Editorial: Saskatchewan stripper laws a puritanical stepbackwards

Like the strippers permitted to get down just to their thongs and pasties when performing routinesin venues that serve alcohol, the Wall government went only half way in late 2013 when it decided to"modernize" Saskatchewan's liquor laws to bring them closer in line with the rest of Canada inallowing this form of entertainment.

A little more than a year later, Premier Brad Wall is having second thoughts, and announcedWednesday that even this timorous move was a big mistake and that his government will again makestripping illegal in Saskatchewan's bars.

"If by this decision we have inadvertently allowed for even a marginal increase in the chance forhuman trafficking, it's the wrong decision," said the premier, adding that strip clubs are linked toorganized crime and he's concerned about sexual exploitation of the performers.

With it, he only serves to refocus national attention on the puritanical bent in Saskatchewan that hadlong kept not only fully nude strippers from earning a living in this province's bars, but also castsuch a wide net that it also tangled up burlesque performers and even a group of Spandex-cladwomen in an aerobics display at a Regina Exhibition beer garden in the 1990s.

Surely, ours isn't such an oddity on the national scene that it needs a "Made in Saskatchewan"solution to avoiding problems in an industry that's commonplace elsewhere. From Victoria andVancouver to Calgary to Edmonton to Winnipeg, licensed establishments provide adultentertainment in the form of strip tease acts, presumably with sufficient laws and regulations inplace to keep at bay the unsavoury elements that so worry the premier.

The comments of Codette bar owner Don Verstraeten, whose business attracts busloads of visitorson weekends to see performers who are required to keep their bottoms on and their nipples covered,illustrates the reality that what passes for stripping in Saskatchewan would barely make the grade ina burlesque show anywhere else.

These aren't the women who are trafficked and exploited.

Rather than turn back the clock in Saskatchewan by five or six decades, surely the government can

adopt the best of laws in other provinces to allow consenting adults to earn a living by displayingtheir bodies to others in a regulated environment.

For instance, in Alberta, the distance between patrons and strippers is regulated. Video recordingsor other surveillance methods can be used to make images that could be provided to police to ensurethe safety of performers and adherence to the rules.

The rules that Wall wants to rescind certainly needed improvement to prevent the confusion theycreated for those trying to establish strip clubs, and made a lot of work for municipal governmentstrying to accommodate the needs of legal businesses trying to operate in cities.

The last thing Saskatchewan needs is to return to the days before even this inadequate andconfusing set of regulations was in place. Rather than prevent exploitation and trafficking in womenby organized crime, as Wall suggests, his "solution" only drives the industry underground inSaskatchewan and makes it less safe.

This editorial is from today's edition of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

http://www.leaderpost.com/news/regina/Editorial+Saskatchewan+stripper+laws+puritanical+step/10921595/story.html