Rebecca Taylor
They Can Take Their Charter of Rights and Shove It: Uncovering the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act’s Conditions of Possibility by Rebecca Taylor A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Department of Sociology University of Alberta © Rebecca Taylor, 2016 Abstract In 1990s Alberta, two discourses about young people pervaded Legislative debates: discourse promoting tougher responses to young offenders, and a rallying cry to protect sexually exploited youth. Both discourses were promoted not only by the same political party (the Progressive Conservative Party), but also by the same politician, Legislative Member Heather Forsyth. This thesis is a social history, tracing the emergence of the Protection of Children Involved in Prostitution Act (PChIP, 1999). To this end, this thesis questions: Why did the Alberta government create specific legislation to deal with sexually exploited young people in 1999?; and How, with protective legislation firmly in place, and growing public and political discourse condemning youth in Alberta, did PChIP gain traction in the Legislature? In this thesis, I argue that, like the white slavery panic in early Canada, the specific actors calling to protect young women in 1990s Alberta drew upon racialized, gendered, and class-based rhetoric. This discourse fuelled the creation of legislation protecting a particular subset of young women: middle-upper class, Caucasian girls from “normal, average, every day families” (Children Involved in Prostitution Report 1997, 7). At the same time discourses advocating for both the protection, and punishment of young people were circulating in the media and Legislature, Alberta was also resisting the growing consciousness of children having inalienable rights.
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