. Your stay in Canada expires soon and better start packing.
Exotic dancers being issued work visas have been on the books for some time. Many have come to Canada in order to get a second shot or depending on from where they come, a first shot. Life in their home countries offer little by way of education, career advancement and a future. Now I know what you are thinking: Working as a stripper in Canada is a better option for these women? What kind of future is that?
Well do the math. Working as a stripper allows them to save, go to school and yes eventually get out of the business all together. These foreign workers do not usually see stripping as an end but as a means to something better. Do all of them make it? Probably not. Maybe some do not want to get out of the business. But it’s the opportunity that attracts these women. And so for them Canada is (was) the land of opportunity.
But that was then. Now such applicants will have to look elsewhere for their dreams to come true. The government’s justification for ending the exotic dancer program is that these women are vulnerable to being exploited. Fair enough. But who should be punished? The women? Or the employers? Is it Canada’s job to protect foreign workers by refusing them visas?
I think what is really behind the government initiative is political. The voting public, the government calculates, will support this move. The voting right will agree that all forms of sex trade work is immoral and therefore should be banned. If the Charter of Rights makes it difficult to go after Canadian strippers, let’s “save” the foreigners and Canadians who buy such services by legislating them out of existence.
On the left, there are those who believe that working in the exotic entertainment industry is by definition exploitive; that if you work as a stripper, you are being abused, degraded and demeaned as a woman.
Members of both sides of the political fence are in agreement that a) these woman must be protected from some form of harm and b) it is the government’s job to protect them. and that c) the sex trade workers are by virtue of their occupation vulnerable such that preemptive government intervention i.e., shutting them out of the visa process is a reasonable means of protection and is in the best interests of Canadians.
I am all for protecting workers, foreign or domestic, from abuse, mistreatment and exploitation. However, equating sex trade work with abuse, as the government does, goes too far. Canada is supposed to be a democratic country. What comes with that is the freedom for people to choose alternative lifestyles, options and yes jobs. The premise of a free society is that citizens are grown ups, not children.
In other words, the state has no place in our bedrooms nor in our strip clubs.
President & CEO
Michael Niren
Mr. Niren is CEO of VisaPlace LLC and the President and Managing Partner of VisaPlace Legal Canada, an immigration law firm based in Toronto, and VisaPlace Legal US a law firm registered in The District of Columbia, USA. Mr. Niren is a graduate of Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada, the Canadian Bar Association’s Citizenship and Immigration Section, American Lawyers Association, and an Associate Member of the American Bar Association.
